Wednesday 21 May, 2003 at 4:48PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (2)

It's Fleet Week in NYC this week, which is basically a celebration of the US Armed Forces, which means a whole heap of US Navy ships are in port and there's military personel all over the place. I found this out in a rather disturbing way. Let me explain.

Yesterday, in response to an increased threat of terrorism, the Bush administration raised the national terror alert level to orange, its second highest level. General threats against cities on the East Coast, including New York, have been intercepted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and NYPD intelligence detectives. As a result, security in the city is now as high as it was during the war in Iraq (not that I noticed any decrease in the interim). This in addition to today being the start of Fleet Week in NYC has got the authorities in a bit of a panic it seems.

A few hours ago I heard a series of what sounded like big explosions. I immediately thought "no way" and stuck my head out the window to see if I could spot anything going on that shouldn't. The explosions stopped after a minute or two, so I switched on NY1 to see if there was anything about it on the news yet ..that's when I discovered Fleet Week had started today. The 'explosions' were a 21 gun salute by howitzer-type guns (I don't know if they were howitzers, but they were big and loud) so that mystery was solved. Certainly startled me considering the alert level had just gone up less than 24 hours previously.

As I may have mentioned in the past, there are police carrying semi-automatic rifles on the streets in NYC now, along with the National Guard wearing combat boots and full camouflage gear on patrol all over Manhattan. They're armed with fully automatic machine guns and looking pretty freaking scary. According to the news they seem to have seen the greatest increase today in their presense in the subway system ..I wonder what they're not telling us. hrmm. It still feels strange to me after living in New Zealand for so long where the police dont even carry sidearms. Actually check out these pics ..those cops on the right are looking a bit S&M don't ya think?

hmm.. best I credit the sites these photos came from while I'm at it. The Fleet Week ship photo is from NY1.com. Of the other photos, the NYPD officers at Grand Central Station in Manhattan (on the right) are pulled from FoxNews.com, and the National Guard dude is taken from the Sacramento Observer. Thanks.