SICILIANS Posted January 4, 2005 Share Posted January 4, 2005 Have any of you ever been searching for a cache in an urban or suburban area and someone sees you, becomes suspicious and actually calls the police or confronts you as to what you are doing etc? How did it go when they got there ? I have seen people watching me as I act as casual as possible on one of the first 3 hunts that had people around, and some acted like I was someone to be concerned with.. Like I was an al qaeda spy scoping out my next hit.. Quote Link to comment
+Moose Mob Posted January 4, 2005 Share Posted January 4, 2005 Ah yes... nothing like getting confronted by authorities at 2:00 a.m. We have had it happen several times. Even during the day it's not uncommon to be confronted by civilians or security folks, most of that is out of curiosity. I think the worse is a cache at the edge of a car lot and having to deal with the vultures there. Quote Link to comment
+YuccaPatrol Posted January 4, 2005 Share Posted January 4, 2005 Maybe you were acting TOO casual? I will usually walk away from the cache site if there are people around and come back in a few minutes. It's always fun to be sneaky. . . Quote Link to comment
+JohnnyVegas Posted January 4, 2005 Share Posted January 4, 2005 This has happend to me twice, just in the past two weeks, both times I was looking for FTFs at night. These are the links to the two caches with logs reg the visits. It seems at night they kind of figure your a little off center Double Cross Oh-Tay Quote Link to comment
+CYBret Posted January 4, 2005 Share Posted January 4, 2005 Take some of the brochures or folding cards along with you. Bret Quote Link to comment
+Kit Fox Posted January 4, 2005 Share Posted January 4, 2005 This topic has been discussed here Having to explain geocaching to the police Quote Link to comment
+LthrWrk Posted January 4, 2005 Share Posted January 4, 2005 What Cybret said. I usually have the folding cards with me and pass them to someone who might be interested.. or especially to Property Manager types.. Admittedly I do not bother with being stealthy. Only sometimes cautious if the cache would be badly compromised. Promoting, positively about what we do. Though my cache partner does not want new players hehehe. Quote Link to comment
+wimseyguy Posted January 4, 2005 Share Posted January 4, 2005 Keep in mind, you are not doing anything wrong or illegal, just playing a game that will soon become a full fledged addiction if you are lucky. Having some of cybret's cards and brochures is a good idea, as are printouts of the cache page. It isn't always a good idea to be paperless. Heck, the night of geowoodstock2 we had to explain ourselves to three seperate PD's (no officer, really, we are grown adults out looking for tupperware at 2/3/4 AM ) Quote Link to comment
+Kealia Posted January 4, 2005 Share Posted January 4, 2005 It's interesting that at this very moment this thread is right next to the one about placing caches on school grounds.... Quote Link to comment
+fly46 Posted January 4, 2005 Share Posted January 4, 2005 I was screamed at by an angry land 'owner' one day. (We never did figure out who he was, but we don't believe him to be the one who owns the land!) The longer I tried to rationally explain to him what I was doing and what geocaching was, the more he got angry and irate. To make matters worse, he was blocking my car, so I couldn't leave to get away from him... At my age/gender, I was starting to be very uncomfortable. Quote Link to comment
pcassel Posted January 4, 2005 Share Posted January 4, 2005 Have any of you ever been searching for a cache in an urban or suburbanarea and someone sees you, becomes suspicious and actually calls the police or confronts you as to what you are doing etc? How did it go when they got there ? I have seen people watching me as I act as casual as possible on one of the first 3 hunts that had people around, and some acted like I was someone to be concerned with.. Like I was an al qaeda spy scoping out my next hit.. Last time out, I guy walking by asked me what I was doing. I told him and then enlisted his help finding the cache. We didn't find it, but had a fine time trying. Quote Link to comment
+Renegade Knight Posted January 4, 2005 Share Posted January 4, 2005 A couple of times. One guy saw me heading into the woods on a snowy day with a young girl and thought I was up to no good. Of course the girl was my daughter and we were hiding a cache. At first I didn't want to tell him what I was doing but I could see that it was getting me nowhere so I explained geocaching and the lights went on and he decided that I wasn't up to no good after all. After that I locked my keys in the Bronco but that's another adventure. In another case I was trying to find ground zero on a snowy day. The roads were ice, muggles abounded, and the GPS could not pick which of three houses had the cache in it's hard. We got stuck once, about ran a pedestrian over who was jogging in the center of the road, so we ditched the Bronco and got stuck again to avoid them (blind corner), and otherwise looked like we were doing odd things. Finally we realized the GPS would never settle down, and we left. As we did we noticed a neighbor out in her moo moo filming us with her digi cam. As for night caches and police...Everyone else I'm with gets questioned. I'm either too far behind or too far ahead to get the chance to participate. Quote Link to comment
