I put an inquiry on the local “Nextdoor” blog this morning asking if anyone knew what had happened last night, and one woman suggested I call the local police station and ask. Yeesh. How obvious is that?
And so I did.
Apparently it was a domestic dispute between a man and his dad. One of them was threatening to burn down the house, and “we took him to the hospital”. Not sure which “he” was “who”, but it wasn’t anything for us to worry about. No guns or loose cannons.
About 8 o’clock last night I started hearing helicopters, very loud and very close. We live fairly close to three different military bases – two Army and one Air Force – and I was beginning to think our dear Cadet Bone Spurs had at last gone too far. A few minutes later I became aware of sirens and flashing lights, to I went upstairs to see what I could see from that vantage point.
The helicopters – three of them – were circling a house a few doors up the road, keeping their spotlights focused on the building. Police cars were everywhere. The road was blocked in both directions, and we could hear loudspeakers, but couldn’t make out what was being said. The Squire went back downstairs, locked both doors, turned the alarm on “instant” and flipped on the lights over both the back and front of the house. After about a half an hour, things began to subside – the choppers went away, and the various police vehicles (we think one may have been a K9 car) drove away.
The Squire stayed up and watched the 11:00 news, but there was nothing mentioned and there wasn’t anything in this morning’s newspaper, either.
We live about ten miles from Edgewood Arsenal and Aberdeen Proving Ground. This morning, about 30 helicopters, including several Blackhawks, flew over the house in groups of six or seven. Given the state of things today, this was very disconcerting, to say the least.
As many of you know, two police officers were shot to death in Harford County on February 10th. (These were the first shooting deaths in the line of duty in the Harford County Sheriff’s department since 1899. There were only two other line-of-duty deaths in that period; one officer was killed in a car chase, and another died at his desk of a heart attack.) Today was the funeral for the first of the two officers (oddly enough, they both attended the same church.) and what we saw was the helicopter escort, circling the area, waiting for the service to end.
And there were only seven of them – two from the County, two from the State, two military and one newscaster. We just kept seeing them over and over.
The second funeral is Friday, so we’ll know what to expect this time.
thisendoftheswamp 