The Met's ct exercise appeared to go well. They picked a lovely day for it. Always good to do, these exercises.
Outside London it's worth remembering previous experiences. Eg. Michael
Ryan (Hungerford), killed 16 people and injured a further 15 at random in under an hour,
including the first police officer on scene. With that rifle, if he
could see you he could hit you. A neighbour just asked me about police
response times to such incidents and if there were sufficient officers. I
said a force has, on average, less than 5% trained for firearms duties.
She replied, "but we never see any police patrols anyway".
I told her not to worry.
Rule 1, reassure the patient. :-/
As for the Tunisia atrocity, that country
was not on my list of desirable holiday destinations yet it
doesn't surprise me when tourists flock to these places as I suspect
many/most never consider the political and other tensions in a potential
destination like I do. But I blame myself for this, as my entire
working life was, in some way, touched pretty much weekly by risk assessments and planned ops to
counter the threat of terrorist activities, so it has become part of my
make up. I'm not paranoid but I am thoughtful about such things. I'm
sure that some people will give the risk some thought (particularly now)
but may well still conclude that in the bigger scheme of things, the
risks are probably very low....probably.
But there's always the `six
degrees of separation` theory to consider. E.g. One of the injured of
the Tunisia killings works for the
Norfolk (UK) police. The ex wife of my friend, former neighbour and colleague of
mine now works for the Norfolk police.
So does their daughter. I have known them all since 1980. They both know
the man who was injured in the attack. So it transpires that I know
someone who knows a victim of last weeks terrorist attack where 30 of my
fellow citizens were murdered. And now you are connected too, because
you know me, albeit through this irregular blog. What are the chances of that happening, eh?
