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An Unhappy Sheriff


jeff35080

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If they thought that it was a bomb and shot at it that wouldn't be good right?

 

Boms are typically 'shot' to disrupt the bomb. The goal is to blow the wiring away from the dentonator in an attempt to keep the bomb from exploding. That is why water cannons are typically used.

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If they thought that it was a bomb and shot at it that wouldn't be good right?

 

Boms are typically 'shot' to disrupt the bomb. The goal is to blow the wiring away from the dentonator in an attempt to keep the bomb from exploding. That is why water cannons are typically used.

Oh :huh:

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It's a cool, rainy day here in Indianapolis.  I think I'll do my bit in the fight against terrorism, and go geocaching.  I may even hide a cache.  :P  :huh:

May I suggest placing the "Blackford County Sheriff Virtual Cache"? The finder would be required to have a picture taken while shaking hands with the sheriff or one of his deputies. Seriously, it'd mend some fences and promote better relations.

 

Yeah, I know it's hard to get a virtual listed, but let's look at the tests:

 

1. Due to land manager restrictions or other reasons, it must be impossible to place a physical cache nearby - even a micro. Yep. I'd say the risk of having the container destroyed by the bomb squad makes a physical cache near the station pretty near "impossible." If you scaled down the cache size to a micro, perhaps they'd shoot it with a pistol instead of a rifle.

 

2. The target of the virtual cache must be a specific, distinct object. Sheriff Mahan is specific, although I'm not sure that he's distinguished himself.

 

3. The target of the virtual cache must be of general interest to geocachers. Well, this thread is on page two and geocachers are falling over each other trying to talk to newspaper reporters.

 

4. The virtual cache target must have a special historic, community or geocaching quality that sets it apart from everyday subjects. Yep. Most places you visit, you won't be able to find anyone who gets paid to destroy geocaches with a rifle.

 

5. The virtual cache target must pass the "Wow" test. Did anybody else say "Wow" after reading the news stories, or was it just me?

 

EDIT: Correction, this thread is now on page three. :P

Edited by The Leprechauns
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WOW. I still cant believe how this whole thing has been "blown up" by all the press. I really cant get over what is being said. My son has went geocaching with Cookcrew and had the time of his life. I know Cookcrew and he is the nicest guy you will ever meet. I cant imagine what my 12 year old son would have done if he would have been with them during all this. My son would probably still be upset over it..... ANyhow just wanted Cookcrew to know that I cant imagine what he is going thru and I am thinking of them!!!!!!!!!!! Dont let them get the best of you

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I wonder what non geocachers think of this now?

Usually more geocachers are created from these kinds of stories.

 

I set up a Google alert to see what kinds of news stories come in on a daily basis. This was an unfortunate incident but bomb scares happen all the time. As it has been posted, the cache was placed with permission and a lack of communication caused this, so no one seems to be "at fault" (though people want someone to be at fault because it is easier).

 

Stuff happens, and unfortunately so does overreaction to a situation. To the extreme, we should stop allowing groups of people to gather in stadiums anymore because this would create a terrorist target, right?

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I don't even have anything to say to this.

Well, I do, but I don't have words for it.

 

You know, we were talking about this at our MTGC meeting. Not this incident specifically, but the same type of thing.

 

The sad thing is that if Indiana had decided to be as productive as Tennessee is being it wouldn't be an issue.

 

TN Authorities have decided that Geocachers are great allies in the war against terrorism. Geocachers and terrorists look simelar in behavior, equipment, etc... The difference is that cachers are good people. So, they have asked us to look for suspicious people because, well, we know who ISNT a part of our caching group. We know that if we come across someone whether or not they're one of us. We know who we are, real names, screen names, etc.

 

Of course, along the same lines, this also means that law enforcement should, in theory, know who we are if we're helping them.

 

Perhaps it's safer for our sport - and for us - if we adopt a policy by one of the communities here. Granted, it's more of a pain in the butt, but the city - I believe it's Goodlettsville, but I'm not sure on that - requires that in order to hide a geocache, you have to come into the police department and mark on a map where your cache is hidden. There are no permits or anything required, they just want to know where the caches are so that when Joe Citizen decides someone is doing something suspicious, the police know if it's a geocache or a legitimate problem. Another added perk is that by us having to go into the police station, the police know what we look like.

