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It's Friday night, it's 1am, and here in Victoria, the cops are normally busy.
This is not a normal Friday night.
We've got a bunch of visiting foreign navy ships in port, including a full-on U.S. aircraft carrier. Now, to their credit, the sailors have so far been much more restrained than they have been in past visits, but that's still several thousand additional loud, obnoxious, aggressive drunks downtown. The police have had to nearly double the number of officers working the night shift.
The cops are busy.
A guest in my hotel dials 911, and an alarm goes off on the switchboard alerting me to this fact. As per usual proceedure, I haul ass to the room asap to see if there is anything I can do while emergency units are on the way.
I knock on the door, and as expected, get no reply; so I used my master keycard to open the door. What I see is 4 healthy drinking-but-still-moderately-sober 20-somethings, 3 of whom are having a conversation, while the 4th is on the phone with 911.
"What's the emergency?" I ask.
1 of the group replies "Oh, my friend just needed the non-emergency number for the police."
Thats right, instead of looking it up in the phone book, calling the front desk to ask me to look it up for them, or even calling 411, they call 911.
"Well, what's the matter?" I ask.
"Oh, we just need to get over to my friends house, and we missed the last bus."
It seems these 4 people, who can afford a hotel room, booze, and from the looks of it both pizza and chinese delivery are unable to scrape together 10 bucks in either cash, debit or credit to get a cab to go the 15ish blocks to a friend's house.
"Okay," I say, "since there's no emergency then I need to get back to the front desk."
I decided I'll let the cops explain to them that having to go about 2 miles to get shit-faced is not an emergency and 'police car = free taxi' is only true if the place you need to get to is jail.
20 minutes later, or exactly the amount of time it would have taken them to walk there, the same woman I spoke with comes to the front desk.
"I need you to call the cops and have them send someone over." she says.
"What's the problem now?"
"Well, my friend has been on hold with them for over an hour now."
I explain that I don't really think that's a police issue, and that if I were to call for that reason, they'd probably just leave me on hold too.
Dejected and defeated, she returns to her room; the gravitational anomaly room, where time runs at triple speed and cops are like cabbies except they work for free, stop at red lights and aren't stoned. (It's between the jacuzzi suite and the maintenance room.)
It's Friday night, it's 1:30am, and the cops are busy.
This is not a normal Friday night.
We've got a bunch of visiting foreign navy ships in port, including a full-on U.S. aircraft carrier. Now, to their credit, the sailors have so far been much more restrained than they have been in past visits, but that's still several thousand additional loud, obnoxious, aggressive drunks downtown. The police have had to nearly double the number of officers working the night shift.
The cops are busy.
A guest in my hotel dials 911, and an alarm goes off on the switchboard alerting me to this fact. As per usual proceedure, I haul ass to the room asap to see if there is anything I can do while emergency units are on the way.
I knock on the door, and as expected, get no reply; so I used my master keycard to open the door. What I see is 4 healthy drinking-but-still-moderately-sober 20-somethings, 3 of whom are having a conversation, while the 4th is on the phone with 911.
"What's the emergency?" I ask.
1 of the group replies "Oh, my friend just needed the non-emergency number for the police."
Thats right, instead of looking it up in the phone book, calling the front desk to ask me to look it up for them, or even calling 411, they call 911.
"Well, what's the matter?" I ask.
"Oh, we just need to get over to my friends house, and we missed the last bus."
It seems these 4 people, who can afford a hotel room, booze, and from the looks of it both pizza and chinese delivery are unable to scrape together 10 bucks in either cash, debit or credit to get a cab to go the 15ish blocks to a friend's house.
"Okay," I say, "since there's no emergency then I need to get back to the front desk."
I decided I'll let the cops explain to them that having to go about 2 miles to get shit-faced is not an emergency and 'police car = free taxi' is only true if the place you need to get to is jail.
20 minutes later, or exactly the amount of time it would have taken them to walk there, the same woman I spoke with comes to the front desk.
"I need you to call the cops and have them send someone over." she says.
"What's the problem now?"
"Well, my friend has been on hold with them for over an hour now."
I explain that I don't really think that's a police issue, and that if I were to call for that reason, they'd probably just leave me on hold too.
Dejected and defeated, she returns to her room; the gravitational anomaly room, where time runs at triple speed and cops are like cabbies except they work for free, stop at red lights and aren't stoned. (It's between the jacuzzi suite and the maintenance room.)
It's Friday night, it's 1:30am, and the cops are busy.
Definitely pity the locals though
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