Good Old Riot Police

Epic and everlasting battle of society's mob versus the government's riot police

Well it had to happen sometime and last Wednesday this something happened. What I’m talking about is, dare I say it, a disappointing field experience. The past field trips we have taken and speakers we have listened to, no matter how early they were or how long they took, always left me at the end feeling educated and happy I was able to experience what I just experienced (I apologize for the double word usage as its probably not good to use the same variation of a word so close in proximity to one another). I guess my hopes had been risen when I saw “Visit to the Riot Police” on the syllabus and visions of cool riot videos, talks about specific scenarios and experiences and huge, muscled men in crazy riot gear flooded my mind. Unfortunately this field experience did not live up to my apparently high and almost fantasy-like.

Presenter could have related to this well

After a fairly short commute we got to the riot police headquarters and the first thing I noticed were the many cameras surrounding the building. This was no joking matter; stuff was about to get pretty serious. The first place we went to was a little conference room where a slideshow presentation was good. What I got out of this presentation was that the riot police are very similar to the regular police except they have a wider jurisdiction. Also there are tons and tons of different agencies that include training, in the field and behind a desk. The main issue I had with this presentation was that the presenter did not know English and thank goodness Ildiko was there because she became our own personnel trainer. Overall the presentation was interesting but what overshadowed that in my opinion was how dry it was and how hard it was to follow along due to lack of English used.  

All the guns that are all actually modeled after the AK47 design

            

After the presentation we saw the barracks located in the headquarters treaty and then crossed the street to a parking lot. In this parking lot, not only were there cars, BUT there was also a dummy in full riot gear, a table full of guns and about four unique vehicles including a tank, a fire-truck like vehicle and a patty wagon. This to me was my favorite part of the whole trip because I got to see in person what was used to control riots is ones ever broke out. What intrigued me was when the member of the riot police who was showing us all these things mentioned that when it comes to riots only tear gas is used and not rubber bullets. He said that this specific force came under intense scrutiny for their use of force a couple of years back so they responded. I thought this was a good thing because they realized rubber bullets were not needed and other things much less harmful and painful could be used as a replacement. A quick show was put on for us and then we said goodbye to the riot police in hoped we would never encounter them on the street surrounded by 100s of other people

             

This tank is only used to shoot tear gas but its still pretty awesome!

This field experience was very anti-climatic for me but I still learned some interesting things. The fact that the riot police are in charge of the transportation of money and assets is very interesting to me. What also interested me was all the different type of groups and unfortunately I did not ask my question but it would have been “can you choose to be in a specific department or do you need to specialize in a specific department or is the whole process a random selection?” I would hope the answer would be that people are specialized in specific fields as to enhance the efficiency of that particular department. The riot police are still in my mind regular police that handle large crowds when needed and do not have specific jurisdiction except to stay within Hungary. Lets just be happy we met these guys when they had on regular people clothing and were talking to us in a friendly manor instead of them being in full riot gear and tackling us to the ground.

Staging what would be done in the instance of a car robbery

See ya’ll later