Today's action: So much hate

Sometimes relationships go bad. Any relationship, husband and wife, parent and child, collegues at work or neighbours. This time things went really bad. But I don't know what relationships were involved here in today's action. Also I don't know yet how badly hurt the victims involved in this incident are. But in my blip journals I try to focus on the emergency workers.

Fact is that emergency services, and lots of them, were called to an address in a neighbouring estate this evening, including the Lifeliner medical helicopter from Amsterdam. Not knowing what had happened I responded and got there in about 5 minutes. Driving into the street and getting out of the car it was immediately clear that there had been a stabbing. The street started to fill with people coming out to see what had happened. A man seemed to have been arrested and was put in a police car to be taken away. Further down the street a victim was sitting in the grass, supported by two policemen. An ambulance was there already, but the crew were inside a house, attending to another victim. More ambulances got to the scene. People that were somehow connected with the incident were still shouting threats at eachother, policemen intervened and kept them apart. Another man was held and questioned across the street by two more police officers. A woman was coming out of the house and entering one of the neighbours' houses, bloodstains on her clothes. Then it appeared that there were children in the house too. So more hands were needed to take care of them. Meanwhile other officers were going past the gathered spectators, asking for witnesses.

Why setting this scene here? Just to show that the emergency services sometimes have tasks that go far beyond the daily duties in an average shift. It maybe took between ten and twenty police officers, crime scene officers, three ambulances, the ambulance first responder, and the Lifeliner medical helicopter to deal with this incident.

Imagine getting there, being the first police unit at the scene. Having to understand what is going on, identifying where there still might be any danger, finding out who are wounded and where they are, taking care of the safety of themselves and others in the house and in the street, having to take care of those injured, but also having to stop anyone who is maybe still in posession af a weapon. Those first few minutes must take everything from those who are there to serve and protect.

I salute them and thank them for what they do. For sometimes there's so much hate, that it takes well trained people like this to help restore order.