Police officers and tram drivers in Zagreb were not on good terms in 1977
We hear stories of ticket inspectors and ticketless passengers in trams fighting all the time (if you haven’t run away from the ticket inspector at least once in your life, are you even in Zagreb?), and ticket inspectors threaten you with calling the police, but did you know that there was a time in Zagreb’s history when there was bad blood between the two?
The story goes that in 1977 a police car drove out of the yard at Ilica 45 crashing directly into a tram that was passing by. The policemen who were driving the car ran out of it, took the driver back to the police station, and beat him. His fellow drivers refused to drive the trams during the following day, and they wouldn’t let policemen ride the trams for free after that.
Some of the Zagreb – kakav je nekada bio Facebook group members commented that the recurring joke at the time was that it was obvious that the driver got beaten because he wouldn’t admit that it was actually him who drove the tram out of the yard.
Some people even applauded the policemen’s actions, saying that the drivers today could learn a lesson or two from it and commented that people felt a lot safer walking around the streets where everyone was responsible for their own actions, while others were shocked at the police brutality.
