Well guys and gals, I had a very interesting experience this weekend. A friend and I were out riding around with really no particular destination. Somehow we ended up in Oxford Mississippi. I personally felt dirty as we crossed into Rebel territory but I refused to let that damper my spirits. For the record I’m thinking it was around 10-11 p.m. on a saturday night. We decided to stop and get a little gas as we really didn’t have a plan as to where are what we were going to do. In order to get to this gas station we spotted we had to navigate a roundabout ( i use the term roundabout for a twisted maze of intersecting streets). In order to go left to the gas station we actually had to turn right and then left. I’ve done a very and I mean very crude drawing of what we were facing.
Now we were coming from the bottom and headed to the box on the left. theY leading into us had a yield sign from the other way and traffic was entering the road we were on from the right Y as well. As we made the right then left we saw a sign. I’m from a very small town, and though i’ve traveled all over, I had never seen a sign like that. Neither had my friend. As we were gasing up, we decided to get a picture. As I was the passenger I was handed the camera to snap the shot. As we go by the sign I roll down the window and snap ONE picture. We had to make the whole loop again to do this so we stopped at the gas station to see if it came out ok. It wasn’t the best as you will see but it was good enough.
We set out again getting ready to leave oxford but as we were doing so suddenly we saw bright flashing lights in the rearview. It was an oxford police officer. We weren’t speeding or doing anything we could imagine that would get us pulled over. Both of us are kind of joking about it because we are sure we haven’t done anything wrong. The officer proceeds to get on his car bullhorn and says “DRIVER TURN OFF YOUR VEHICLE”. That seemed a bit out of place and we began to get a little worried as to what the deal was. The officer came up on the passenger side where I was seated. As he walked up he was checking the car and backseat over with his flashlight. I rolled the window down and he asked me what was with all the picture taking. A little taken aback I replied that we had not seen a sign like that before and simply wanted to take a picture of it. He informed us that in the coming months a presidential debate was to be held in oxford and they were on alert as to any weird activity including picture taking. My friend gave him her driver’s license and then he asked for mine as I was the one actually taking pictures. He informed us that while picture taking was not a crime our names would be recorded somewhere for taking pictures. He then went and ran a check on both of us which of course turned up clean. After making another joke he sent us on our way.
At first this was just funny and to some extent it still is, but the more I thought about it I began to get a bit angry. I can understand the precautions. What I don’t understand is why after checking us out and finding out what we were actually doing he knew it was nothing nefarious. If taking a picture isn’t a crime: a) why were we pulled over. b) why did he feel he had the right to run our names through their databases. c) Why we were still going to be put on some list. Since when is it ok to infringe on a person’s rights because ppl that someday might be president are coming to a town sometime in the coming months. Is taking a picture of a street sign at night seen as a terrorist plot. I could understand if the cop had pulled us over and asked what we were doing and after it was plain we weren’t doing anything wrong, explained his reason and let us go on our way. So now my name is floating around on some document ( probably federally by now ). I wonder what the header is: Suspected Terrorist???? Screw it i’m voting for Ron Paul!
