This afternoon I was looking online for more information about a possible forest fire in this area. One resource is live audio feeds of police and ambulance radios. I started listening to one that sounded like a high-speed car chase. The policeman was calling off the streets as he followed a suspect. I figured out it was in downtown Denver, and it wasn't a speed chase with sirens and lights, it was just following a guy in a rental car.

Eventually, he pulled into a restaurant parking lot. "He's got an envelope in his back pocket that he has adjusted several times. Let's see if he makes contact with someone and passes something to them." But he didn't talk to anyone, he bought an all-day pass for the light rail and waited for the train. At this point one of them said: "What's he doing? All he's got is Iranian money." The cops weren't sure which train he was going to take so had to wait along with him to know which ultimate direction he was going to go. One of them wrote a message to his partner on a train ticket and dropped it on the ground so he could pick it up. When the train finally came and the suspect got on, three other policemen also got on the train.

Then, they had to cover the various stations down the line in case he got off at one of them. As it happens, he went to the end of the line, south of Denver, and they discussed covering all the exits from the parking lot in case someone was picking him up. They also confirmed that someone had put a tracking unit on his rental car in case he returned to it. It was all very low-key and thorough, and I never heard why they were following this guy. I don't even know if it was police: might have been the FBI or some other federal agency, and more likely was.

There were two channels coming in at the same time, so in my other ear, I was listening to policemen rehearsing how they would accompany five buses from the Denver airport to downtown Denver.

They were actually driving the route with the supervisor telling them where the buses should change lanes and how the police would deal with cars cutting into the convoy "yes, go ahead and pick them off - hand signals are good - then speed up and get back in line. And Chad if you and Mike want to go ahead of me here, just pull on out like we have some pretend buses right now. You guys have never heard me talk so much in my life, but I just want to make sure there are no miscommunications.”

I thought that pretend buses concept was cute.

I have no idea of what event they are getting ready for, so I'll have to watch the news to find out.


How did they end? I don't know - the feed was dropped suddenly. I'll probably never know what the deal was with the suspicious character.