[kaboom]

The news report said that MP's were coming from Ft Meade to train the 354th MP company (St Louis based) on how to drive the vehicles on hwys and city streets. Also The Army MP training school is at Ft Leonard Wood, MO which is about 150 miles from St Louis. It would make sense for MP's to go to MO for training.

I'm sure that the MP's would prefer to go and train 354 NP's (just not how to drive).

[norton]

The news report said that MP's were coming from Ft Meade to train the 354th MP company (St Louis based)...

Now that would make sense.
So the question is merely where in the St Louis area they did the training...in a smaller community, with locals fully aware and even participating, it could be a real good thing.

[piasa]

Being from the St. Louis MO and IL metro area, I'd be more inclined to bake cookies for the guys and watch the show than worry about this. There was an army reserve center over on Goodfellow on the north side and those folks pretty much turned out the lights every day at 4:30 after spending some long lunches at a local lunch joint that had good BBQ, parachutes on the ceiling, and woodland camouflage cloth napkins. They did a lot of stuff in conjunction with armor. Across the river from there was a training depot kept alive by one aging congresscritter which was used for helicoptor training and it was no big deal to see streams of military choppers going in and out, hovering, carrying really big payloads with those double rotored choppers, doing whatever, around the area.

They used to MAKE tanks right there on the east side of the river, maybe still do something relating to armor there.

Scott FB across the river and to the South flew Military medical planes in and out that sometimes flew low enough to waggle their wings over their pilot's neighborhoods.The MO national guard flew F-4s out of Lambert field and we'd all pull over to watch it, and the added benefit of old McDonnell Douglas - before it became "McBoeing" and their test flights. We were seeing Harriers long before the rest of the country had even seen such a thing take off vertically.

There was an ammunition plant around there, and scrapyards where you could get some awesome huge brass artillery shells before they got shipped up to a town a wee bit north of St. Louis for recycling.

Truck convoys from FT Leonard wood and Scott were not a big deal. Seeing light armor, artillery and heavy tanks - real ones, real ones like M1s or the older ones on railroad cars- not a big deal.

Seeing people in uniform all over, not a big deal. When you're one of those who raised the sons and daughters manning those vehicles and flying those choppers and planes it isn't alarming, or fearsome, or intimidating but rather, enjoyable to see our kids and our "products" moving around.

St. Louisans on both sides of the river were well acquainted with military activity of all kinds and probably still are, which is why it makes such a good area to operate in. There are so many ex mil or mil families or friends of mil families in that area and numbers of people who work in defense that I doubt anyone would get their panties in a bunch over it.