A walk to work

This morning, my walk to work was interrupted many times by policemen and women sauntering down the sidewalk near Queen's University. Now, the sight of police officers has never made me feel safer, no matter where I am or where I am living. I don't know who would feel safe if their walk to work or school, normally completely policeman-free, is one day dotted with figures donning bullet-proof vests. If this were to happen at Macalester, I feel that it would be just as out of the blue, but my comfort level with the neighborhood would allow me to rest assured that if anything bad were about to go down, I would at least understand something of it from context clues.

The fact that I'm starting to become more comfortable with this area helped me to notice that there were academic-types looking at maps as though they were trying to navigate the uni and get somewhere fast, and that uni security was also really beefed up. I've deduced (mostly from reading someone's folder or something) that there was some sort of conference at the university. Though I was completely safe the whole time, the presence of the police made me extremely uncomfortable. Part of it was because of the naturally on-edge feelings I get from the presence of police officers in general, and part of it was being here in Belfast and knowing the place of the police here. Honestly, to see a bunch of men and women dressed in a hybrid of a normal uniform and military riot gear is unnerving. Policemen here are not the same as policemen anywhere else. The service is probably more contentious than a lot of different things (i.e. flags, parades) and that makes me even more wary of their presence (en masse) in the streets of Belfast.

Also a thought on the situation: Why would an academic conference at Queen's University Belfast need at least 50 uniformed police officers mulling around .5 square miles and a similar amount of campus security? Tell me if you'd feel safe...