NYPD, #3, originally uploaded by Vidiot.

I went to go see a show on Thursday at Radio City -- more on my weekend later, when I have a chance -- but I wanted to write about this: just before the show, when everyone was standing around under the marquee, the NYPD scared the shit out of everybody with one of their "show-of-force" drills.

Basically, what they do is run about thirty cop cars screaming down the street, lights ablaze and sirens howling.

If it were a legitimate crisis, that'd be one thing, but this thing seems to happen pretty regularly in the evenings in Midtown, especially on Thursdays and Fridays. It disrupts traffic, frightens people unnecessarily, and I'm sure it's not too safe -- the cars are flying.

These "surge drills" absolutely reek of arrogance and smugness, and the cops' attitudes don't help either; the tourists on the sidewalk were obviously freaked out, and cops just smirked as they sailed by. The message they're sending is not "we're here, you're safe, we're working hard to respond effectively", but rather "this is OUR city, not yours -- we own it, not you -- and we can go anywhere and do anything we want to."

Is this really the best tactic? The NYPD is actually a pretty good police force -- I think it's run by people who are smart and who generally know what they're doing, and their Intelligence Division strikes me as one of the best uses possible of money, energy and manpower. But what does this accomplish? It isn't clear, because to me it just looks like a lot of in-your-face machismo and posturing to no real effect...something that, alas, the NYPD also does fairly well.