Question: Do you all think they might consider moving parades from downtowns and onto a more controlled setting like stadiums or parks?
Parades in general are difficult for police to control since they happen in areas which you basically have no control and are stretched over a long distance. They also require police to block off streets which interferes with traffic and normal business flow.
Now we have the tragedy in Oklahoma.
Here in Kansas City they had the American Royal parade in the massive parking lot at Kaufman stadium. Anyone observing can see the both the benefits and drawbacks. Yes, the event could be controlled better and also all the elements such as parking could be in one place. OTOH attendance was alot fewer and the fact it wasnt downtown really cut out the great vibes of a normal parade.
The whole idea of a parade it public exposure. If you enclose it into a restricted space, it will still be a lot of things, but “parade” is not one of them.
I understand the incident occurred at 10:30 am local time. Who the hell gets that blasted that early in the day? Did she start drinking fresh when she got up that morning or was it left over drunk from closing the bars earlier that day at 2:00 am (or whenever closing time is)?
Let’s us totally eliminate the Public Space, in the name of Public Safety. The Boston Marathon bombing could have been averted if all the participants had run on their home treadmills, calibrated by the appropriate governing body, with their performance re-created in real time via computer animation, streamed online.
And for you Catholics: “Mass for Shut-Ins” will now simply be called “Mass.”
No. Not here, anyway. Parades draw anywhere from 250,000 to 1 million people. Parades will always be in the streets. There’s talk of neighborhood whiny babies in Lakeview wanting to move Pride *to *downtown because it’s so disruptive to the neighborhood, but I really doubt that will happen. It’s one day, a Sunday, and those little thumb sucking whiners need to suck up something different. It comes with the neighborhood, don’t like it, don’t live there. This from someone who lived there for 10 years and had no problem with it even though I worked Sundays and had to go either through or around the parade route to get to work. No small feat.
A drunk driving incident is not an indicator that all parades are unsafe. Any crowd gathering has potential to be unsafe. There are plenty of drunk driving into crowd incidents that happen every year, it’s the presence of a crowd, not a parade, that is the factor here. Well, plus one drunk asshole upon whom I wish a lifetime of agony.
I freaking hate parades. Both as a citizen and a cop. First of all, I think they’re stupid and I never would go out of my way or even look out my window to watch one.
And what a major P.I.A. to deal with one on the job.
But the teeming masses seems to like them from time to time. Making significant changes to their location just because of the actions of criminals is not acceptable.
You might as well propose moving any mass-public event away from downtown. Come to think of it, in a large enough city, downtown on a workday rush hour is already a mass-crowd event, what “controls” it is that most of those people have a specific structured goal of their commute.
As SeaDragonTattoo points out, drivers running down the gathered crowd happens not only in parades but also in street markets and festivals. What keeps some demented driver from mowing down the people in line for Star Wars or the next iPhone? Meanwhile impaired drivers get on the freeway going the wrong way and take out whole families in cars, or drive into people’s houses or businesses, with no need for a special event.
When I go the bank in the AM I see people buying booze and it looks like they had a few under belt already . The liquid store had to replace their window a few times b/c people failed to stop in time. I hate using the sidewalk in front of the bank and liquid store for good reasons
You do see some parades moving from downtown to more the city parks and outlaying communities but the idea of major parades and celebrations going from city streets to stadiums I don’t think will ever happen.
If you (any you) are thinking like that the terrorists have already won.
We are a nation of 350 million people. If there was a twitter feed of each and every death regardless of cause, your screen couldn’t keep up with the fire hose of data. There’d just be a blur of words scrolling past continuously.
What is utterly lacking in today’s overwrought hand-wringing media world is any sense of scale. a handful were killed and 20-some people were injured in the OP’s event/accident. Out of 350 million.
We have not yet learned as a society that if every novel death or injury is reported, there’ll be a pretty continuous flux of them from someplace due to something and scared / paranoid / depressed people will overreact to that and decide the USA is a very dangerous place. It’s not. Chill.