Police State!

New York City has become a police state. The cops are everywhere. Like Macavity the mystery cat. We go up to the roof of my apartment building - mere 3 floors above the ground - and they come into the building and order us down. Apparently the helicopters detected us smokers as a threat to the high and mighty. And I don't think they mean by second hand smoke.

The cops are all over the sidewalk, and on most of the road - on little scooters, huge motorbikes, cop cars with the flashers on, and on some weird looking vehicles that look more futuristic than practical. Just get a few of them on Segways, and that'll complete the spectrum. I don't understand the logic behind using electric vehicles for cops, when the special buses for carrying the RNC delegates around the city are left idling in front of our building for the entire evening, leaving the smell of freshly burnt hydrocarbons in the air.

These images are from yesterday evening, around Herald Square. The sidewalks are cordoned off by orange chicken mesh, and the cops move the mesh around to open up the crossings for us mortals. People cross like herds of sheep. Or like cows. Well, not quite. This is what a crossing cow really looks like, in Bangalore, from the Deccan Herald: