Turkish Wedding Story

My local town news here in Wiesbaden (Wiesbadenaktuell) put up a piece from the Police blotter from yesterday (Saturday).

Typically, Wiesbaden doesn't have a big crime scene.  There might be an average of two or three murders in an average year, in a city of 285,000.  I admit on assault, and petty robbery.....the numbers are moving up slightly.....but you just don't see a lot of stupid crime around the city.

So yesterday, around 4:20 in the afternoon....there was this 'convoy' that was making it's way from the outer suburbs from the east of town....into the city, and folks were calling the the cops to report 'shots fired' from the 'convoy'.

So around Am Mainzer Strasse....several cop cars set up a road block, and this 14 vehicle convoy was stopped and the vehicles searched.

The deal?  Well....it was a Turkish wedding group, apparently leaving the wedding and heading toward the party afterwards.

Cops find three bullets, and at least two weapons are found in the vehicles.  Naturally, the pistols were seized and there's going to be charges against the individuals holding the guns.  After everything was said and done.....paperwork written up at the scene....they were all released and continued on to the wedding party.

The amusing thing to the story is that they had to identify the group in some way, and finally noted in some short blunt way.....they were "predominantly Turkish people". 

I paused over this.  If they had written the piece and just said "Turkish people", it would have worked.  But you are left with some this question in your mind.....over the term 'predominantly'.  What did the cops mean when they made this quote to the news guy?  Of the 35 people in the group....were there 34 Turks and one German?  Of the 35....were half of them second-generation Turk-German?  There are probably a hundred ways that you could have uttered predominantly and meant something totally different.

Are gun-firings common at regular Turkish weddings?  Well....around Istanbul....no.  If you went off into the rurals of Turkey, yes. 

As for the shooting charges?  There are several potential charges that you could end up with.....the more serious one would be that you had a gun in your possession but no license for it, and it was unregistered (if that was the case).  Fines alone?  On up to ten-thousand Euro.  Jail-time?  Potentially six months, if the judge wanted to make an example here.  It's a pretty stupid 'crime' if you think about it.  Just in lawyer costs, you'd have to figure 1,500 Euro as a minimum, and likely going up to 5,000. 

The thing is that Germans are all hyped up about gun-shots now, and they will call the cops the minute they think they hear a gunshot.