Capital Security

Today I was having a gyro near the Colorado capitol in downtown Denver, and a policeman all in black with “HOMELAND SECURITY” written across his chest in grayish white was wandering around our restaurant.  I didn’t think much of it until I realized he was carrying a little black box the size of a deck of cards that was ticking erratically.  My friend I was with said he was looking for something, investigating.  And I’m a little silly, but I didn’t think so, and I ignored it.  My friend, she has more experience than I do.  She was right.  A little later he explained to the owner - a round-headed short man with silver hair and kind eyes and an apron - that the radiation levels weren't high enough to be anything serious (a bomb like those in nightmares).

I suppose the owner was worried that there was something wrong with his shop, or that someone was plotting terror from one of his tables, and he hovered just behind the officer’s shoulders.  The all in black man was very calm, telling the man that his sensor had sounded an alarm as he drove by…  My friend asked people if they’d recently been though those out of control full body scanners at the airports.  Probably someone eating there must have had something medical done that day, said the man with the little black ticking box. And he didn’t ask all of us sitting there, but he also didn’t look like he was going away.  So the lady in the corner raised her hand half way and confessed to having had a PET scan that morning. And apologetically, "My doctor said I should be fine to go out." People look around kind of nervously. Some joke. Some are puzzled. Ms. Radiating wants to know if he really could sense her from all the way outside.  The officer (who was probably wearing a lead vest, himself) reassured the rest of us that we weren't in danger.  Then he shows the woman his Geiger counter (how frightening) to prove to her that yes, the numbers were quite high enough for him to have detected. 

The officer was DRIVING BY and his radiation detector picked up the woman's aftereffects of the PET scan. (I always wondered what our law enforcement actually did to try to keep dirty bombs from going off.)  Most likely following protocol, he reported the mildly increased radiation. The report went straight to Washington, DC. We're talking Pentagon and Homeland Security. Probably not Obama, since he has much more important things to worry about than nuclear scares at home and abroad.  The woman cooperatively provided the officer with her name and contact info in case anyone needed to follow up on his report and confirm that she wasn't a terrorist, just a patient in the tech-y US of A.

 Publish Post

True story. 

To God be all glory.