Bomb Squad Caled

[furfool]

This is an email sent to me by DoctorDoolittle.

This is real story in the news on Sunday 11-16-08. I’m not a person who forwards much in the way of email, but I thought you all would find the following article interesting. You can search for it using Google news if you wish. Enjoy. 🙂

‘Geocache’ found by bomb squad

The Conway Fire Department Bomb Squad responded to a report of a suspicious object alongside Prince Street Saturday morning. The object was determined to be a “geocache,” and not dangerous.

The Conway Police Department was notified of the suspicious device by Ali Hamad, who was opening his gas station at 2820 Prince St. at about 8 a.m. when he saw a car parked near Prince Street and a person walking around a roadside bush for no apparent reason. Hamad investigated the area after the vehicle left and found a cylindrical object wrapped in brown tape that he feared may have been constructed and placed with malicious intent.

The Conway Fire Department and CPD secured the area and closed Prince Street. Some surrounding businesses were also shut down until the object was determined to pose no threat.

The bomb squad used its remote-controlled robotic vehicle to make initial contact with the object and a bomb squad member wearing a protective suit used a hand-held X-ray device to determine that the cylindrical object did not contain explosive or incendiary materials before disassembling it.

What the object did contain, CFD Division Chief Jon McMahan said, was a piece of paper presumably used by geocachers to log when they had found the “cache.”

Geocaching is a hobby practiced throughout the world in which a container is placed in a somewhat remote or hidden location and precise Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates of the container posted online at http://www.geocaching.com and other regional or club geocaching Web sites, such as that of the Arkansas Geocacher’s Association (AGA), http://www.arkgeocaching.org. Geocachers then use handheld GPS receivers to follow these coordinates to locate the caches.

Some containers contain trinkets or other “treasures” which geocachers take and replace with other items of similar or greater value, while others contain a piece of paper for geocachers to record the date of the find.

The “suspicious” woman Hamad saw near the roadside Saturday morning was likely a geocacher making a find.

It was AGA member Tim Stone of Conway that placed the cache found by the bomb squad robot, according to fellow AGA member Wayne Lunsford, also of Conway.

As it happened, Lunsford and Stone hosted an AGA meeting in Conway on Saturday. The members were aware that one of their caches had sparked a bomb scare earlier in the day, Lunsford said, and the club discussed how to avoid future clashes between their hobby and law enforcement.

“Geocachers really try to pride themselves on being law-abiding and family friendly,” Lunsford said Saturday afternoon. “I really hate that this happened.”

All AGA members at the meeting were reminded of the rules that caches must be clearly labeled and that permission be granted from property owners when placing a cache on private property.

Stone said he wished to apologize to those who were inconvenienced or alarmed.

“I feel terrible that I caused anybody any worry or grief or trouble,” he said. “Sometimes you get so involved in playing the game that you forget how outsiders view it. I feel terrible and I’m really sorry that it caused any problems. I’m going back and re-evaluating my geocaches and I’d advise anybody hiding geocaches to go back and do the same thing.”

McMahan said that the incident was the third time the Conway Bomb Squad had responded to reports of a suspicious device to find a geocache.

“It’s a real problem for squads all over the country,” McMahan said. “It’s an interesting hobby, but it comes down to somebody putting a suspicious package in a suspicious place under suspicious circumstances.”

McMahan urged geocachers to clearly label their caches with information to let citizens and police/fire personnel know what it is and who put it there. The label should include contact information so that whoever finds it can contact whoever placed it there, he added.

Lunsford said AGA members met a few years ago with former Conway Chief of Police Randle Aragon to discuss the nature of the geocaching hobby, and intends to meet with current Chief of Police A. J. Gary to discuss the same.

Gary said he also intends to meet with the hobbyists.

“It’s a lot of manpower and expense to come out to something like that,” he said. “It’s our intention to touch base with them … and ensure that what happened today doesn’t happen again.”

Gary said Saturday afternoon that he was unsure if criminal trespass or other charges will be filed in this incident, but that police and fire personnel were instructed to consider the cache evidence and transport it to CPD headquarters.

Investigating suspicious objects is what the bomb squad does, McMahan said, and the citizen who reported this one “absolutely did the right thing.”

While at the scene he said he was more frustrated with the motorists who drove around a fire truck parked across the road to block traffic than geocachers.

“If there’s a fire truck parked across the road that means the road’s closed,” he said.

Stone placed the cache at Prince Street on Oct. 19. Five geocachers have since posted comments on geocaching.com stating that they had located it. One of the comments warns of “muggles,” a term used in the Harry Potter book series to refer to persons unfamiliar with magic and used by geocachers to refer to people unfamiliar with the hobby who may find it strange to see that someone is, for instance, searching through a bush along Prince Street early on a Saturday morning.

[Ray]

Did they get the robot to sign the cache log? ❓

Is this the cache? GC1EG0A

[Lostby7]

Here is the important part of the article which some of us have lost sight of….even with permission placing a cache where it could be problematic is still a bad idea. Even if all the neighbors know about the placement do their visitors…do the police…the mailman…newspaper guy or meter reader? Bad placement is bad placement.

(Yes this is a soapbox issue for me as I have seen too many caches placed in overly public areas which are just begging to have the police/bomb squad pay a visit.)

“I feel terrible that I caused anybody any worry or grief or trouble,” he said. “Sometimes you get so involved in playing the game that you forget how outsiders view it. I feel terrible and I’m really sorry that it caused any problems. I’m going back and re-evaluating my geocaches and I’d advise anybody hiding geocaches to go back and do the same thing.”

