Debate on Police Response to Teenage Shoplifters in London

Do we really need truncheons and pepper spray to fight off London’s ‘feral’ teenage shoplifters? | Zoe Williams

I don’t want to minimise the scenes in Clapham High Street. But how about dialling things down a notch? Last week, some teenagers in the Clapham area of south-west London started running up and down the high street. The terms used to describe them ranged from “feral gang” to “chaotic swarm”; evidently, it is in the eye of the beholder as to whether they were closer to animals or insects. Definitely, positively, some of them shoplifted. Fireworks were let off, which sounds like the kind of mis...

By Zoe Williams