Party Vibe

@MrsRobinson 596755 wrote:

I think it’s heigher for drivers in the rush-hour :p

interesting you should say that as I remember when all that oil spilled in some bit of the USA; the head of Police for the area was on BBC news. Dude wore a stetson and a “mustache” as they call it; had two crossed rifles and possibly a moose head on the back wall of his office along with the USA flag; and a cylindrical container near him with yet more rifles in, he looked more like a character out of a movie.

But he was a very intelligent and mild spoken chap; and rather sheepishly let on that although they had all the FBI and SWAT teams ready for folk running amok with all their guns; none of this actually happened. What did happen was (predictably) domestic violence cases did go through the roof; but what caught the cops by surprise was a massive spike in the number of injury and fatal road traffic colissions. It wasn’t even that people were deliberately setting out to crash into each other or the roads were also full with spilled oil but the mental effects on the local drivers were so bad they just stopped caring about anybody else and that affected how they were driving.

Unfortunately I fear that could easily happen in any country of Europe if we had a major crisis; indeed I remember there being more crashes when the financial crisis was at its height a few years ago. Some countries fare better than others; as even if they are geographically small they pay more attention to road layout and what goes on on the street; simple things can make a lot of difference and make neighbourhoods far safer (that goes for America as well).

@Requiem 596763 wrote:

Seems the only time the police need to use the masses of armed personnel carriers and mine sweeping vehicles they crave is when the police have done something so heinous that they piss off an entire town/city/country.

or there is a big hip hop convention or event. I saw some news reports about one in LA a while back and it was as if Al-Quaeda and IS had all moved to USA and gone to the same hotel with the amount of paramilitary units that were present (not just locals but all kinds of feds). I’m not even a great fan of modern hip hop with its often violent and misogynistic lyrics but I did think that was a bit excessive for what was a legal business activity in USA…

@Requiem 596766 wrote:

I read pretty recently about a towns police deciding they needed military vehicles to police a towns annuals pumpkin festival despite there not being a single incident in something like 8 years giving the reason as something as bizarre as the potential for a terrorist attack or something.

I know drunk redneck kids have kicked off at these in other bits of USA but FFS if normal cops can’t deal with that in the same rural area like they do in anywhere in Europe they aren’t worth the peoples taxes….