After last year's discovery at the Open Golf Championship that what I took to be square gun packs on the belts of police officers with Tiger Woods contained no guns but did contain their lunch ( only bananas, in fact) I beg to report the latest blow.

Police have dropped in-line skates as a way of getting around quickly because they could not give chase across grass. Officers who patrol the Royal Parks in London have reverted to bicycles. Superintendent Derek Pollock said that the idea was " not an awful success" He added : " Not a lot of officers were interested because it hurts when you fall over. The minute people realised they were being chased they would switch to a soft surface." [The Times March 28th, 2006 ]

How do American police in, say, Central Park, New York,deal with this problem of fugitives ?

Both the City of St. Louis and the County of St. Louis (separate entities, with no land in common) still use mounted police for some park duty. The City uses them in Forest Park, and in the Downtown area. (The Downtown area got its own stable in 2000 when the last remaining Historic Row House in downtown St. Louis was converted into a stable.) Forest Park, once the largest city park in the United States, is over 50% larger than New York's Central Park. (1293 acres v. 843 acres) Forest Park was the location of the 1904 World's Fair (which did NOT introduced the ice cream cone or iced tea to the world, but did introduce Quaker Puffed rice) and the 1904 Olympics. A few of the original structures built for the Fair are still being used. Buried somewhere in Forest Park is the 70 ton axle of the world's largest Ferris Wheel.*


*This first wheel weighed 2200 tons and could carry 2,160 persons at a time. Standing over 250' tall and powered by two 1000 HP steam engines, the Wheel's 36 cars, each the size of a school bus, accommodated 60 people each (20 seated, 40 standing). The Wheel took 20 minutes to complete one revolution.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: DorianGreyed,

New York City patrols in most all the parks and sporting events in several ways. I have seen police offices on roller blades but they are complimented with foot patrols, ATV patrols, and horseback patrols. On “big game” days (Like this coming Monday in Flushing New York ) all forms of patrols are deployed in large numbers, although I have never seen any police officers on roller blades at Shea Stadium I can guarantee there will be helicopter and Sniper teams deployed as I have seen them many times.