Right now, and perhaps for the past five years in Germany....it really doesn't take much for the authorities, or the police to get hyped up and react to what they perceive as a public threat (say terrorism for example).
So it came up in local news this morning that the cops got a call from the Frankfurt Niederrad area, that some guy was on the train with a 'weapon'. The initial report? Well....it came from some passenger communicating with the train engineer aboard a S-Bahn train.
Within seconds, the engineer called the cops, and they shut the station down, and spent a fair amount of time going car by car.
So the cops come to the guy who first reported this, and he started with some 'gun' story, seemed to get confused, and then went to a group of a dozen who threatened him.
The changing story? Well....at that point, after most passengers were interviewed....there just weren't any suspicious people or guns.
Paranoid Schizophrenic guy? Well....maybe. But here's the thing, everyone is hyped up and prepared for the worst-case scenario now in Germany. Cops get this call.....they feel hyped-up and anxious, expecting action and maybe some terror threat.
This is part of the landscape that you have to live with today.....things might be fine and perfectly normal, or vice-versa (in massive chaos), or in some state of paranoid schizophrenia for a guy who can't tell reality from fantasy.
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