The one highlight of my year is taking my daughter to the Gasparilla Children’s Parade here in Tampa. It is a great beginning to our Gasparilla festivities, which are like a mini Mardi Gras. Every year, the event has gone fairly well. This year it was terrible. Weather had been an issue this year and, as the day went on, the threat of rain got worse and worse. Every other year the parade would continue rain or shine. This year, because there was also tornado warnings being issued, they canceled the parade right after it began and evacuated Bayshore Blvd.

As most know, parking for the parade is a nightmare. To help alleviate the problem, the city and event promoters began having people park in Fort Garrison garage in downtown Tampa and take free charter buses about 3-4 miles to the parade route. The buses continued all day until they transported roughly 5,000-10,000 people to the parade. After the parade route was evacuated, everyone who had come to the parade via the charter buses were gathering under the overpass for the Crosstown-Leroy Selmon Expressway. Here is where the story goes downhill.

Instead of employing more buses, they continued using only 3 buses to handle the transport. Additionally they only allowed 35-40 people per trip. The crowd kept building to a point where anxiety and chaos were beginning to take its toll. The wind and rain came and soaked everyone. Then the police began doing their crowd control. Most of the TPD officers were professional and friendly. They calmly migrated people to the limited buses.

Then we get the real jerk of an officer. Not only is he rude, he is yelling and barking commands at people. Tired of waiting and listening to this ass scream and holler when he could have resolved the problem by getting people to queue, I made the comment that it was cops like him that escalate already tense situations. I also said all the other police, particularly a black female officer, were very nice and professional. I also kidded to the woman next to me that maybe he doesn’t realize he is outnumbered 900:1.

This is when he started flexing his nuts and wanting to know who made the comment. Myself and a brave woman standing next to me spoke up and told him it was us and repeated to him what we said. He just stared at us and finally backed down…