The Guardian has reported that when Brussels went into lockdown immediately after the Paris terrorist attacks the Belgian security response was, shall we say, innovative. A number of soldiers and police working out of a station in Ganshoren had an orgy! This gives new meaning to both the concept of a full body search and security theater, if you know what I mean… This seems to be a far superior response than to freak out on cable news 24/7, but your mileage may vary.
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JPL
That would be a more appropriate response, then what we have in this country.
Seanly
And we thought our Secret Service was freaky…
Hats off (and pants I guess) to the Belgians!
Major Major Major Major
Well, that’s one way to thumb your nose at Islamist extremists.
Adam L Silverman
@Seanly: I used to do aikido in this area. My senseis had a dojo there: Aikido Besace de Ganshoren. When I saw The Guardian article I knew I had to post on it. As my senpai Ramon always used to say: “aikido is love”…
ruemara
At least their night was interesting.
Baud
I saw a movie like that once, but it involved pizza delivery rather than terrorism.
pea
“it’s the end of the world as we know it
it’s the end of the world as we know it
and i feel fine”.
R.E.M.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: They did three involving skyjackings. I only know this because I research terrorism, low intensity warfare, and national security…
Adam L Silverman
@pea: I actually used that as part of the title for my MA thesis in comparative religion on millennial/apocalyptic movements. It was “Its the End of the World as We Know It: Faith, Fear, Foreboding, and Violence at the End of the Second Millennium”. I’m very good with titles.
JPL
What would happen if the Cleveland Police Officers had an orgy instead of killing Rice? They’d be fired and Fox News would bloviate 24/7 about morality in our country.
MattF
Well, it’s a local tradition. Try googling ‘Belgian sexual misconduct’– and you’ll get an eyeful.
redshirt
@JPL: It fits out culture: You can show 30 people get gunned down in a PG-13 movie, but not a booby.
PurpleGirl
@Adam L Silverman: That sounds like a very interesting thesis. I’d like to read it.
raven
@Adam L Silverman: Love those colons!
Geeno
And people say Belgians are boring.
Suzanne
Good for them. Our cops murder black people and get away with it, while theirs get awesome.
Mike J
Don’t be fatuous, Jeffrey.
Adam L Silverman
@raven: An often under appreciated form of punctuation.
Elizabelle
The Guardian article seems thin; pretty much allegations. Would be curious if the Belgian papers offered more detail.
OT, and whoa boy: another shooting story out of Florida, per the WaPost:
Dad’s a cop, mom’s a sheriff’s dispatcher. Gun safety in the home.
Adam L Silverman
@PurpleGirl: If I may say it was okay. I’ve gone back and relocked a lot of stuff I did before I went to work for the military and I’m not sure I’d approach it the same way anymore. Not that what I did was bad or inaccurate or anything, and I was awarded highest distinction on it, but there’s a difference between learning about low intensity warfare – revolution, civil war, insurrection and insurgency, and terrorism from books and articles and from actually going out and talking to people involved on both sides of it, observing it and what it does, etc.
raven
@Adam L Silverman: Given time, I think we would always do things differently but that doesn’t diminish the work.
Elizabelle
And the local story, from the Orlando Sentinel, is weirder still:
OK. Cop slept through gunshot. Is possible. And:
bemused
@Elizabelle:
I think this is the third story I’ve read in a week that one or two cops in a household woke up thinking someone was breaking in and shot a family member or a roommate. What the heck is going on? These are cops and they are so freaked out they couldn’t remember to assess the situation and check if it was just someone coming home?
BGinCHI
Update:
Hmm. Does not roll off the tongue.
OzarkHillbilly
@Elizabelle:
Yes it is. You wouldn’t believe the stuff I used to be able to sleep thru. Wish I still could…
redshirt
@bemused: Cops like to shoot first, I gather. Everything else comes later.
Anoniminous
Back when a friend was working for the ATF the number one cause for shootings of ATF agents was an agent shooting himself, the number two cause was other ATF agents. Gun Safety is for wimps.
debbie
I can’t find corroboration on Google, but there’s a FB group started by parents of the Sandy Hook victims. They’ve posted a donations request (no surprise), but they’re saying that the NRA is hurting for funds to the point where they’re raising membership fees for the first time in 20 years. I sure hope this is true. It would be one small bright light in an otherwise cesspool of a year I’m glad to see ending.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: My husband and kid could sleep through a gunshot. One time in our old house, a chandelier spontaneously detached from the ceiling and crashed to the floor, shattering bulbs and sconces into millions of pieces. They slept right through it while I investigated with a dog and a 9-iron.
Gimlet
@Elizabelle:
Dispatcher shot the daughter instead of waking her husband, the “trained” police officer?
Police Officer Hubby didn’t notice the gunshot wound when he reported to 911?
Almost seems like Hubby didn’t wake up with the sound of the gunshot?
