Today I had a cop (MP) pull a gun on me.
Okay, well, maybe he didn’t “pull the gun” but he did put his hand on the gun grip while in the holster and yell at me…
Yesterday I worked all day and all night on some lightning-fried equipment up in Georgia. We got it back up and running but one of the two circuits was running on alternate ports of damaged cards. I had already used my spares on the other circuits. So I had an appointment to drive back up there to replace the questionable hardware today. When I got out of there last night it was close to 8:30pm and I had close to a three hour drive home. So I told them I’d be back out around noon today. After setting up the appointment with the officials, the local contact and I discussed it and I said I could probably make it a little earlier but let’s call it between 11-12 just to be sure.
So I get out there around 10:15 and the guy’s not answering the phone. It was a nice morning so I just parked off the road by the back gate and waited to get in touch with my point of contact. After 45 minutes of voicemail attempts a security vehicle pulls up, lights flashing. I hop out to tell him what’s going on and he says something I can’t quite hear over his engine noise and the Bluetooth in my ear. So he hollers out, “Sir, return to your vehicle immediately!” and grabs the butt of his weapon for added emphasis. Well shit, I know to stay in the car when a cop pulls you over but I just thought this was a rent-a-cop checking out the perimeter. After looking closer at the rent-a-cop’s “security” vehicle I see that it says “BASE Security” on it. He’s no mall-cop, he’s the real deal and then some!
An unmarked van with no windows sitting for close to an hour just 300 yards from a light security gate to a military base…? I can’t blame him for wanting to know who the hell I was. He asks for the standard ‘license, registration, insurance’ and why I’m sitting there. Then he inspects the van inside and out. After it’s all over he tells me that I’m not violating any rules but he got a call about a suspicious vehicle and they had a breech last week at this gate. He says I can stay parked where I’m at but as soon as he left I took off and waited for my contact down at the local inconvenience store.
I really like it when cops do their job. Some times I am in wonder at how often I am in places where maybe someone should be watching me closer but they don’t. Lucky for them (and me) that I’m one of the good guys, but how do they know that about me? I’m around a lot of cool shit out there and most of it is critical stuff, I’m really happy to know that somebody’s looking at this stuff once in a while.
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