This article titled “Anti-terror raids lead to 12 suspects being held” was written by Steven Morris, for The Guardian on Tuesday 21st December 2010 00.46 UTC

Five men in Cardiff were among 12 arrested yesterday by counter-terrorism detectives acting to prevent an alleged plot to attack multiple targets in the UK.

Three of the suspects were detained early yesterday morning in Riverside in Cardiff, an area close to the Millennium Stadium with a large Bangladeshi community. Two others were arrested in Ely, a largely white working-class area.

Councillors, who were told of the arrests, said police had indicated that the men seized were British nationals of Bangladeshi descent. The men are believed to be aged between 23 and 28.

The other arrests were made in London, Stoke-on-Trent and Birmingham.

In Riverside, Cardiff police attention focused on a seven-bedroom Victorian house, understood to be occupied by a middle-aged couple who run a take-away restaurant, and their two sons. It is not clear whether any family members were among those arrested.

Officers who were carrying out a search of the property also seized a Mercedes estate car.

Neighbour Marc Davies, 26, said: “I was driving to work when I saw police all suited up – it looked like they were wearing chemical suits.”

“There were police everywhere, there were vans parked up on the side of the road and it looked all go.

“I was absolutely shocked, this is a normal part of Cardiff.”

Next door neighbour, Avtar Singh, said: “I’m very surprised … They are in their 50s and run a restaurant. I know them to say hello to in the street. They’ve lived here for around six or seven years.

“I was fast asleep when the police arrived. I woke up at 7am and there were all flashing lights outside.”

Greg Maciaj, the other next door neighbour, said he had done some building work for the couple at their restaurant. “They are lovely people, decent people, and very friendly,” he said.

Ward councillor Mohammed-Sarul Islam said there had been some trouble in recent months with young local people promoting radical views at local mosques. There had also been some trouble around the time of the general election in May, he said, when some election posters had been vandalised, but there was no violence.

Islam said the community would have no sympathy for anyone with extreme Islamist views: “This is a peaceful community and we are shocked that there seem to be idiots like this,” he added. Islam said he had been told the men were all British nationals.

Another councillor Ramesh Patel said he had been told by police that the majority” of those arrested were from the Bangladeshi community.

Neighbours said a police raid also took place at a flat above a takeaway restaurant in Ely, two miles from the house in Neville Street. A young couple in their 20s or early 30s live there, according to neighbours.

Eyewitnesses did not see any arrests being made at the address, which also occurred in the early hours.

One shopkeeper, who runs a convenience store across the road from the flat said he was just lifting his shutters at around 5.30am when he saw 20 people outside the door of the flat.

They knocked on the door but broke it down when there was no answer. In Cardiff city centre there were fears that crowded shopping centres and bars could have been a terrorist target. Some shopkeepers said there had been rumours ahead of the arrests that the city could be under threat.

Nick Beckett, general manager of the Queens Arcade shopping centre, said : “It has been very worrying and especially when you heard about the arrests today.”He said he had not heard anything directly from the police.

A highly-placed source in the police operation said that the alleged plot was targeting shopping areas in the West Midlands and important sites in London. There has been no indication that locations in Cardiff were an intended target. South Wales police refused to comment saying it was an anti-terrorist operation mounted by the West Midlands force.

Forensic searches in Stoke-on-Trent were centred on Grove Street, Cobridge, where more than a dozen police vehicles had gathered.

Officers were present inside three end-terrace properties and a group of four uniformed police were seen entering a fourth house. Police activity was also reported to be under way in the Tunstall and Shelton areas of the city.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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Here’s a video that’s making the rounds in the blogosphere today. It shows a Seattle cop punching an unruly and out of control woman in the face. Was it over the line? I don’t know, but it didn’t slow the broad down one bit.

I suspect this is going to come down to whether or not the officer followed police procedure. I don’t know what the policy is on punching women in the face with a closed fist.

That said, where in the hell was this guy’s backup? It took him forever to get cuffs on the woman, meanwhile a semi-hostile crowd was gathering. This could have gone very bad for the cop.

The Trinidad area of Washington D.C. is like a war zone. Since April 1, the Trinidad neighborhood has had seven homicides, 16 robberies and 20 assaults. They’ve had 22 homicides total so far this year, which is 1 more than all of last year.

The violence has become so severe that D.C. Police have resorted to setting up military style checkpoints at the entrance to the worst neighborhoods.

The ironic and frankly laughable part of all this is that Washington D.C. is the only city in America with a complete handgun ban. Only the Police and other law enforcement agencies are allowed to even possess a handgun.

This is a prime example of why gun control laws are so ridiculous. It’s no accident that the city which keeps law abiding citizens from owning guns is also plagued by the worst gun violence.

To believe that a criminal or gang member is going to stop carrying a gun because it’s illegal to do so is hilarious.

A lot of homicides, robberies, and assaults, could have been avoided if law abiding citizens had been allowed to defend themselves.

The U.S. Supreme Court is in the midst of deciding whether or not D.C.’s gun ban is in fact unconstitutional, which they will almost certainly rule that it is.

University of Florida police were justified when they used a stun gun called a Tazer against a student who refused to stop questioning U.S. Senator John Kerry at a campus event, according to a state investigation released Wednesday. A summary of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement report was released by the University of Florida after some questioned the use of force against student Andrew Meyer.

The videotaped altercation and Meyer’s cries of “Don’t Taze me bro!” were played frequently on the Internet. T-shirts and bumper stickers are even being sold with the catchy phrase.

-Chris Jones