In a third, Bank Job, a teenager is seen assaulting a hole-in-the-wall customer while another youth grabs the money he has just withdrawn from the cash machine.
Welcome to the disturbing world of the "happy slappers" - a youth craze in which groups of teenagers armed with camera phones slap or mug unsuspecting children or passersby while capturing the attacks on 3g technology.
According to police and anti-bullying organisations, the fad, which began as a craze on the UK garage music scene before catching on in school playgrounds across the capital last autumn, is now a nationwide phenomenon.
And as the craze has spread from London to the home counties to the north of England, so the attacks have become more menacing, with increasing numbers of violent assaults and adult victims.
In London, British Transport police have investigated 200 happy slapping incidents in the past six months, with eight people charged with attacks at south London stations and bus stops in January alone.
The Metropolitan police have no overall figures but recorded a number of attacks in London boroughs earlier this year.
Following a spate of random attacks last December on pupils at Godolphin and Latymer girls' school in Hammersmith, west London, police posted extra officers in the area as a deterrent.
But as police have become more vigilant, so the gangs have become more sophisticated, seeking victims in parks or public areas where their crimes are unlikely to be spotted by the authorities or captured on CCTV.
Liz Carnell, the director of Bullying Online, a Yorkshire-based charity set up to combat bullying in schools, said that since the start of the year she has heard of increasing attacks both on children and on adults. But she fears many incidents are not reported.
"In most cases the worst that happens is a minor scratch or a bruised ego," she said.
"What the people behind these attacks have to understand is that technically they are committing an assault. And if they then upload the images on to the internet or a phone system they could be prosecuted for harassment."
What makes the attacks all the more bewildering is that many victims do not realise they have been happy slapped until after the event.
Earlier this month James Silver, 34, a freelance journalist, was attacked while jogging on the South Bank in London. While one youth blocked his path, another hit him with a rolled-up magazine.
When he spun around another teenager - who had been hiding behind nearby scaffolding - leapt out and hit him hard in the head. When he staggered to his feet he noticed the rest of the gang were jeering and pointing their mobile phones at him.
Silver admits that while the attack left his "ego smarting" he did not think it worth reporting. "At the end of the day I was unharmed but it was pretty shocking at the time," he said. "The worry is that while the bulk of the attacks are trivial, some of these youths could be carrying knives."
Earlier this year, schools in Lewisham, south London, and St Albans banned camera phones because of worries that the fad was leading to an increase in playground bullying.
In a comment recently posted on a London community web forum, "Happyslapper2" described the craze as a "joke", writing: "If you feel bored wen ur about an u got a video phone den bitch slap sum norman, innit."
However, in a sign of a gathering backlash, other forum members disagreed. "It's hardly a joke ... it's fuckin rude and pea-brained," wrote "slappersidiots".
"If this happy slapping fad continues it will only be a matter of time before someone is seriously hurt," predicted another.
Legal consequences
Denmark
When the international media attention surrounding attacks abroad reached a high point, a girl was sentenced to 8 months in prison. She was however sentenced on a number of counts including previous crimes. According to more recent sentences the common punishment is a fine or up to 40 days in prison, suspended if the attacker has no previous record.
Happy slapping is judged as "simple battery" as defined by section 244 of the Danish Criminal Code.
France
In February 2007, an amendment to a law on the prevention of delinquency aimed at criminalising happy slapping was added by the Parliament of France to a law "on the prevention of the delinquence" based on a proposal from then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. In the final text, the anti-happy-slapping clause appears as the last part of Article 44, which also deals with ambushing law enforcement forces. To summarize:
- The law equates filming or photographing certain classes of violent crimes, including severe beatings and rape, with being an accomplice of such crimes.
- The law makes it illegal to broadcast the images of such crimes, punishable by up to 5 years in prison and/or a €75,000 fine.
However, the law is not applicable to those who took the above actions in order to obtain evidence in court, or as professional journalism. Professional journalism is delimited in France by the "press card", which is awarded by a commission representing journalist unions and press organizations. As defined by law, a professional journalist is one whose main activity is professional, paid, journalism.
The bill was signed into law on 5 March 2007, despite some organizations, including Reporters Without Borders and the French chapter of Wikimedia, arguing that this clause created a legal discrimination in criminal law between professional journalists and ordinary citizens practicing journalism. Specifically, it was argued that citizens filming incidents of police brutality and publishing such information online could be intimidated by law enforcement into remaining silent, or possibly prosecuted for their actions. This criticism was relayed by the international media.
Nicolas Sarkozy, French President, declared to Reporters Without Borders that "the spirit of the law is not to infringe of freedom of information", "However, if the least doubt subsisted, then I'm in favour of a clarification of the law".
United Kingdom
In March 2008, a teenage girl who filmed the fatal beating of a man on her mobile phone was sentenced to two years' detention in the first prosecution of its kind in the United Kingdom. She had pleaded guilty at Leeds Crown Court in February 2008 to aiding and abetting the manslaughter of Gavin Waterhouse, 27 from Keighley, West Yorkshire.
Mark Masters, 19, from Keighley, and Sean Thompson, 17, from Bradford were sentenced to seven and six years respectively after admitting to Mr Waterhouse's manslaughter. He died from a ruptured spleen after being beaten by the two youths in September 2007.
Just before the attack, the girl was handed a mobile phone by one of the attackers and told to "video this", prosecutors said. She then approached Mr Waterhouse, asked for money, and recorded the subsequent attack. She was sentenced to serve a two-year detention training order.
Police said they were satisfied with the court's decision. The Crown Prosecutor said "this is the first time a suspect in England and Wales has been successfully prosecuted for aiding and abetting murder or manslaughter, for the filming of an inaptly called, 'happy slapping' incident".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Htsg3ZH6pPQ
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