I wrote this piece a week ago and decided not to cause worry at home by mentioning it, or blogging about it, before I got back.
Up until this evening, I had not seen an armed robbery. I still haven’t, but I have now had a ringside seat at the immediate aftermath. The incident itself was small, and was over in a couple of minutes, but it was my own reaction to it that lingers.
It was a windswept late afternoon in a large seaside town three or four hundred miles south of Buenos Aires, one of those days when the sand being blown around on the esplanade becomes a metaphor for a kind of repressed sulkiness at something good missing, something imperfect in the day. No one seems that happy, particularly when about five police cars head towards the main bit of the beach, sirens blaring. A crowd of young people look for a moment like they are the focus of the police attention.
Not wanting to be involved, I re-route my journey by one block inland, and end up in a curving, covered walkway, more or less empty. There is the sound of running footsteps behind me and I turn round to see a young, overweight man about to be overhauled by two policemen. As they pass me, they catch him and, accidentally or not, throw him to the ground. There is a struggle, shouting from them, screaming from him and me just standing there.
For a moment, I haven’t got a clue what to do. They are winning, but haven’t yet won. The old copper has done this before and is all competence and force, but his younger colleague is manifestly scared. I can’t go anywhere, as I am stuck between a pillar and the action. They appear to be gradually subduing him, but there is a nervousness in the younger policeman that suggests more than just a routine arrest. Just at the point more police appear in the arcade, still 100 metres away, the younger policeman catches my eye in a way that might mean he needs help, or just might mean he is wondering if I am involved. I may be a 59 year middle-aged, middle-class British man on his way out for a beer, but I am dressed completely in black trekking gear, unshaven, and I am wearing a dark green baseball cap over my eyes. I am alone, and I look decidedly dodgy.
And just for the tiniest of seconds, such a short instant that I don’t recognise it until later on, I think he might shoot me. The look I have seen in his face is simple fear, and scared people do unpredictable things.
So I raise my arms in the air, palms towards the policeman, and I stand there until the other officers arrive and calm is rapidly restored.
And I watch them subdue the suspect, and marvel at the workaday familiarity with which they lock his arms behind his back, remove his shoes and start to search him for weapons. It is only when I get back to the hotel that the concierge, a term that over-graces the most miserable hotel south of the equator, tells me that there has been an armed robbery. Something I couldn’t catch, but mentioning the word ‘knife’.
It’s a funny feeling, standing on the streets of a strange town with your arms in the air, but it is as natural as breathing. It might not sound it but, for a second or two, it was properly frightening.
Eventually, one of the new, more serious policemen asks me if I am OK, and suggests I continue my evening.
And that was it. No brutality. No inefficiency. No witness statement. No comebacks.
But for some reason, it seemed a tiny moment when my life was completely out of control.
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