In the wake of the horrible event that took place in Virginia last weekend, I was reminded of a couple of things. #1 Sometimes people can be atrocious maggots, and I’m speaking of the one guy who drove his car into the crowd. And #2 How much I love the police department here in Nashville. In my experience, they’ve been nothing but top-notch, literally the guardians of the city.
One story I can share happened a few months back on a Thursday I went downtown to watch the Predators play in the Stanley Cup finals. I’ll admit I was a bit nervous because the crowds there were so big. Someone might have seen it as a perfect opportunity to inflict harm on people. But I decided to go anyway, so I met up with a friend a couple miles from downtown. We walked from Centennial Park all the way down Broadway to set up our camping chairs at one of three giant screens they erected for fans to watch. As we neared the organized chaos of that night (CMA Fest was also happening at the same time) and saw thousands of people scattered throughout the downtown streets, we also noticed something else.
This…
Those are a dump trucks. Those are giant dump trucks lined up back to back. This was at the intersection of Broadway and maybe 10th or 11th Avenue. From there down the rest of Broadway was all blocked from vehicle traffic and these giant blockades would prevent any sort of “terrorist” from driving anything smaller than a tank into the crowds that night, and the entire weekend. It made me so proud. SO PROUD. Our police department, and city officials, plus CMA and Predators folks as well, were thinking ahead and planning in ways I never thought of to protect me and everyone else who just wanted to have a fun, safe night.
Awesome, awesome, awesome.
I know this is just one example and I’m sure there are plenty of other stories about the police here. We’ll never know what possible barbaric acts were prevented the nights Nashville hosted the Stanley Cup finals and the CMA fest on the very same nights. But my memory from those nights will be how Metro Police officers were our guardians.
-Out of the Wilderness
Out of the Wilderness 