Not sure who this was- I'll have to do some snoopin'
20 percent of the Flathead County police reports involve surveyors. Is that a yearly trend?
Don
I went back to that site and looked over some archived police reports. Man, you have got some strange people in Flathead County.:-)
Don
I think it is actually flat head county. Perhaps that explains the oddness of the locals.
"A curious woman on Mountain View Drive in Whitefish called in about truck that had a surveyor label on it. She thought it suspicious and asked that a deputy check out the driver. It turned out that the driver was a surveyor who was surveying the area."
Now that is funny! Too funny, because it happened to me once.
Right after 9/11/2001, I was doing a engineering design survey for street improvements. I was set up with a total station down the street from a hospital. The cops were called reporting that a dark skinned person was taking pictures of the hospital. The SGT that came to investigate was a nice guy. He asked some questions and left thinking it was kind of funny. The interesting part was that a week later, I was on another road working and a car accident happened in front of us. No one was hurt, but the same SGT came to the scene. He recognized me and says "you get around don't you".
Miguel A. Escobar, RPLS, LSLS
ONLY IN TEXAS !!!
I was doing a survey around a small bridge over a box culvert. A deputy sheriff drove past and then turned around an came back. He spent 10 minutes grilling me on what I was doing. Had to have him call the county public works dept. (my client) to prove that I was not performing recon for some terrorist group hell bent on blowing up that little bridge!
I had an airport tower call the cops once when I set up a GPS on an NGS point along the main highway near the airport. Cop was nice, and left after a few minutes.
I was set up on a county road overpass above a major highway merely traversing around a section when a state trooper pulled up to see what I was doing. Apparently someone on the highway had reported I was doing something harmful to the deer population. That struck me very funny as his car going down the highway had a million times higher probability of doing something harmful to the deer population than me using a total station.
I get checked on frequently by the local constabulatories (a 10-66 is a suspicious person), our trucks are "ninja" trucks (no name on the side). Most officers are real polite, just checking us out. I really don't mind. They got a job to do and it's good to see they're paying attention.
Quite a few always start the conversation off with something like, "What are you all doing?"....I love it...I always reply, "Not much, what are you doing?"
Sometimes it gets a laugh, sometimes not.
Happened to me twice where the locals see the car there parked early in the morning and there all day. When they drive by the next day the car is there again and they think it's been there overnight and they call the cops. I now usually leave a note on the windshield "Out Surveying". Of course, my cars have always kind of looked like abandoned vehicles.
I had police called on me once. I was in a rural subdivision at 3am, in my own Bronco, unmarked. There was a lot of large trees and my window to get good GPS data was from 3:30am and 9am. I had several points that I needed to run static sessions on. I guess some gal got a little scared I was parked a couple hundred yards from her house. The police came, and I was setting my unit up for the static session. He knew what I was doing, and we kind of laughed about the call. He went down told her what I was doing. About 20 minutes later she brought me a nice hot cup of coffee. She let all her neighbors know what I was doing, and described my Bronco. All the neighbors were very helpful and friendly for the rest of the project. We were building a golf course, and most were avid golfers in the area.
