On Wednesday afternoon at 2:45, I arrived at the Bresnahan School to teach my computer class in the after school program. I don't really teach, and it's not really a class: it's actually half a dozen grade-schoolers playing their favorite computer games in the computer lab, and I help them with any technical problems that come up. Anyway, as I entered the building, the custodian urged me inside and locked the door behind me, and ushered me into the darkened main office, where several other people were standing. "What's going on?" I asked no one in particular. Someone said, "We're locked down." "Why?" I asked. No one seemed to know for sure, but eventually someone offered the opinion that "someone had seen someone suspicious somewhere in town." Immediately I realized there was probably nothing to worry about, and it was all a mistake of some kind. As a soldier in the National Guard, who stands 6'4", I am not particularly worried about suspicious persons, or "SP's" as they are called in police lingo. For the first decade of my military service I was an infantry soldier, and like most infantry soldiers, I am always hoping something interesting will happen in daily life that gives me a chance to be a hero, but of course nothing ever happens. More to the point, I have been an intelligence analyst in the Guard for the last few years, and one of the first things you learn as an intelligence analyst is that first reports are always wrong, no matter how much convincing circumstantial detail they may include. This truism was brought home to me during my year and a half deployed to the Balkans in 2006-2007. If a first report came in to us that a tall man driving a red SUV had shot up the downtown, the final version was likely to be that a short woman riding in a blue horse-drawn cart had been accused of shoplifting in a suburb. As we were standing in the Bresnahan office, someone said, "There's a police helicopter flying around the Route 1 traffic circle." I suggested, "Maybe a prisoner escaped." A woman across the room, who had not heard my "Maybe," gasped and said, "A prisoner escaped?" I laughed and said, "No, I'm just starting a rumor." Meanwhile, poor Bill McGowan, the Bresnahan assistant principal, was rushing around with a walkie-talkie, trying to organize and calm the many people trapped in the building. The people in the building included teachers and staff, kids who were there for the various after school programs, the after school program teachers, and parents who had come to pick up their kids. No one could leave the building, and the doors were all locked or being locked by the custodian. The same thing was going on at other schools around the city. When I had been at the Bresnahan a short while, several Newburyport police vehicles pulled up in front of the school. Like clowns at the circus, Newburyport police officers poured out of the vehicles. One officer was carrying a shotgun. Another officer drew his pistol as he approached the school. The custodian let some of the police officers in the front door. It seemed that the police didn't know why they were there. They had rushed over to the school as if responding to a crisis at the school. However, nothing was going on at the school. The crisis at the school had been started by the police, who had called the school, telling the administrators there was a suspicious man in the area. I asked Mr. McGowan if I was going to be able to hold my after school program. He said, "It doesn't look that way." I asked him if I could go home. He said, "It's out of our hands now," and gestured at all the police outside. Then he hurried into the gym to calm the large group of people there. I walked outside, and told the nearest police officer, "I'm going home." He ignored me. I went home. Apparently everybody else in the school stayed for another couple of hours. My wife, who is an aide at the school, didn't get home till after 5 p.m. As I walked away from the Bresnahan, I saw two agitated women holding cell phones to their ears, running toward the school. I stopped, raised my hand, and said, "Don't worry. There's absolutely nothing going on at the school." Later that night, I was sitting at the counter at Angie's downtown, eating a raspberry turnover and drinking a decaf coffee. The waitress said to me, "We heard a lot of things here. We heard someone with a gun broke out of the courthouse. Then we heard he had taken hostages in one of the schools. I guess what it really was, someone saw a hunter, and called the police. I heard about it on the Boston radio." She added, "It cost a lot of money."

Are you sure you're not a secret soap opera writer?? And you're killing me with the comment about the raspberry turnover and coffee. I can practically smell and taste both! Don't do it again . . . or there actually may be reason for police assistance.

Ah, nothing like the classic knee-jerk reaction and panic-management approach.

...followed by dessert and a cup'a decaf. Perfect!! You should submit this to Down East magazine - right up their alley... Thanks for the grins! Jay

'We have procedures for just such an event and we can't wait to use them...' The most dangerous things in the world are a lawyer who flies his own plane and a school administrator with a walkie-talkie. TC

There were two or three lockdowns at my kids school in the past couple years. One time a crazy guy was walking around the neighbourhood naked, or nearly naked. Apparently he was known to police and is basically harmless. Another time a guy let his dog loose on the school property, and when he was asked to get the dog off and go home he got quite belligerent with the staff, was swearing a lot etc. They thought he might return to make trouble. Both situations could have been serious. There was another naked man running around town a few years ago. Unfortunately he had a gun and shot (dead) an officer and a bus driver. We happened to be driving by this scene moments after it happened and I was scared shitless because he hadn't been caught yet and police were still in full swat mode. So, you never know.

Airports, post offices & many other buildings have been closed because someone forgot a bag. A county courthouse was closed because the custodian set down his brownbag lunch on his way in to work & forgot about it. A mall was closed when the local hash house harriers put a chalk line in the parking lot. Just yesterday Fox news was reporting a armed gunman running around shooting up the campus of a major university, the report turned out to be unfounded. I know someone who was headed South on vacation pulling a small pop-up camper & drove past signs about no trailers permitted in D.C. Well he didn't think it meant small trailers like his... wrong he was stopped by 5 police cars & homeland security I have to enter four locked doors that use 2 keys & 2 combination locks to get into work... I long for the good old days