 

Hey, I don't care what the police do. I'm still going caching in an hour and a half!

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I just took a look at that indianapolis channel 6 website.. there is a poll there

 

http://www.theindychannel.com/news/3859424/detail.html

 

as of now 1/3 of the people voting suggests that the 'badguy' pay for the associated costs.. egads.. lets all vote.

Would that be the person who called in a fake scare, or the person they were calling about? If I'm going to vote, it would help to know. :huh:

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hmmm.... ok.. dang got my brain into gear again.

 

Maybe Jeremy or his crew could put together a 'standardized" presentation.

 

Something that we could printout and present to our local law enforcement?

 

Sure some of us might duplicate what others have done in making a presentation??

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I just took a look at that indianapolis channel 6 website.. there is a poll there

 

http://www.theindychannel.com/news/3859424/detail.html

 

as of now 1/3 of the people voting suggests that the 'badguy' pay for the associated costs.. egads..  lets all vote.

Would that be the person who called in a fake scare, or the person they were calling about? If I'm going to vote, it would help to know. :huh:

Man this is crazy.

 

So how about 'tallying the charges' and charging officials everytime they over react.

 

Now I 'get' the fact that someone saw something suspicious and called it in - in these crazy times that's understandable.

 

But the guy was right THERE and offered an explanation. It could have ended there.

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hmmm.... ok.. dang got my brain into gear again.

 

Maybe Jeremy or his crew could put together a 'standardized" presentation.

 

Something that we could printout and present to our local law enforcement?

 

Sure some of us might duplicate what others have done in making a presentation??

Here's an electronic version:

 

Geocaching Flash presentation

 

It's a good place to start in building a printed version.

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Well... let's see just how mangled my words become. I just got off the phone with Ric Rutledge the reporter. And as everyone knows, what you're trying to say and what comes across are often two different things. He DID mention getting "a heck of a lot of email," most of it giving him hell about the sherriff overreacting.

 

I may just be next on the burning stake! :huh:

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WAITaminnit...

 

Mahan said he did not know if Cook would face charges.

 

"We're going to interview Cook, tally the costs and then meet with the prosecutor,"

Aw GEEZ. What if the innocent geocacher is socked with a nasty fine of some sort?

 

Can we take up a collection for him if that happens? Paypal? Something? :huh:

Edited by Sparrowhawk
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WAITaminnit...

 

Mahan said he did not know if Cook would face charges.

 

"We're going to interview Cook, tally the costs and then meet with the prosecutor,"

Aw GEEZ. What if the innocent geocacher is socked with a nasty fine of some sort?

 

Can we take up a collection for him if that happens? Paypal? Something? :huh:

Better still; any lawyer/geocachers willing to take up the torch in needed?

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you know what is freaky? we could be out doing anything and look suspicious, and have the blame pinned on us. Life is just getting too weird and big brother-ish. Just because we're playing a game, doesn't make us any different than a guy reading a newspaper at the park. Or ordering an ice cream, or looking for a lost contact.

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hmmm.... ok.. dang got my brain into gear again.

 

Maybe Jeremy or his crew could put together a 'standardized" presentation.

 

Something that we could printout and present to our local law enforcement?

 

Sure some of us might duplicate what others have done in making a presentation??

Here's an electronic version:

 

Geocaching Flash presentation

 

It's a good place to start in building a printed version.

http://www.geocacher-u.com/resources/brochure.html

 

These guys already have a lovely brochure in pdf format that you can print out. Also a business card version is available.

 

Jeremy and Co., I suggest posting this brochure link on the front page so that others can benefit... it would sure help the cause.

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OF course the really SCARY thing about this is "there but for the grace of god..."

 

I mean this could have been ME. I was planning on logging this cache over the Thanksgiving weekend.

 

Worst yet it could have been one of MY caches.

 

I've been stopped and questioned by police three times about caching and asking why I was 'snooping around'.

 

But on each occasion simply explaining what I was doing did the trick.

