I don’t even go near police stations. When I had some prescription meds that had expired, I was told that I could either turn them in at a police station, or put them in a Ziploc bag with cat litter and put them in the trash that way. I chose the Ziploc bag.
I can’t forget Charles Kinsey. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article227823904.html
For sure; I only wish I knew it was a police station before I started poking around haha. Now I won’t let my guard down as easily, hopefully.
It’s always scary to hear the stories of helpless victims, too. I got lucky that day.
I can confirm - most of my interactions with police have ended up this way with them claiming they’re just checking to make sure I’m ok. Definitely an expression of white privilege, I think. I suspect these encounters can take quite a different form for say a black guy botanizing through the neighborhood.
With park rangers, I’ve found the proactive approach really helpful. Go to a couple of their guided hikes/presentations if those kinds of programs are offered, introduce yourself in all your nature-nerdiness, whip out your field guide to ask some questions and offer your help as a volunteer. It’s part of their job to educate about nature, and they appreciate having interested and knowledgeable people interacting with them on that level. Demonstrate that you are aware of the rules, i.e. mention that you obscure location info on iNaturalist for sensitive species. I think all of the rangers at the local State Parks know me quite well by now and I’ve gotten a couple of ranger-guided off-trail excursions to look for endangered plants out of this.
I need to stop storing insect eggs in my gel capsules when I’m working in the fields near the elementary school. I was searching earlier this week by a grumpy cop that I’d never seen before, and I had five of six gelatine capsule filled with beetle eggs (each capsule held a different species) so that I could preserve some, and try to raise the rest alter. He was convinced that they were some sort drug, same with my EpiPen that was in my satchel, when he read the label on the EpiPen he calmed down a bit, but was still peeved about the “pills” still just storage capsules dude! So I had to show him where I was finding them beneath small mounds of decaying plant matter, and had to explain that he were eggs that I was trying to raise, not eat. He actually seemed pretty interested in the eggs until he realized that he was kneeling in coyote poop, which I had tried to warn him about before, and he said it was just a bit of mud. : )
Overall, he was nicer than most of the others, at least he actually came out of the cruiser, and became somewhat interested.
Selfish people
Looks like someone with a pickax
A pickax? What’s the point?
We are trying to work out the image on @jnstuart 's thumbnail. Ancient rock art from New Mexico?
It’s kind of a mystery ain’t it? And no it’s not a pickax.
Maybe the person saw a really rear plant, bug ,animal but couldn’t get a photo that far back and got really anger and had a pickax in their car.
I’ve been approached by cops twice while documenting animals in my apartment complex, always on my way home from the convenience store, shopping bag in hand. The first just asked if I was okay while I snapping a quick photo of a cicada, then left. The second I had no idea was a cop at first, since he just stopped in his unmarked car, lights off, and got out while I was taking a picture of a slug just after sunset. I didn’t feel safe, so I just hurried back home. He proceeded to follow me up several flights of stairs and scribble down my unit number, as I saw through the peephole. For what purpose, I have no idea. Then again, I’ve seen people hassled around here for literally just walking down the street, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
I’m a middle aged White woman in a Prius, Last spring during migration I pulled way over on a right of way, well off the highway, watching Sandhill cranes. A car pulled in behind me. I paid no mind because the word had gone out on birding social media and figured it was a fellow birder. It wasn’t. It was the Highway Patrol. After a few minutes he comes and knocks on my window, asks me what I’m doing. (I had my binoculars and camera and the field was full of Sandhills). He tells me that someone “matching my description had been reported missing”.
Yeah, right.
I pointed to the cranes and he looked over at them like “Oh yeah.”
I am pretty sure he ran my plates and he knew exactly who I was supposed to be. I am about as innocuous as you can get and if I’m getting questioned I can only imagine what those who are perceived as more threatening have to endure. The whole thing was a little weird and even a year later I don’t quite understand it.
Ah yes, I’ve had that one said to me in two countries, here in the US, and the last time I was at Mugdock Castle, my family’s ancestral castle(was is left of it). It becomes hard to believe them sometimes.
Grumpy bobbies are, interesting, in England.
For some of us it is: “I don’t believe them.”
: )
No comment
Interesting. I said this in April, and it is now almost the end of May. I have not been talked to by anyone, police or otherwise, and lately I have found myself, rather than being my normal quiet introvert self, keeping conversations going after elderly folk in the area start conversations when they see me out checking my pitfall traps or sweep netting in tall grasses. Some of them seem to be quite enthusiastic that I have shown this much of an interest in insects. And, it isn’t the end of the world!
Success?
Same. being a white female birder/naturalist definitely carries a certain privilege; the one time a cop approached me while I was pulled over to see some swallow-tailed kites, was to ask if I was ok/had car trouble. In the field when people ask what I am doing (because they are curious, or because it looks weird) they tend to accept my explanation of my hobby quite readily, and do not tend to consider me a threat
biologists with a high caliber rifle? 
with the smaller ones being biologists with a .22 ? Just a guess and probably the first part of it is wrong.
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