Another encounter with the Police! At my front door!

Boy I got a shock last night. I was sitting at my PC around 8 pm and the door bell rang.

Naturally my dog went nuts and started raising hell. I got up and went to the door and in the process tried to restrain my ferocious hound in the darkness of the front alcove. He has a nasty habit of running up to any stranger, jumping up on them and peeing on their shoes. In retrospect I wish now I’d turned his bladder loose to do its worst.

While fumbling with the dog I shouted thru the door “Who is it?”

A voice that sounded exactly like a good friend of mine (a person much given to jokes of this sort) answered “Police!”

Uh huh. Right.

I snatched the front door open expecting to see my friend and lo and behold I found myself in the presence of SIX local cops. To say that I was taken aback would be a gross understatement!

They were positioned with two in the doorway, two back about 25 feet down the entrance walkway, and two more off to my extreme left and extreme right – also back about 25 feet. It looked like they were expecting serious trouble. Heck, they even parked their cars down the street, well away from my house!

“Mr Gunrights” one says.

“Yes”

“Are your boys at home?”

“No…my boys don’t live here anymore. What’s this about?”

“Well we’re investigating an automobile burglary, and your son’s names came up”

Now the alarms in my head go off big time! My sons don’t hang out together because for the last 8 months my youngest has been living in Orlando going to school. He’s trying to complete a 4 year degree in less than 3 years, so he doesn’t time to come home for months at a time.

“Who has implicated my boys?” I ask.

An officer standing in the background pipes up “Oh about three different people!”

When the stormtroopers found out that one boy was out of town the line of questioning shifted entirely to the oldest who still lives locally. In the interest of brevity I’ll explain that my degree of cooperation was pretty much nil.

To such questions as “Where does he live” and “Where does he work” I claimed ignorance. I decided to give them his cell number hoping that the matter would be resolved over the phone rather then face-to-face. Once the Gestapo realized I wasn’t going to be much more help, they cordially refused to answer any of MY questions and exited stage left.

I was VERY pleased to see them leave!

Once they’d gone I began to analyze all that had transpired, starting with my own performance. With all that I’ve read, and all the advice I’ve taken on how to deal with encounters with the police, I must be quite candid and say that I did a poor job.

My failures were thus:

I did not demand that they identify themselves by name or badge number.
Even when a cop is in uniform, make them identify themselves by name. Make note of it, as well as their badge number. The department is NOT going to assist you in this matter later if this information becomes necessary!

I did not turn on the porch light so I could see their faces clearly.
This one burns me above all. I had the means to ID these guys right at my fingertips by flicking on a light switch, but I didn’t have my wits about me.

I volunteered entirely too much information, while gathering too little information of my own.
Instead of telling the thugs my son was in Orlando, I could have said he lives out of town. The less they know…the better for YOU!

I did not correctly identify who was at before door before opening it.
I will NEVER make this mistake again!

I was unarmed during the entire time.
Again…I will never open my door without the means to defend myself. I admit there’s little to be done against six heavily armed and well-trained men with merely a pistol. But putting up a better accounting of myself would have allowed me to go to my grave in a better frame of mind.

These last two failures are not police-encounter-specific. They apply to ANY TIME the doorbell rings. My only excuse is that I let my guard down because I heard what I mistakenly took for the voice of a friend. It’s a lesson that I won’t forget anytime soon.

Once the self-analysis was done I turned my attention to what I had learned about the enemy and his motives, intentions, and future plans.

(Note: I refer to them as “the enemy” because to a great extent they ARE the enemy of the general public. For one, the police no longer see themselves as peace officers; they are “law enforcement officers” and with that goes a distinct attitude of Us versus Them. I can attest to this having worked directly with police for many years as a civilian employer of police officers as cash security at an NFL stadium. Even the “good ones” have this attitude.)

The first thing I pondered carefully was why they sent six cops to merely question someone about a simple property crime. That seems highly unlikely given that the “parties of interest” have no police records. It just doesn’t seem to add up.

Relative to that point is the textbook assault positioning they took up at my front door. I have already described the manner in which they positioned themselves. Even the parking of their squad cars down the street makes me wonder what were they expecting.

That they did not voluntarily identify themselves I also have pondered. Why? Has officer anonymity become the norm now?

When I stupidly volunteered that my youngest was in Orlando going to school, I recall one officer asking if he was at UCF. At that time I thought nothing of it. For reasons I’ll clarify in a moment, I’m not so sure it was an innocuous question.

The whole casualness of the encounter lent a certain air of un-officialness to the event. They didn’t give me a card or phone number or name. They completely left the youngest son out of the questioning once they found he was out of their jurisdiction. Their whole attention shifted completely to the oldest – because he might still be reachable.

The last piece of the puzzle seemed to fall in place on the following morning when I phoned a good friend who is highly placed in the local Sherriff’s Office. He informed me that the badge number they later gave my oldest boy on the phone was a fake badge number, and he confirmed that no warrants existed for either of my boys. If there were three witnesses to a property crime, I feel sure there would have been an arrest warrant issued for one or both of my sons. That makes me doubt the story I was told about a car burglary being investigated.

Because of this incident that happened in a neighboring county only two weeks before, I am pretty convinced that what happened last night was the result of the Good-Ole-Boy network that exists among cops. I believe a phone call was made from the McIntosh county cop to one of his friends here within our local department, and what happened at my door last night was an attempt to provoke my sons into doing something foolish that certainly would have cost them their liberty - and maybe even their lives!

Am I paranoid? Possibly. But I read of cases involving police misconduct nearly every day. And it’s growing worse, not better. Ever ask yourself why it is that you so dread seeing blue lights in your rearview window, or why you’re so afraid of running afoul of any part of the Gubmint enforcement apparatus? It’s because you KNOW there is no justice to be found there! None!

I am on my guard, and I have put my sons on guard as well. I sincerely hope that the Good-ole-boys are not out there planning something devious. Are the Campus Police now trailing my youngest looking for an opportunity to settle the score?