 

One police officer actually said, "Cool! Can you write down the link? Sounds like something my kids would enjoy."

 

Another one actually cut me off as I was explaining, "Okay, I've ran into you guys before."

 

Guess I was lucky. ;D

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Now to play devil's advocate... What if the guy sneaking around a historical location wasn't a friendly cacher and he actually had evil intentions? If the caller reported the person and officers that responded didn't know anything about Geacaching, how could they distinguish the person and the package from a bomb? Remember, stickers can be all over the box refering to Geocaching or 'not a bomb'. But if you had no idea what the hobby was all about, given recent events of our society... Would you open the container? Let me add this to your decision. Military friends of mine come back from Iraq telling about bombs in dead animals along the roadside. If someone will put a bomb in an animal, why not in a box that is under a historic train? I would think to myself, why else would this container be here? Seems a little out of place!!

I don't know what your answer is for the situation. But if I had no idea what Geocaching was and how fun it can be, I would probably error on the side of caution. I have a wonderful wife that I intend to go home to at the end of my shift, and I wouldn't consider opening it if a safer option existed.

In this situation the Sheriff has a little egg on his face for being careful. I think that is a better result than if he ended up with blood on his hands for being careless.

Maybe one remedy for this type of situation, is to go and education your local law enforcement. Explain to them that there are hundereds or thousands of places where small containers have been hidden within their jurisdiction and in an attempt to avoid problems of possible bomb threats you want them to know of the hobby. Have them bring up the website there in their office and hopefully the officers will take some time to learn more of this hobby spreading in each community. Try and 'sell it to them' as a training aid for using a GPS.

I wish I had answers to keep these stories from happening, but I don't. I wish everyone, especially other officers, knew the amount of family fun that can be had with Geocaching. It's unfortunate that Terrorism has effected us all the way it has.

I liked the earlier post from Sept1c tank,"I think I'll do my bit in the fight against terrorism, and go geocaching."

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In this situation the Sheriff has a little egg on his face for being careful. I think that is a better result than if he ended up with blood on his hands for being careless.

My problem with it is that he had four kids with him, and was willing to walk over to it and open it for them.

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My problem with it is that he had four kids with him, and was willing to walk over to it and open it for them.

Yes, but let's look at this from a criminal psychologist's POV: If a guy is unstable enough to try and kill people with a bomb, he is likely unstable enough to take himself out in the blast.

 

I suppose in the "err on the side of safety" mindset, he couldn't let Cookcrew approach the box.

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Smokey and the Bandit,

 

I would't go as far as to say you are playing devils advocate. People need to be willing to call if they see something. They should call if they see something. Geocaching can look odd. Geocachers though are out there too and we see a lot of things. There is another thread on where someone reported bloody clothes found in the woods.

 

The Sheriff responded as he should, the EOD as they should. There is no need to place blame because everyone is doing their job as they have been taught and asked to do it.

 

When we move on to the self serving and smarmy comments department, then a few comments that didn't need to be made were made, and mostly by the elected official. :huh:

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Perhaps we (geocachers) need new stickers to place on our containers.

 

Instead of the old ones (which I have never used, but may start), perhaps new one similar to:

 

No Threat

Official Geocache

Placed with the permission of_____________

In Case of Emergency, Call______________

 

While it could never be enforced to make it mandatory to place a label on the cache like the one above, it might be very encouraged...

 

Ed

The Badge & The Butterfly

Edited by The Badge & the Butterfly
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Now to play devil's advocate... What if the guy sneaking around a historical location wasn't a friendly cacher and he actually had evil intentions? If the caller reported the person and officers that responded didn't know anything about Geacaching, how could they distinguish the person and the package from a bomb? Remember, stickers can be all over the box refering to Geocaching or 'not a bomb'. But if you had no idea what the hobby was all about, given recent events of our society... Would you open the container? Let me add this to your decision. Military friends of mine come back from Iraq telling about bombs in dead animals along the roadside. If someone will put a bomb in an animal, why not in a box that is under a historic train? I would think to myself, why else would this container be here? Seems a little out of place!!

