NSW Police Commissioner blames violent video games for knife crime
By Tim Colwill on August 6, 2012 at 5:23 pm
Turns out you don’t actually need to know anything about video games at all to be Police Commissioner in NSW, as Andrew Scipione demonstrated today when he claimed that violent video games were to blame for a rise in knife crime rates.
Mr. Scipione lambasted video games in which “you get rewarded for killing people, raping women, stealing money from prostitutes, driving cars crashing and killing people”, and suggested that “That’s not going to affect the vast majority but it’s only got to affect one or two and what have you got? You’ve got some potentially really disturbed young person out there who’s got access to weapons like knives or is good with the fist, can go out there and almost live that life now in the streets of modern Australia.”
Naturally, Mr. Scipione quickly found himself the target of people who actually know things about video games, including Dr. Ferguson from the University of Texas who described Mr. Scipione’s claims as “irresponsible”, and said that “in fact, in most countries youth violence has reached 40-year lows during the video game epoch”. The statement is backed up by Australia’s own Institute of Criminology studies which show car theft dropping by 60 percent and homicide dropping by 25 percent over the last decade.
As IGN’s Luke Reilly pointed out, “No video game that rewarded players for raping women would ever pass through the Australian Classification Board in a million years,” leading this reporter to wonder exactly whether Mr. Scipione has actually ever seen a video game being played in his life at all.
Source: GON Forums
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Off the top of my head there are 2 problems with this:
Firstly blaming the violent games no proof aside for something that could be considered coincidental (whats the saying correlation doesn’t equal causation), and
“That’s not going to affect the vast majority but it’s only got to affect one or two and what have you got? You’ve got some potentially really disturbed young person out there who’s got access to weapons like knives or is good with the fist, can go out there and almost live that life now in the streets of modern Australia.”
The ‘one or two’ he refers to might even do stuff like this WITHOUT playing the kinds of violent games he’s referring to.
Sigh…
I hate ignorant fools using video games as a target for this type of thing, because soccermums jump on board without a moments thought.
Video games dont make us violent, Lag makes us violent!
Perhaps violent video games were to blame for the last round of police killing young schizophrenic men armed only with a knife.
1 Capsicum Spray
2 Baton
3 My highly trained hand to hand
4 Pull gun and shoot 3 times in the chest.
4.
thefinn,
This guy is obviously an idiot no doubt, I’m sure he is just talking out his arse.
However if you run at me with a knife hell if you have a knife out near me and are threatening my life is worth more than yours 100% of the time if I tell you to back off or put the knife down or assume I don’t have enough time to do either of those things and I have a gun I will shoot you, I expect any officer of the law to do exactly the same.
Back on topic this kind of thought reminds me of Dawkins stating Stalin had a mustache how can you say it was atheism and not the mustache that lead to him committing the terrible atrocities he did the same of-course could be said for Hitler, same argument applies here there is no validity behind this claim it’s just plain silly
thefinn,
It’s like you tried to argue for the winning side and then dribbled all down your shirt. What do you mean “armed only with a knife”? Knives are bloody dangerous. Capsicum spray is not always very effective, and going hand-to-hand against a knife weilding opponent, especially for police who are not remotely close to as you said “highly trained” is seldom a good option. I think any sensible policeman would be reaching for their tazar or firearm when threatened with a knife.
The resurgence of MMA in mainstream would be more to blame imo.
thefinn,
Yes, Scipipne’ comments make me sigh and wonder why on earth he would say something like this but yours make me faceless even harder.
You criticise his comments which make sweeping generalizations, by making uneducated comments of your own.
I don’t know exactly what incident (if any) you are referring to, but I’m fairly confident you’re not in any position to comment on police operational safety and tactics (unless of course you think watching a current affair qualifies you).
Can we get an edit function on this comments section already, jeeeez!
Pretty sure people have been stabbing each other ever since the invention of pointy things, not Playstations.
Another day, another “Video games make people hurt people” statement….
From my experiences I must admit coppers are way too fast to react with excessive force and claim non-compliance as an excuse. Having been assaulted in a courtroom, then having been charged with obstruction of a police officer as a result too (claimed I injured his arm and damaged his partners sunglasses…), then successfully defended against those charges in the Magistrates Court in Brisbane.
So far the level of ignorance of coppers is very high for those at the lower end of the power structure of the police force. To say it’s not intentional either by those who train and select the officers would be a lie too. That a sensationalist is at the top in NSW is not really news, after all he has a business to run and creating these sort of controversies is part of it.
Something similar happened up here with Bob Atkinson getting back in the top job of Commissioner when he and the head of the CMC are at odds and the CMC head didn’t want to back Atkinson (though it needed the CMC’s approval) to get back into the top job. It maybe a different topic, but the same bell is ringing and it’s heavily linked to total bullsh*t.
lol i used to be pretty good mates with his son, they’re pretty solid christians, when i heard this interview on the radio this morning i wasn’t really suprised he’d say something like that. Blaming video games is old, he is right that parents need to take notice on what games their kids play…
If that’s the case, how are ‘video games’ causing kids to think violence is okay if the parents aren’t monitoring what they are playing?! It once again comes down to parents, i know some kids just do they want and are out of control, but put your foot down.
Don’t get me wrong, i grew up playing doom, wolf 3d n that, but it was a different time, people were slightly more tolerable, these days people will blame everything but themselves for the shit going on in our streets.
I could go on forever, but i won’t, in the end, blaming games all the time is fucking old, and it annoys me it’s still used as an excuse because a small group of people are idiots.
Society isn’t scared of police anymore, especially here, they’re walkovers (mainly because of piss weak judges/laws), maybe if our laws were fixed up a bit to punish people being violent, etc. and police had more powers (like they did back in the 70′s), people would know there are serious consequences for their actions and behave more?
I’m so ashamed to be living in NSW right now.
korbain,
I’ll drink to that!
There’s a poll on the News.com.au article – 30% agree games are to blame. Fucking ignorant cops spreading their ignorance to the ignorant.
2005 called, they wanna speak to shitty parenting and scapegoat policing. Please hold.
Sometimes it’s not about what the ‘right’ reason is, it’s just that it’s easier to point at games and violence on TV than saying our whole culture is screwed up. You’ll see it in the next few weeks when there is some massive probe into Australia’s Olympic failures, inevitably the easiest scapegoat will be made. Better to find something/someone to blame than to take a hard look at yourself.
HAHAHAHA, it sure does!!!
Meh, im pretty sure it started with dull rocks ;)
Meh, im pretty sure it started with dull rocks ;)
Sack the idiot.
So he doesn’t mention anything about how television actually depicts rape? Or how shows like The Shire could drive anyone to violent crime? That’s just irresponsible.
This is another very simple common sense argument that seems to end with ignorance prevailing. If most people can play video games and not become violent, knife wielding maniacs, then doesn’t it stand to reason that it’s not video games that causes this violence? Moreover, violence has been a common motif in all 8000 years of recorded human history (and I’m willing to bet since the dawn of time). There’s any number of hyperbolic comparisons I can make, but why bother.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-08-06/violence-and-video-games-link/4181004
:\
That news story starts off with “The police commissioner has linked a growing number of stabbings in NSW to violent video games…” How did he make this so called link??
Oh and this is because stabbing violence is relatively new and only happens in NSW, Australia and only started occuring since GTA4 was released… oh wait… NO.
Cant remember the last time I played a game where a knife was a usable melee weapon. They should be more concerned about railgun and particle disruptors crimes!
What next, they are gonna blame mages in WoW for people starting bush fires?