Dancers cause terrorism scare running through tunnel wearing camouflage
21st November 2010
The troupe, Club Envy, had driven more than 1,000 miles from Florida for the TV appearance, but became stuck in rush-hour traffic in the Lincoln Tunnel between New Jersey and New York.
Leaving their supervisors in the car, the seven dancers and their manager sprinted through the tunnel on foot in an attempt to ensure their journey – paid for a three-month funding drive – would not be wasted.
Who dances in camouflage? And they drove 1,000 miles, rather than fly? Sounds suspicious to me.
The FBI and New York Police’s Joint Terrorism Task Force sent dozens of heavily armed officers to surround them just as they were about to emerge from the tunnel into Manhattan.
Uh-huh. We have a bunch of terrorists in the tunnel between New York and New Jersey. What do we do? Surround them in the tunnel. I would have thought that getting them out of the tunnel would have been the first priority. But I guess I’m not a Highly Trained Professional like the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
One of the group, Eternity Odom, 16, later told local reporters: “It was terrifying. I was crying.” Eventually officers, who closed the tunnel for 45 minutes in all, offered the dancers a lift to the studio, where they were due to perform on 106 & Park, on the BET network.
Who names his kid ‘Eternity’? (Or her kid, in this case, given the almost certain tincture of the group involved — don’t know of many white people who perform on BET.)
And surely this could have been taken care of with a simple phone call? Why is it that whenever the government gets involved, things take forever? (Hint: Nobody wants to take responsibility for making a decision. It took five minutes to get the story, and forty minutes to find somebody who was willing to make a fargin decision.)
But the programme’s producers informed them that it was too late and they were no longer required, and the troupe returned to Jacksonville, Florida.
With greater respect for the NYPD and FBI, no doubt. And people wonder why everybody hates the government.
One final question: Would this have gone down the same way had they been white kids rather than black kids? Just asking.