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We have vicious gangs here that control the drug trade but they are happy to take potshots at each other and when there is a serious disagreement they take out

We have vicious gangs here that control the drug trade but they are happy to take potshots at each other and when there is a serious disagreement they take out each others leadership. But this kind of brutal violence like a torture chamber and the stuff that you see in Mexican drug cartels (ISIS type of debauched executions) is on way another level. It is actually bad for their business you would think.

mytailorisrich 6y ago
> It is actually bad for their business you would think. No, this is a way to establish a reputation so that people don't even try to screw you. It's good old terror, not very subtle but effective. When you deal with 'bad' guys and have no legal recourse for anything it is rational to use violence as a way to make others 'play straight', and being very harsh actually minimises the instances where violence is needed at all.
- walshemj 6y ago
  Its also a way if you go full Templario death cult you become a problem that is dealt with by military force.
bilbo0s 6y ago
A French friend of mine, long ago in college, was actually on Interpol's list of wanted criminals for a while. He slipped into the US, (have no idea how), and has lived a crime free life here ever since. One thing he told me after living here in the US for a while was that Americans tend to believe violent crime in Europe is lower than violent crime in the US because they can easily compare the homicide rates. Whereas people like him know that you don't compare murder for murder, you compare murders in the US, to "missing" people in Europe. His sense was that there was actually far more violent crime in Europe at the time, just far fewer living witnesses. The discovery of this "shipping container" kind of "jibes" with that long ago street-level assessment.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Nice theory. The big differentiator for homicides is simply the number of firearms floating around in the United States. That's an enabler if there ever was one and violent crime is to some extent a natural outflow of that. When the former USSR collapsed and the war in former Yugoslavia happened cheap arms flooded the market here and that caused an immediate rise in gun related crime. The fact that in the EU countries that neighbor each other can have very different gun laws is another reason why since the Schengen area opened up in some countries there are now substantially more guns than before. They are still illegal, but criminals don't actually care since they are already on the other side of the line and their competition has them too. There have been shootouts between gangs with fully automatic weapons on the streets of Amsterdam (fortunately not many), and the police has also come under fire from gangs with machine guns during getaway attempts or murder attempts. I am not sure if they will be able to put this genie back into the bottle. The gangs here are a lot harder this decade than they were 20 or 30 years ago, there are more of them and they are far more ruthless. Some samples: heads left in front of businesses to warn others about territory violations, murders of people who looked alike some criminal or drove the same car in broad daylight, parents slaughtered in front of their kids or in the schoolyard. It's not what it used to be, that's for sure.
  - ColanR 6y ago
    > war in former Yugoslavia happened cheap arms flooded the market here and that caused an immediate rise in gun related crime As long as we're talking theories, was it the guns coming in or the people coming in that cause the rise in crime?
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      A mix of both. Ex Yugo army set up shop in and around Amsterdam bringing manpower and weapons and collaborated with existing dutch crime rings who supplied money and local expertise. This is all fairly well documented now.
  - samatman 6y ago
    Nice theory. The big differentiator for homicides in the United States is proximity to the drug war. There are more guns than humans in the United States. You'll find ownership of a gun and likelihood of committing homicide to correlate quite poorly; while ownership of a kilo of cocaine correlates quite strongly. As you're indicating, in Europe, ownership of a kilo, a gun, and propensity to murder, all track quite closely. This suggests a different set of policy-level decisions than the myopic focus on the tool of murder would.

mytailorisrich 6y ago

> It is actually bad for their business you would think. No, this is a way to establish a reputation so that people don't even try to screw you. It's good old terror, not very subtle but effective. When you deal with 'bad' guys and have no legal recourse for anything it is rational to use violence as a way to make others 'play straight', and being very harsh actually minimises the instances where violence is needed at all.

walshemj 6y ago
Its also a way if you go full Templario death cult you become a problem that is dealt with by military force.

bilbo0s 6y ago

A French friend of mine, long ago in college, was actually on Interpol's list of wanted criminals for a while. He slipped into the US, (have no idea how), and has lived a crime free life here ever since. One thing he told me after living here in the US for a while was that Americans tend to believe violent crime in Europe is lower than violent crime in the US because they can easily compare the homicide rates. Whereas people like him know that you don't compare murder for murder, you compare murders in the US, to "missing" people in Europe. His sense was that there was actually far more violent crime in Europe at the time, just far fewer living witnesses. The discovery of this "shipping container" kind of "jibes" with that long ago street-level assessment.

jacquesm 6y ago
Nice theory. The big differentiator for homicides is simply the number of firearms floating around in the United States. That's an enabler if there ever was one and violent crime is to some extent a natural outflow of that. When the former USSR collapsed and the war in former Yugoslavia happened cheap arms flooded the market here and that caused an immediate rise in gun related crime. The fact that in the EU countries that neighbor each other can have very different gun laws is another reason why since the Schengen area opened up in some countries there are now substantially more guns than before. They are still illegal, but criminals don't actually care since they are already on the other side of the line and their competition has them too. There have been shootouts between gangs with fully automatic weapons on the streets of Amsterdam (fortunately not many), and the police has also come under fire from gangs with machine guns during getaway attempts or murder attempts. I am not sure if they will be able to put this genie back into the bottle. The gangs here are a lot harder this decade than they were 20 or 30 years ago, there are more of them and they are far more ruthless. Some samples: heads left in front of businesses to warn others about territory violations, murders of people who looked alike some criminal or drove the same car in broad daylight, parents slaughtered in front of their kids or in the schoolyard. It's not what it used to be, that's for sure.
- ColanR 6y ago
  > war in former Yugoslavia happened cheap arms flooded the market here and that caused an immediate rise in gun related crime As long as we're talking theories, was it the guns coming in or the people coming in that cause the rise in crime?
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    A mix of both. Ex Yugo army set up shop in and around Amsterdam bringing manpower and weapons and collaborated with existing dutch crime rings who supplied money and local expertise. This is all fairly well documented now.
- samatman 6y ago
  Nice theory. The big differentiator for homicides in the United States is proximity to the drug war. There are more guns than humans in the United States. You'll find ownership of a gun and likelihood of committing homicide to correlate quite poorly; while ownership of a kilo of cocaine correlates quite strongly. As you're indicating, in Europe, ownership of a kilo, a gun, and propensity to murder, all track quite closely. This suggests a different set of policy-level decisions than the myopic focus on the tool of murder would.