Half a million people on Thompson concert in Zagreb they represented an organizational challenge for the city. Everything was completed without major incidents. The police announced an analysis of the recordings due to the possible highlighting of prohibited symbols, reports Deutsche says.
Zagreb has barely 800 thousand inhabitants anyway, and in these summer months there are even fewer. Already after the first information that half a million tickets were sold for the Thompson concert, there were good reasons to worry about how such a large event would be organized.
The city and the competent services have shown that they are up to this challenge: in addition to the extensive and special regulation of traffic in almost the entire area of Novi Zagreb, a Polish hospital has also been set up. It was announced that in addition to making available public water stations, around 10 bottles of water were distributed to visitors.
Of course, the concert was also a special challenge for the police: as reported by the Reuters agency, there were 6.523 officers on duty to ensure the safety of the entire event. The problem was also banal because many people came in their vehicles, but it was not possible to allow cars to simply park on the main roads.
Photo: Tanjug / Hina / Dario GrzeljMarko Perković Thompson's concert
Maja Grba Bujević, director of the Croatian Institute for Emergency Medicine, and Ivan Usmiani, coordinator of the Croatian Red Cross teams, told the HRT media house this morning that everything went well: they were actually ready for as many as 4.000 aid services, but apart from minor medical interventions - such as sticking band-aids on small wounds, there were a total of 245 medical interventions, almost in all cases due to alcohol poisoning.
The rescue service only had to deal with two visitors who remembered to climb the scaffolding of the stage, and the police announced that they detained 123 people. Almost all of them - 111 of them - were detained for possessing "illegal pyrotechnic devices" which were taken from them, and only in 12 cases was it a case of "disturbance of public order".
Thompson's concerts are certainly manifestations where patriotism and religious feelings can turn into extremism and the glorification of the Quisling NDH.
Deputy director of the police and head of the special staff for this occasion, Damir Barić, told Croatian television that it was clear that "prohibited signs and symbols" could easily be displayed. But it was estimated that the intervention of the police could lead to unnecessary conflicts, so Barić warned that the entire gathering was being recorded, and that the police would analyze all the recordings and subsequently conduct a criminal investigation and identify the perpetrator. And such a criminal offense expires in four years.
