Re: [85attendees] Safety in the surroundings of the Hilton

[Dean Willis <[e-mail]>]

On Nov 3, 2012, at 10:53 AM, Alexandru Petrescu wrote:
> 
> One the positive side, in several years of IETF I never heard of somebody being physically aggressed outdoors during an IETF meeting (despite the some times "let's fix this outside between you and me"
> statements in WG meetings :-)

The only "physical aggressed" incident I can recall was an IETF woman attacked during the Paris-before-last.

There was, I believe, a confrontation that didn't quite get violent at Prague-before-last in a train station between some IETFers and some punk rockers.

Lots of people, however, got pickpocketed, bag-snatched, or room-burgled at both of the recent Paris meetings, and I think a few in Prague, and a few in Vienna. And I wouldn't be surprised to hear of a few bar fights in London, but that hardly counts as it's a national pastime.

That said, I did have an incident some years ago in Atlanta (during a 3GPP2 meeting, I think) where a street person wanted to show me his knife and mine turned out to be bigger and shinier (and probably sharper, though there was no Crocodile Dundee jacket-slashing), so he left. He probably didn't intend to actually hurt anybody, but threats have to be taken seriously.  This was about 0200 and somewhere near the CNN headquarters, as I recall. There are a few rotten apples in every barrel, and southern US cities have big barrels of street-people apples.

Incidentally, as I understand Georgia law, a knife under 5" is a pocketknife, not a weapon, so they're very commonly carried. In Texas, it's 5 1/2" -- everything is bigger here except IQ (Thank you, Texas School Board.)

--
Dean