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-mom-accidentally-shot-killed-daughter-20151230-story.html
St Cloud Police Cpl. Claude Campbell, Jr. placed a breathless 911 call late Tuesday evening as his step-daughter lay unconscious in his 10th Street home.
He tells the dispatcher that 27-year-old Ashley Doby has “passed out. She has a pacemaker. She has a heart problem,” in a recording released by police.
But not once during the five-minute 911 call does Campbell, a veteran member of the St. Cloud Police Department, mention why Doby was struggling to breathe: a gunshot wound to the chest.
Campbell omitted that fact because he was asleep when his wife shot Doby, mistaking her for an intruder, police said on Wednesday. He didn’t realize what happened until his wife — a 911 dispatcher with the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office – explained it to him, according to authorities.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: Myself, I always go for a #3 wood. eta Cause I always get a little too much slice with the 9 iron.
Corner Stone
Posted under “Contraception Clusterfuck”. That is so unsubtle as to be sublime.
Corner Stone
@Gimlet:
He was banging the stepdaughter. She offed the competition.
Gimlet
@Corner Stone:
Makes you wonder if events occurred as reported.
Elizabelle
I can believe the cop sleeping through the gunshot, or coming awake from it, and not realizing why.
It’s a little stranger to hear that Mrs. Cop did not divulge that she’d shot the daughter — that little tidbit got passed along to the first responders, on arrival.
Will put that one down to Ms. Dispatcher’s sense of denial.
OzarkHillbilly
@Elizabelle: People do really strange things in stressful situations. Would not surprise me in the least that she just kept a wishin’ and a hopin’ that she missed and that the blood was from hitting something when she fell.
OzarkHillbilly
Meanwhile: Las Vegas cop couple wakes up and ‘accidentally’ fires 27 rounds at mother who lives with them
Yeah right, my finger involuntarily twitched 27 times cause, you know, shit happens.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: We don’t have a lot of sex themed categories, so you blog with the categories you have, not the ones you want.
Adam L Silverman
@OzarkHillbilly: Full mag dumps, from both guns. One must have had a 15 round mag and the other seventeen. Amazingly enough she survived and the only reported wound was in her leg.
Gimlet
@Adam L Silverman:
Think mom will sleep with a gun after this?
redshirt
@OzarkHillbilly: Perhaps you’re joking, but when could you ever substitute a 3 wood for a 9 iron? In golf, I mean, not smacking someone upside the head. And even then I might go 9 iron because I’ve a had a couple of woods snap off at the end.
Adam L Silverman
@Gimlet: If it was me: full body armor, kevlar helmet, riot shotgun, AR 10 in a heavy caliber, several handguns, lots of bladed weapons, a doberman raised on human flesh, and enough locks on the steel cored doors to make a New York apartment look under secure. I like to keep things minimalist.
Also, they’d both be out of the will!
Frank Wilhoit
If we could all stop snickering for a moment, the takeaway here is that the Belgian police regarded the situation (and the reaction to it of their professional and political masters) Entirely Without Seriousness — and they were quite right.
Elizabelle
@OzarkHillbilly: And no charges filed because shooting was “accidental.”
Head slap.
Mom’s lucky that 20+ of the bullets missed, no? I think her shooters should find another line of work.
Gimlet
@Adam L Silverman:
Only wound in the leg?
Son was pretty scared.
Mom must look a lot different with her teeth out, hair in curlers and no make-up.
Adam L Silverman
@Gimlet: The write up I saw indicated that the only confirmed wound was in the leg. Would it surprise me that the other 26 shots missed? No. Would it surprise me that follow reporting shows she suffered multiple gun shot wounds to different parts of her body? Also, no.
bystander
A few years ago we were in Paris in July and everywhere there were posters for a gymnastic exhibition by a special select group of firemen. The ads were totally Cirque du Soleil with an emphasis on the hunkiness factor these guys exuded. About two days into our trip, news broke that the senior gymnasts had been conducting initiations for newbies that would have been more appropriate in a gay porn movie. We never looked at the hunks in the posters quite the same way, and wouldn’t you know they canceled the exhibition.
I guess all I’m saying is your average foreign police and firefighters seem to delve into team building exercises our people never do.
ruemara
@Adam L Silverman: They should get fired for being lousy shots, too
mclaren
@redshirt:
Yes, America suffers from a sick twisted puritanism that says torture and death are beautiful and ennobling but sex and the human body are disgusting and horrible.
Puritans were the iconoclasts who smashed lovely statues and burned gorgeous paintings because they gave viewers sensual pleasure. European Taliban, in other words.
Doug R
@Corner Stone: Aiming at the husband.
J R in WV
I know a Belgian scientist, I will have to query him about this story.
Most interesting! Polyamorous to the extreme, isn’t it?
Should be an Olympic Sport I would think. In a more sane world, anyway. Matched pairs, doubles, team sport, etc. Best ratings ever!! Think of the profits…
Adam L Silverman
@J R in WV: that’s team spurt