First time out and about at JFK since last September. Nice to get out and see all of you guys and gals. Anne and I had a great time catching up with you all and, of course, having our special guest, Josh Rawlins, from DFW was an added benefit ... until we had our Close Encounter of the Cop Kind.
Apparently some of the beach litter crowd reported some suspicious activity that sent NYPD's finest in our direction. It was funny. A police car pulls up beside us, then backs out, leaves the parking lot and heads over the bridge toward Howard Beach. They were looking for someone we thought but, luckily, not us since they left. Well, they came back five minutes later.
Josh and I were parked against the front curb while Mike P., Phil, Mel, Mike M., Eric and maybe others were parked in the second lane behind us. We were each sitting in our respective cars and an officer approached each separately. I got the little grumpy guy, aka the bad cop, while Josh got the bigger, aka the good cop. He asked what I was doing and I replied taking photos of the planes. He asked why and I told him that was what I do for a living and that I also write articles for magazines. As you might expect he was not happy about that and his attitude immediately changed. He got grumpy and questioned me why again. Then, of course, he asked for my driver's license which I promptly gave him. He went away for a bit, and then returned.
On returning he asked me what the day of my birth was. My NJ license does not show the day, only the month and year. I told him and then he complained to me about the license not having my birth day on it. I told him that if he had a problem with that he would have to take it up with NJ since they issued the license to me.
Well the next thing we know he's asking us to leave. In fact he's telling us to go back to NJ and take pictures there (since my plates are NJ plates). The other cop who was with Josh had told Josh that we were doing nothing illegal. So I balked and asked why we should leave if we are doing nothing illegal? His reply was that they were going to continue to get phone calls about us. I continue to balk at leaving stating we were in a public park and not doing anything illegal ... that led to the officer asking for my vehicle registration and insurance ID card. Just looking for something to tag me on. I gave them to him.
He took the registration and insurance card, went back to his car and five minutes later sent the good cop out to talk to Josh and I. He gave us back our papers and implied we were being somewhat beligerant. Bull ****! We responded much more nicely than the bad cop did when talking to me. We simply took a stand for our rights. We were in a public park, we had complied with the officer's request, and we were doing nothing illegal.
The officer then told us there was a detective on his way down to question us. He then got back into the partrol car and they left. His threat was ridiculous because if a detective was indeed on his way to see us, they would have never left. We stayed for at least an hour after the incident.
Of course everyone in the cars behind us were laughing their heads off as we were going though another Close Encounter of the Cop Kind, and we joined them to discuss the happenings. A short time later they left and headed over to eat and catch arrivals by Costco. We stayed a little longer since Josh wanted to catch the ANA 773, and then we headed over to Boston Market for lunch.
Everyone had congregated at Inwood Park to catch the arrival of the Pink Song and we were the last to arrive. It was payback time. When we arrived we noticed the group out by the water's edge with a cop car right beside them. So it was our turn to sit back and laugh.
Another enjoyable day at JFK interfacing with NY's finest :(
Art
P.S. So Mike M. where is our photo with NY's finest?
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