23 March 02

Of danger signs, from an LEO friend in the West Coast:

"Monday afternoon, I was dispatched to a local Catholic church to investigate a vehicle doing donuts in the soccer field behind the church building.

By the time I arrived, the suspect vehicle was gone, so I went inside the church to talk with the staff. Upon entering, I discovered that a baby christening was taking place. There was a large crowd in the sanctuary. I tried unsuccessfully to get the attention of the priest.

Being in uniform, I am accustomed to people noticing me, but, when I entered the building, a man looked at me intently, far more intently than I would consider ‘normal.' In any event, I decided to leave then and there, telling myself that I could talk with the priest later, but knowing it was the look on that man's face and his posture that triggered my alarm response. Interestingly, I had no premonition or ‘bad feelings,' but the picture I was getting caused me to believe that I needed to disengage immediately.

A half hour later, my dispatcher called me and asked me to call, via cell phone, an officer from the jurisdiction next to ours. I had met him several times, but we did not know each other well. I called at once, and he asked me if I had just come from the Catholic church. When I replied in the affirmative, he indicated that his wife had been at the same christening and that, when I walked in the church, she saw a man staring intently at me. What she then saw (and I didn't) was that he pulled a pistol from of his waistband and held it at his side. He then passed the gun to a female accomplice, and she put it in her purse. The two hurriedly left the church together shortly after I did. When the officer's wife got to a phone, she called her husband who, in turn, called my department.

We got a description of the couple's vehicle, but it was never located. After getting several officers together, we returned to the church. Over the following few hours, we interviewed nearly everyone who had been at the christening, but no one else saw the gun, and no one knew the identity of the couple in question. We still don't.

In retrospect, I'm glad I left the church when I did! All is well that ends well, although we may never know whom these people were."

Lesson: As any pilot will tell you, TRUST YOU INSTRUMENTS, NOT YOUR "FEELINGS." We get in over our heads, not because warning signs are hidden, but because, when they are present, we chose to ignore them. Many thus die suddenly, "feeling fine!"

/John