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Full Roundup Tomorrow
Hey everyone, forgive me again for punting the roundup to Saturday. These past weeks have been a uniquely challenging time for my schedule as well as a particularly complex news period. Taken together, it’s been a bit of a mess. Hopefully things will smooth out quite soon.
The full Roundup will be tomorrow, but I thought it would be fun to whet your appetites by sending one particularly humorous story tonight. Enjoy.
Illegal Party Turns into a Kidnapping?
This week, one story dominated all others for fans of dark humor. Nightclubs remain closed due to COVID-19 restrictions and bars and restaurants are required to close at 10 pm and only admit vaccinated customers. In spite of this it is well known in Chisinau that many clubs continue working in a clandestine manner flagrantly violating COVID restrictions and allowing patrons to dance the night away like it’s 2019. Early in the week the Chisinau police department prepared to conduct a series of raids in order to crack down on this practice. According to reporting, the police department got off to a very poor start. In the pre-raid briefing officers of the Fulgar Brigade (local SWAT team) as well as regular officers apparently asked their superiors just how they were supposed to manage the situation they were heading into. In all likelihood these raids would involve hostile club owners, lots of intoxicated partygoers and possibly people on various party drugs. Apparently, officers thought this may be a volatile mix. Leadership disagreed saying that “for the owners, we are sending representatives of the economic police, for the partygoers we have some anti-drug officers, they all know how to handle unexpected things.” The briefing was short, to the point, and totally insufficient for what was to come.
That night, the police raided the ATICO nightclub. Immediately after the police arrived the management of the club quickly locked all the doors and attempted to pretend that no one was there. To do this they turned off all the lights and electronics in a room filled with (reporting differs) between 100 and 400 people. Police began negotiating with the club security officers to be let into the premises… a process that took over 3 hours. During this time, partygoers experienced a slow rolling panic as they sat, heavily intoxicated, in the dark as the room slowly became hot and stuffy. Soon people began panicking as there did not seem to be enough fresh air in the building with all the doors and windows sealed. Now, hours in we have people in the club calling 112 (Moldova’s 911) saying that they are being imprisoned against their will. Finally, the desire of the police to get in and the desire of the trapped partygoers to get out was enough to overwhelm the small security team resulting in confused patrons spilling out into the streets where the police met them with ambulances and questions.
It turns out that there were more than a few problems with this party. Firstly, a number of people were not vaccinated. Secondly, in addition to the club operating illegally it quickly became clear that people had been held against their will. Finally, according to reporting a large portion of the people partying in the club were themselves anti-corruption police, prosecutors and judges. Police are not commenting on the identities of the guests but say they are processing IDs and information pending fines.
Somehow, in one story we have a perfect humorous and dark glimpse at the corruption, irresponsibility and incompetence driving the COVID-19 pandemic in Moldova. Following the raid charges of violating COVID restrictions as well as “kidnapping” are being leveled at nightclub ownership. The fate of all of the officials of law enforcement and justice that were dancing the night away? Well, that remains to be seen.
Thanks for reading this short preview of the Weekly Roundup! We’ll be back tomorrow with the full range of stories from this week!