[Team Deejay]

This is why I make it a point NEVER to be stealthy, regardless of what the cache page says.* Acting like you are doing something wrong is a good way to get all sorts of the wrong kind of attention. Instead, we try to act like we belong where we are hunting and have no reason to be sneaky. I can’t count the number of random “passers by” that we have recruited to help look for caches. Gardeners, maintenance men, security guards, kids, hunters, police, joggers, fishermen, gas station attendants, you name it. I don’t believe any of them actually ever “helped”, but being in on the game makes it less likely that they will cause problems. 99.9% of the people in the world are not interested in destroying someone else’s fun for no reason. For the remaining 0.1%, well, that is why they make more ammo cans!

* Yes, Steve, I know that you don’t think it is possible for Sasquatch to be steathly!

[SammyClaws]

@Team Deejay wrote:

* Yes, Steve, I know that you don’t think it is possible for Sasquatch to be steathly!

Oh I know they are stealthy, otherwise there would be more pictures of them. The way you had that dog quaking in its boots made me realize what it must be like to actually run into one in the woods. I swear I could still hear it barking when we got to the cars! 😆

[gotta run]

@Lostby7 wrote:

(Yes this is a soapbox issue for me as I have seen too many caches placed in overly public areas which are just begging to have the police/bomb squad pay a visit.)

We call these drive-bys, and fortunately our immediate area has not been as infested with them as some other areas we have visited.

On the Left Side of the Road...

[Lostby7]

@gotta run wrote:

@Lostby7 wrote:

(Yes this is a soapbox issue for me as I have seen too many caches placed in overly public areas which are just begging to have the police/bomb squad pay a visit.)

We call these drive-bys, and fortunately our immediate area has not been as infested with them as some other areas we have visited.

But the good news is that by following the no stealth rule and wearing brightly colored clothing, blowing horns and waving flags during my search of these caches they will kinda vanish on their own….problem solved.

[gotta run]

😆

Ya, but when you’re poking into a guard rail on a busy streetcorner, or feeling up some electrical panel that might or might not be on private property but it’s the only thing around 😯 😯 😯 it’s pretty hard to make it look like you’re “supposed to be there doing that.”

Then when the lame cache goes missing, you get blamed for being LTF because you didn’t rehide it well enough. 🙄

On the Left Side of the Road...

[-cheeto-]

So you are saying I should stop wearing my unibomber hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses when I find these “urban hides”?

Awe man, you take all the fun away….

On the subject of “urban hides”… why not stick to hiding magnetic nano’s, I’m sure it’s hard to cram all those necessary bomb parts and fuel into one of those. (not that I know anything about making bombs.. I just watch a lot of mythbusters) and everyone loves unrolling nano logs in the winter.

[Lostby7]

@-cheeto- wrote:

So you are saying I should stop wearing my unibomber hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses when I find these “urban hides”?

This is how I normally dress while caching…I might need to update the attire so I don’t look “suspicious”….

[Team Deejay]

@-cheeto- wrote:

On the subject of “urban hides”… why not stick to hiding magnetic nano’s, I’m sure it’s hard to cram all those necessary bomb parts and fuel into one of those. (not that I know anything about making bombs.. I just watch a lot of mythbusters) and everyone loves unrolling nano logs in the winter.

Note that this issue is generally not the cache container itself. It is the way that people act when they are searching for an urban hide. Even if you are not dressed in camo in the city, not wearing a ski mask with sunglasses, and not slinking around hiding behind trees like the Pink Panther, most people will still act “strange” when seeking a cache. Think about the last time you ran into a “nano in a hollow fence rail” hide. You basically went around sticking your fingers into every opening of that fence until you found it. Anyone witnessing this would classify that behavior as strange unless they knew what was going on.

Of course, you can’t avoid this if someone is watching you with binoculars behind curtains, but if someone comes out to investigate you, the smart move is to be open about what you are doing and ask them to help you. People love to be needed (even if they really aren’t) and love to get involved in new things that they don’t really understand. The best case is that you end up recruiting a new player. The worst case is that they think you are weird and leave you alone. At least they aren’t going to call the police.

[gotta run]

GC1J568

…just fit the theme of the thread for the “head stuck inside the bush” part of the description…

On the Left Side of the Road...

[-cheeto-]

Note that this issue is generally not the cache container itself

I get that. However, this particular story and thread are regarding all the wasted time and money because a bomb squad was called in to remove this suspicious container and the story notes more than one of these removals.

I get the “don’t look suspicious thing. However, when it comes to calling in a bomb squad, I would imagine that if you make a PVC pipe cache container it is much more likely the bomb squad will be called then if you were to hide a magnetic nano (that the suspicious muggle probably wont even be able to find!). That was the nature of my commentary.

[sandlanders]

@-cheeto- wrote:

So you are saying I should stop wearing my unibomber hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses when I find these “urban hides”?

End of last November, two days before the start of…The Snow… on now-archived GCG9A3 (definietly NOT an urban cache).

Dressed like this for the weather, but we actually put as a caption:
“The Unabomber goes geocaching.”

[The Pirate Monkies]

Being stealthy doesn’t always require a trench coat, fedora, and sunglasses… Sometimes attracting attention by doing something completely and obviously innocent is the best use of stealth… I always carry a digital camera and sometimes pretend to take “sightseeing” pictures while looking for an urban cache… Magicians use a technique known as misdirection to help create an illusion… Tying your shoe, checking a “loose” nut on a bicycle, or checking that “strange noise” coming from your right rear wheel, are all examples of misdirection that I’ve used in the past… Hobbling around with a cane after knee surgery was a great excuse for me to make frequent rest stops to feel for that magnetic key case under park benches… The most creative use of stealth is to let everyone see you doing something that you’re not… 😉

p.s. I was recently mistaken by a muggle couple as park ranger doing a forestry survey, I let them know what I was really doing and they tagged along to my next find… I think they’re hooked…

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