SICILIANS Posted January 4, 2005 Author Share Posted January 4, 2005 (edited) Take some of the brochures or folding cards along with you. Bret Cool.. thanks Nice work. Just paranoid I guess not needing a hassle. Don't we have enough already ? Grazi Edited January 4, 2005 by SICILIANS Quote Link to comment
+orome Posted January 4, 2005 Share Posted January 4, 2005 As we did we noticed a neighbor out in her moo moo filming us with her digi cam. Did you wave and blow her a kiss? Quote Link to comment
+TEAM 360 Posted January 4, 2005 Share Posted January 4, 2005 Don't have to explain myself if I am out caching, whether it's mid-afternoon or 2 in the morning, I can go stand outside anytime I like, without needing a reason to do so. Quote Link to comment
+NightPilot Posted January 4, 2005 Share Posted January 4, 2005 If the DHS has its way, that may not be true much longer. Quote Link to comment
+Moose Mob Posted January 5, 2005 Share Posted January 5, 2005 Don't have to explain myself if I am out caching, whether it's mid-afternoon or 2 in the morning, I can go stand outside anytime I like, without needing a reason to do so. And when the officer asks "why are in this park after hours", do you say "none of your d@## business!"? Quote Link to comment
+ChicagoCanineCrew Posted January 5, 2005 Share Posted January 5, 2005 (edited) Ok I know I posted this in another topic but I say if you have a dog (and it's dogs-allowed area) bring them! Seriously, people tend to ignore you if you've got a dog with you. They tend to assume you're just walking your dog and pay no attention, unless they want to pet the dog. I've gone walking (and sometimes acting "weird" because I am looking at something, etc...) at all times of the day or night with the dogs and the police never bothered me, they just pass on by, or sometimes wave. Even if I am walking the dogs in a park at night (after hours) they don't bother us. I've even had my dog off-leash in a park (there is a leash law here) when I was working on training her, doing 'stay' and 'come' from further away than the leash would reach, and I realized after I put her leash back on that there was a police car sitting next to the park and two officers watching us... I walked past the car on the way out and the officer complimented me on my dog's obedience and asked if I could train his dog, hehe Edited January 5, 2005 by ChicagoCanineCrew Quote Link to comment
+TEAM 360 Posted January 5, 2005 Share Posted January 5, 2005 Don't have to explain myself if I am out caching, whether it's mid-afternoon or 2 in the morning, I can go stand outside anytime I like, without needing a reason to do so. And when the officer asks "why are in this park after hours", do you say "none of your d@## business!"? I tend not to go into parks after the posted hours, but, if on occasion I DO, I'm too good to get caught... Really, though, I wouldn't be mouthy about it or anything, but you can go outside and walk around any time you like... Quote Link to comment
+Team Perks Posted January 5, 2005 Share Posted January 5, 2005 And when the officer asks "why are in this park after hours", do you say "none of your d@## business!"? I hear that doesn't work so well if you're standing around a major international airport though... Quote Link to comment
+TEAM 360 Posted January 5, 2005 Share Posted January 5, 2005 And when the officer asks "why are in this park after hours", do you say "none of your d@## business!"? I hear that doesn't work so well if you're standing around a major international airport though... If that happens, I will just tell them my name is Perky Perks and to $% off! Quote Link to comment
+Escapades Posted January 5, 2005 Share Posted January 5, 2005 If you just walk around argueing with yourself people tend to leave the area and leave you alone. Quote Link to comment
+El Stajihaha Posted January 5, 2005 Share Posted January 5, 2005 Don't have to explain myself if I am out caching, whether it's mid-afternoon or 2 in the morning, I can go stand outside anytime I like, without needing a reason to do so. Yeah, you're right. You have the right to be outside anytime you want, but remember, the cops are just doing what they get paid to do. If someone calls then they have to go. It seems that things would go alot easier if you would just tell them why you are there. I have gone on a few suspicious person calls that turned out to be cachers. Every one was a pleasant experience because the cachers just explain the hobby instead of trying to come up with a crazy story which would make me even more suspicious. Luckily, nobody has told me to #&% off. Quote Link to comment
+TeamTeeGee Posted January 5, 2005 Share Posted January 5, 2005 If you just walk around argueing with yourself people tend to leave the area and leave you alone. That is OH so true! And that's also a handy trick to remember if your car breaks down in an undesirable neighborhood. Quote Link to comment
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