Well, mistakes are bound to happen, but a little logic on the part of the guy calling this in woudn't have hurt...

1. This isn't Iraq. Nothing like this is happening in the US presently. If it were, that would be entirely different.

2. What recent events? It's been a while since Sept 11th. It's been a while since the oklahoma city bombing, but people didn't get as worried over that. What's the difference? As best I can tell, our attitude has changed. Not one thing in the external world has changed - people were trying to do bad stuff to us before 9/11/01, and they continue to try to do bad stuff to us today.

 

If the guy who called this in had used a modicum of logic, he might have realized that what he witnessed, although weird, was most likely not a bomb:

A. The ice cream store isn't a very likely target for a terrorist bombing. The total number of people killed might actually approach the number of traffic fatalities over the weekend. It would be a tragedy, and get national attention, but it would not be that effective of a gesture.

B. Most terrorists aren't playing with their kids while they are planting bombs - at least I wouldn't suppose that was typical.

C. It was in the middle of the day, in a public place, with people around. That might also have been a clue.

D. Nobody seems to be planting bombs here in the US at the moment. (And God willing, never will again.)

 

This would be very different if we were in Iraq or Israel. Someplace like that - you see something weird, you should report it. Heck, even here, if this had been by a federal building, a power plant, an airport, or even a bridge, the person who reported this to the police would have been quite correct to report it. But I'm sorry - I just don't think our old antique trains and ice-cream shops in small towns are tempting terrorist targets.

 

Suppose the situation had been different, and this guy had seen some smoke and called in a report of a fire, which had ultimately turned out to be someone barbecuing dinner in their backyard. Would people feel like the person who reported the fire had done the right thing?

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Good detective work! I wonder if the owner(s) of the business were at work when this happened or if they had told any of their employees about the geocache?

whilst reading the news story on this I noticed this line.

 

Craig Heavenridge, owner of the Tin Lizzy, was enroute to Florida, but his mother, Hope, said the family was relieved that everything turned out OK

 

maybe that's why the owner didn't speak up. he may not have let anyone on his staff or in his family know about the cache.

very unfortunate that this happened though.

:huh:

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Well, mistakes are bound to happen, but a little logic on the part of the guy calling this in woudn't have hurt...

1. This isn't Iraq. Nothing like this is happening in the US presently. If it were, that would be entirely different.

2. What recent events? It's been a while since Sept 11th. It's been a while since the oklahoma city bombing, but people didn't get as worried over that. What's the difference?

Have you forgotten about the nutcase who was placing bombs in the midwest? The guy who was going to put a giant smiley face on the US by the location of his bombs. There are bombs set all over the US presently. Unfortunately, bombings are not at all uncommon in the US. We find them from cases like the nutjob "smiley face bomber" to the dopers planting bombs to protect their pot fields, to the high school kids making pipe bombs, gangs setting bombs for rival gangs. It's way too common. Sept 11 was not that long ago. If you study these people's MO you'll see they'll wait for many years to make another hit. Time means nothing. Waiting until people let their guard down and become complacent is how they succeed. If you recall the 1st WTC bombing in 1993. Same folks. They didn't succeed in 1993 and they waited 8 yrs before they tried again. Intel tell us if they hadn't scored in 2001 they would have kept trying. That's their MO.

If you understand how bombers operate they first do a series of tests in very remote locations to test their bombs. It's not unusual to get reports of bomb blasts in remote sites.

BTW, having worked very closely with EOD shooting with a .50 cal is one method utilized. It all depends on the circumstances at the time.

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Through some.... how shall I say this... contacts. I have learned that it was not a .50 caliber bullet fired at the geocache in question, but was in fact a .50 caliber disruptor.

 

Basically, these disruptors have a .50 caliber bore and are fairly basic cannons. You unroll a condom (yes, a condom) and place it into the bore of the disruptor, then you fill-up the condom with water. As you can imagine, it's basically a giant water balloon inside a .50 caliber steel tube. A charge that looks somewhat like a shotgun shell is used to propel the water charge towards the offending item... in this case a geocache.

 

The explosive force of the water hitting the device hopefully disrupts the device without causing a detonation i.e. it blows the wires off of an electrical source that could be used to detonate a charge.

