on hotel maids and cops.

A couple of weeks ago I posted about the time the maid walked in on me while I was cleaning a service rifle. The pair of cops that showed up went into a panic and hilarity coupled with a serious puckering ensued.

When I wrote the story down it made me think a bit about the police and their relationship with people in the shooting sports. I'm not here to bash cops, but to look at policemen in general and their relationship with the shooting sports.

Now some of the people I shoot with are members of the law enforcement community. Most are pretty good stand up guys. I have had to deal with one jerk and the people that ran him off the range were his felow officers. Had any of these officers I have shot with responded to the incident in the hotel things would have been a lot different. They would have had a few words with me, checked a couple of things and then we'd probably wound up talking about the match I was supposed to shoot and how well/poorly I was doing.

Of course, the pair of officers that showed up in the hotel were obviously not shooters.

To the non-shooting citizen, they look at a police officer and his pistol and they are absolutely positive that the officer is a master of every firearm put in front of him and can shoot the eye off of the gnat at 1000 yards with his off hand.

There are an awful lot of people in the shooting community that think this is true, too.

Most cops that are shooters will tell you something a whole lot different.

First of all there really isn't any national standard out there to be a police officer. Education of the individual officers can probably range between PhD and grade school dropout with the norm being somewhere in between. A High school education seems to generally be the lower end of the educational requiremment.

The pay ranges are pretty wide, too. Police officers range in pay probably between well over $100k/ annum all the way down to absolute zero in the case of volunteers. The norm in this case is probably somewhere between two.

Pay and educational standards vary widely from place to place. Department standards vary.

Backgrounds vary.

There are policemen on the beat in places that are very capable outdoor types that hunt, fish, hike, camp, kayak and just about everything else you can imagine. There are also policemen out there who consider a tree to be a wild animal and look at the outdoors as something between a building and their car.

Politically, they range from uber liberal to uber conservative, but are probably on the average somewhat conservative. In short, policemen are nothing more than a cutaway of the society that hires them. To say otherwise really isn't fair to the officers. They are not supermen; they are pretty much normal people that have simply chosen a career in law enforcement.

What happened to me in the hotel room was nothing more than the luck of the draw. I guesss the two officers that took the call were neither outdoorsman and

After the incident when I was back at my local club range I mentioned the incident to a couple of the officers I routinely shoot with and I'll have to admit that they were probably just as amused as many of the readers of the story I posted were. They howled.

Then a few of their stories came out. Some were funny, a few sad. One pointed out that in his department the person I had to fear was the sergeant, as he had a tendency to make a mountain out of a molehill. What I noticed about their stories is that many of them involved ignorance on the part of their brother officers.

All of the officers I have spoken with over the years since the incident, for the most part shooters, agree that in their department most officers are not 'gun people'. They simply consider their duty pistol as just another tool, and for that matter, a tool they pray they do not have to use.

These guys, the shooters, explained to me that there were quite a number of officers they served with that only shot for qualification.

Now, like a whole lot of other things that go along with the police as an entity, the marksmanship requirements vary widely. In some departments you have to be a pretty good marksman, while in others you have to simply be able to throw your service pistol at the ground and hit it. In some departments if it bounces off your foot but eventually hits the ground, you are good to go.

If you are talking with, for example, a Texas Ranger, you are probably talking to a pretty good marksman. If you are talking to a member of New York's Finest, it's hit or miss. You very well may be talking to a police officer that can't hit a bull in the ass wiith a canoe paddle.

Another factor that has to be brought into the equation of dealing with the police is that in urban areas the average officer is not around armed citizens. Not a whole lot of city people hunt and firearms there have a bad reputation. The mere presence of a firearm in, say downtown Philadelphia is probably certain to draw a lot of police attention and quite possibly an over reaction on the part of the responding officer, while the same firearm out in the Poconos probably would not draw more than a passing glance.

You also have to remember that the incident I wrote about earlier took place several years ago shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing. The media was having a field day beating the right up and if any of you recall, the media was having a feeding frenzy like a school of hammerhead sharks that did a pretty good job of convincing a lot of people that there was an armed militiaman behind every tree.

A year earlier the Federal assault weapons ban had been signed into law by Bill Clinton and because it was federal legislation,(as opposed to local) most state and local police officers were unfamiliar with it even though virtually all were well aware that it had been passed. Many probably thought it was a machine gun ban even though machine guns have been strictly controlled since the 30s.

When you add these two things to the equation it is really not surprising that a couple of semi-informed local cops jumped to conclusions.

The fact that the sergeant seemed to be a sage old lion cop with a bit of common sense was another case of the luck of the draw, too. I can say that in my own home town we had a sergeant with a reputation of creating a mountain out of a molehill. He was so bad that the individual officers, normally very tight lipped, would bad-mouth him to citizens. Had I drawn a sergeant like that, there is no telling of what the outcome might have been.

A lot of people have commented that I probably should have used the 'Do Not Disturb' sign. Mine was up and the deadbolt was locked.

Neither of these mean a damned thing to a hotel maid that is in a hurry to get her job done with so she can go home or get to her other job. The deadbolt means nothing either. Every maid has a pass key.

I know. I worked as one for a while in my off time a couple of decades ago when I was an ordinary seaman to supplement my scant pay. I took a job as a temp and the agency sent me there for a couple of weeks. The job sucked, but I learned a few things.

The hotel people gave me a list of which rooms were empty and which ones were not. I supposidly could just barge into the empty rooms and get to work cleaning them up. (After a couple clerical errors by the front desk I learned to knock on ALL doors before entering) If the DND sign was up, I would quietly knock and politely make arrangements to come back at a later time.

Incidentally, in both of the two week periods I worked as a maid, I only saw only one firearm, a revolver, in a room. I left it where it was and dusted around it.

When you consider the event took place in the early afternoon, a period of time when most hotel guests are gone, it is not too surprising she walked in. She probably assumed the room was empty.

The mistake I made was in not using the 'maid keeper-outer', the flimsy little hook attachment screwed onto the door and the door jamb. I had noticed it and discounted it as a security device because I say I could jerk the damned thing of the jamb with my bare hands.

It was later explained to me by a sarcastic shipmate that the little device was designed to keep the maid from walking in while you were screwing her kid sister, the one you picked up on the street corner about a block away from the hotel. When you heard it click, you would put your hand over the woman's mouth and shout "Go away!" and the maid would leave, none the wiser and you could then return to taking care of business.

Had I realized that the little hook attachment was only to keep the maid out, I surly would have used it and saved myself a lot of grief.

Back to the cops.

When you are dealing with the police as a shooter it should be carefully noted that some will, in fact understand what you are doing. Some will not have a clue and will be suspicious. There will be no real rhyme or reason and I'd say it will be mostly luck of the draw.

My advice is that if you have to stay in a motel somewhere it is best to disguise your goods. Leave nothing behind in the room. Not only is this a good idea to prevent panic on the part of an ignorant maid, it's also a good way to make sure that you still own it when you return to your room. There are a lot of people that have access to your room and not all of them are maids.

When you are dealing with police, you are not dealing with supermen or trained attorney types, you are simply dealing with just another cutaway section of American society. You take what you get.

Nothing more, nothing less.



my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/