Tuesday 1 May 2012

Are there such things as mugging myths?


I know a bloke who got mugged recently. Friend of a friend in the pub stole all his money on the way home, but do you know what I want to know? What was he doing out pissed at midnight?  And why did he get so drunk he couldn’t defend himself? Honestly some people are such idiots.
I’ll tell you what happened.

My friend, I’ll call him Paul, met some mates in our local pub.  He only knew two of them, the other two were friends of friends and he hadn’t met them before. One of them, I’ll call him Steve, ended up being the last in the pub with Paul after everyone else had gone and they decided to go for a kebab. They were getting on really well according to Paul and were talking about going to see the football together the following weekend.
When they got to the kebab shop Steve didn’t have enough money on him so Paul lent him a tenner and they ended up walking back to Paul’s house to eat their kebabs, both totally pissed. At some point on the walk Steve asked Paul to give him some more money and Paul said no.  I think they had a bit of a row about it. I’m not surprised, I mean, Paul had given him money just 10 minutes before so why did he have a problem giving him some more? How was Steve supposed to know it was a one off, especially when he had seen how much cash Paul still had on him, and he was wearing really expensive clothes so obviously well off, God that just asking for trouble. Paul loves it when he can feel like the centre of attention and the drinks are all on him because he earns more than us, but suddenly it was a problem to give Steve some more?

Paul tried to storm off but he was so drunk all he really managed to do was stagger around a bit. I said to him after, why didn’t you just get in a taxi at this point? If he had just used his common sense and not tried to walk home alone Steve would never have been able to catch him up and take his wallet of him. I had to laugh at that, he just walked up to him and took it from him. Didn’t even bother asking if he could, and Paul didn’t even say no.
In fact, the more I think about it, I reckon Paul might have just given Steve some money, and then when he realised what he had done when he sobered up he felt like a twat and made out he was robbed. I mean, he didn’t even try to stop himself getting mugged. He didn’t fight back, he didn’t shout, he didn’t do anything I would do in that situation. He says it was because Steve is bigger than him and he was drunk, it happened too quickly, blah blah.

You just can’t go out flashing the cash and not expect people to want some of it. You know what blokes are like, they can’t control themselves when they see some money. If you get drunk and don’t take responsibility for your own actions I’ve got no sympathy for you, he’s just lucky he didn’t get a good kicking too.
Basically if someone doesn’t use force to take something off you how can you really have been robbed right? Pauls going to get the right piss ripped out of him next time I see him.

4 comments:

  1. Excellent stuff, deserves to be widely circulated.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Brilliant.

    You don't hear that said often, do you?

    ReplyDelete
  3. So if someone threatens you with a knife, but doesn't actually apply the force of pushing the knife into you its not really robbing? I'm not sure that the application of force is necessarily what determines whether its a robbery or not. Threatening behaviour in itself can be pretty frightening. Not that Paul wasn't an idiot though...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree with you, the application of force isnt what defines something as a robbery. The point I was trying to make is that in a robbery no one asks these questions, however in a rape they do ie. she didnt fight back, she didnt say no.

      I am questioning why these myths are applied to rape when they are not applied to any other crime.

      Delete