 

It appears that the news reports simply did not understand that it was a .50 caliber disprutor that was used and was fired at the geocache, not a .50 caliber bullet.

 

I hope this tidbit of info that I have acquired might help everyone understand that no bullets were fired at the geocache..... simply a very powerful water balloon. I have had the opportunity to participate with one of our EOD members in using a similar device... it's very cool what you can do with a condom filled with water ;)

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Well my only comment is......................COMMUNICATION.

It is the one thing that I have seen from along time ago even to today,that really needs work.

In every facet of life.

 

It is the key to all actions and reactions to any situation.

I see that many still lack these skills even those who are in the Intelligence Depatrments.............................Intelligence is just that, it is the way you use it to "COMMUNICATE" that counts in the long run.

You either accomplish your goal or fail.

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Unfortunately, bombings are not at all uncommon in the US. We find them from cases like the nutjob "smiley face bomber" to the dopers planting bombs to protect their pot fields, to the high school kids making pipe bombs, gangs setting bombs for rival gangs. It's way too common.

I guess it depends on how you define "uncommon?" Is arson uncommon?

 

Last year, according to the ATF, there were 386 explosive incident reports, resulting in 55 injuries, 7 deaths, and $5.4 million in damage. (It was a slow year for bombing - it's been about double that for the 3 prior years.)

 

Last year, there were 1884 arson incidents investigated by the ATF. (Probably more that weren't investigated by them.) These resulted in 642 injuries, 299 deaths, and $749 million in damages.

 

By contrast, there were 2,153,464 burglaries, and 16,503 murders in 2003. So perhaps my understanding of "uncommon" is in error?

 

I wasn't trying to downplay the seriousness of bombings in the US. I was merely trying to point out that terrorism happened prior to 9/11, bombings have happened for quite some time, and all that's really changed is we, as a nation, seem really panicked about them now.

 

My point was that in these stressful times, people should be careful to only report what they really see. It is easy enough to see things that aren't really there. Also, perhaps a person should consider the probability that they are actually witnessing a bombing - the probability of observing one is apparently quite low. If after thinking about it a moment, a person still is convinced that something bad is possibly happening, then of course they should call the police. Perhaps that's what this citizen did, but perhaps it isn't.

 

I don't know much about how bombers operate, however, I bet it's not really common for an apprehended bombing suspect to tell you that your suspected bomb is a geocache, and to offer to go and open it for you.

 

I understand that law enforcement must err on the side of caution. By definition, this means that sometimes they'll dispose of a geocache instead of a bomb. I don't understand getting upset about this. Perhaps my thinking on this isn't right either -but if it were me, I'd be not unhappy to discover that a bomb threat turned out to be nothing. I'd imagine finding a real, live bomb is a whole lot more worrisome, both form the standpoint of danger, and from the standpoint of the perpetrator being at large.

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I found a link in this forum to a very well written tri-fold brochure that explained GeoCaching very well. It has a place to print your personal info, and I printed it out to hand out to anyone that thought I looked suspicious because it's easier to let them read it than me trying to expain what I'm doing in their bushes. I carry them with me everywhere I go and have handed out several. Problem is, I wanted to post the link here but I can't find it.

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I found a link in this forum to a very well written tri-fold brochure that explained GeoCaching very well. It has a place to print your personal info, and I printed it out to hand out to anyone that thought I looked suspicious because it's easier to let them read it than me trying to expain what I'm doing in their bushes. I carry them with me everywhere I go and have handed out several. Problem is, I wanted to post the link here but I can't find it.

CapnJackSparrow, I think this is the link you are referring to at Geocachers U website. I also use this trifold brochure along with the cards that you can print out.

 

http://www.geocacher-u.com/resources/index.html#downloads

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Another local report which includes a video of caches in nearby Muncie, IN.

 

http://www.newslinkindiana.com/news/00000004649.html

 

In the video this reporter actually finds two geocaches and takes one to the local sheriff.

Good video -- at least it showed what caching is all about so people can see how it works.

 

I recognized the last cache -- I logged that one a year or so ago.

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