What is the most pleasant way to spend the National Day? How about having your genitals groped? Bonus: if you are a guy and the person doing it is a blond female. OR you are a girl and he is a man in uniform.
Long story short: 1st of December is the Romanian National Day and traditionally there is a big military parade in Bucharest at Arcul de Triumf, which is admired by a lot of people (I heard around 15.000 were this year). Less traditional, this year the security was a lot tighter.
In all the access routes, there were control filters: some gendarmes in uniforms were controlling everyone: men, women, children, old people by groping the bodies and looking inside the bags (TSA-style pnly low-tech).
The gendarmes were both male and female and the intention probably was for same-gender groping only, but with such an amount of people it was chaos: everybody groping anyone. I saw an old woman protesting, who escaped only with a purse-check and an young man unhappy he was groped by a guy gendarme, not by the blond women gendarme.
After this filters, there were some guys in suits watching, probably the SPP amd some more… After passing the check I stopped, turned around to shoot the groping, but somehow my view was blocked all the time. Breathing, I understood: there was a “normally” dressed guy, most likely a SPP undercover who was moving in such way to be in my view all the time while maintaining a casual appearance. Time to change my lens, put a wide one, extend my arm and shoot from above his head. He tried to extend his arms too, realized is ridiculous, exchanged a few words with a suited guy then dropped his arms. I continued shooting while asking him “is there any problem?” and when done left with “see, there is a solution for every problem”.
On the positive side, when waiting in queue for the filter, I was asked if I have a press pass (had my biggest lens mounted) – don’t know if that would have me skip the filter or just go in front. Another fellow photographer was asked to take a shoot to prove the camera is working – not sure if because she had a red Nikon DLSR which the gendarmes had doubts is a real camera or because it was early in the morning, before the gendarmes got bored.
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Wrong! The officers who conduct a body search are pilots from the Scubadiving in Mountain Areas Special Unit. You ignorant! There are no gendarmes in any of your picture. If you zoom in the third or the fourth picture you’ll see the badge of the officer who try to hold the two kids. The others are from the same Service. Yes…SPP. I hope you know how I figured it out. Yup…you’re right again! They wear the same uniform. Apart from you, the officers checked the camera before, just not to be WRONG, as you posting information about something you are not aware. I actually didn’t read your article, your mood at the end of it made me write you this way. On the other hand, I wish you all the best. Keep posting!