Recently in Scotland this video became quite famous and a follow-up is available here. Now I do not belong to the type of people who want to beat up every idiot that I see on my way, though I truly believe that, I would be physically capable of doing that in most cases, purely because in many cases those people were never shown an other way of behaviour and it would be a much better act to show them other options - anyway for the sake of argument this does not matter.
What matters here is that we had someone using a service for which he did not have the required proof of pay. Now the fact that maybe when he was buying the ticket in the first instances it was sold to him wrongly, but most sensible people check that they get what they pay for. Neither can his medical state be used as excuse for this, as a adult he is probably well aware of it and should take adequate measures to control it - it is sad, but this is not much of a different case of people abusing e.g. alcohol and behaving like idiots.
Now I heard opinions that the boy was treated harshly and that if other people were asked to move by someone who is not a police officer, they would also try to punch them. In the first instance the boy was offered several times to move freely out of the train - he did not. He was lifted-up by someone who had permission of a employee responsible for eliminating fare-dodgers (I have no idea how much less force could you use - tap him on the shoulder???) and told to move - he did not. He tried to swing a punch, but was moved out, not even put in a arm lock. He then tried to run back into a train (private property), to which he did not have the right to enter.
Now with regards to police and security. Police are nothing more than security employed by the government, I have seen them many times doing a great job and I heard stories from my friends experience about the contrary. By no means should police though be put over other people, it is the sad case that in many instances they seem to have extra privileges, often not completely even related to the acute actions that they might have to take in their job (this makes me thing of politicians...). There is no reason why a owner or a person designated by him should not be allowed to kick someone out of their property as long as they do not break any contract. Trains should not be regarded any different than pubs and clubs, where even the law states under the Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005, that when asked people should leave the private premises and reasonable force might be used to enforce this.
If we are not allowed to protect our property, if we are not allowed to freely use our lives, what are we allowed then?
