Posted: 3/26/2007 11:31:45 AM EDT
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I grew up in Michigan and had the misfortune of having witnessed a small riot at Michigan State Univsersity during a Final Four game. It was by no means on the order of the LA Riots, but mostly a bunch of kids roaming around destroying property here and there, starting fires, drinking open containers, women flashing their breasts...that kind of thing. I stayed on my friend's porch and kind of watched the whole thing go down. There wasn't anything I could do as an individual to stop it and there was no violent acts against other people taking place. One thing I noticed was that the East Lansing Police Department were being reinforced by near by Metro Police Departments, suburban area police departments, and the Sheriff Department. In a SHTF where there is serious urban violence how much of say your local suburban police department or county sheriff's department will be sent to the city to back up those departments? Does that leave suburban areas less patrolled? |
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i wasn't a cop but our ems unit was assigned under the pd. departments here participate in what was called a "mutual aid" agreement. immediate response was done by on duty personel and off shift officers were called in to patrol locally as needed. it very well "may" reduce coverage in outlying areas depending on the response time of off shift guys and the manpower availabe to start with. |
| During the LA riots I was living in Sacramento, CA. For about two weeks or so it seemed there wasn't a cop around. I lived on Mather AFB and thery were loading cops on C-130s for several days there to go south. There wasn't a cop on the roads, lots of speeding, it seemed more than usual. Asisde from that there didn't seem to be an increase in street crime, no roving bands of youth, etc., nothing reported that I remember. But it made me wonder if there had been an event up there to touch off a similar situation. Espicially in light of how long it took to activate and rally the National Guard to confront the rioters in LA. |
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I've seen impromtu riots start on the state college campus and pretty much every police agency in the county responded. I'm sure the cities and maybe the villages may have left one car behind to cover calls. There is a mutual aid agreement between communities, it applies to fire and police and who knows what else. |
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All the mutual aid agreements that I have seen deal with Fire, and Law enforcement. I haven't SEEN one with an EMS element, but I know they exist. That's primarily because the places I have been to outsource their EMS to third parties. As far as your question, it really comes down to the agreement your particulare PD has with the sourounding areas. Mutual aid agreements spell everything out with every i dotted and t crossed so as one agency can't point the finger at another durring a large scale event. I have not been at a dispatch center when a mutual aid call came out, save for a large scale training excersize that took place at a school around Richmond, VA, which didn't dwindle the PD, EMS, or LAW coverage in the participating areas. But, that was training. YMMV |
The riot in Benton Harbor was MUCH worse than the Lansing Riot. I think that the extent of the Lansing Riot was a bunch of collge kids dragging their couch into the street and setting it on fire. |