Police

Mirkheim, XIII.

At an open-air public meeting, there are:

"...police at the corners of the park. Evidently a disturbance was considered possible." (p. 187)

In my experience, police can either prevent disturbances or cause them. But, whatever they do, they act in unison and obviously under orders. There is always some policy. We learn about the police by interacting with them and can be surprised. Preconceptions can be wrong.

Today, in Lancaster, the police were helpful. They were neither too many nor too few. Their liaison officer informed our organizers, for example, when those on other other side who had come from elsewhere had departed so that only a few locals were left around the statue of Queen Victoria. ("Local reference," as it says in Pantomime stage directions.) There were no disturbances. Two city centre windows were found to have been smashed but that might have happened during the night.

One of the many things that I do with Poul Anderson novels is to compare them with life. I have never been in space or on another planet but I have been in parks surrounded by police. I can imagine marching for peace on Esperance or to the Dennitzan Parliament with Dominic Flandry, Kossara Vymezal and hundreds of Merseians.

Onward.