Signs and Surveillance
Airport cops in Colorado, a golfer-friend mistaken for a sniper, and following the rules as an American expat in Dubai.
In the post-9/11 world of heightened anxiety and increased surveillance, occasionally one has had to tolerate the absurd. Nearly two decades ago, not long after that dreaded Tuesday, I arrived at the Denver International Airport with my wife. Our ski trip to Copper Mountain had proven an excellent idea, with a foot of fresh powder and short lift lines. We were pleasantly tired, as ski days will do, and ready for sleep on the flight back to New York. Not wanting to lug our skis through the airport, we opted for curbside check-in.
The queue advanced steadily and minutes later we approached the airline podium and politely handed over identification. I was reaching for my credit card when an NTSA deputy cut in and touched my wife on the shoulder.
“Sorry, ma’am.”
“Yes?” she asked.
“You’ve been red-flagged for bag inspection.”
“What does that mean?” I interrupted, trying not to sound annoyed.
“Yes sir,” he answered, pointing to the entrance. “Could you both make your way inside to the big machine down there?”
At the far end of the terminal was a large scanner machine with a yellow and black trefoil and circle radiation symbol.
“Way down there?” I asked.
“Correct,” he continued. “They’ll take care of your bags and direct you to security.”
Growing up, I had a friend foolish enough to mention an imaginary bomb in his father’s suitcase and I knew airport security people take their responsibilities seriously when it comes to explosives. I had watched the towers burn and collapse from a roof in Manhattan and while I have often bristled at our rural states’ almost giddy band-wagoning when it comes to funding “protection from terrorism,” there was no denying 9/11 had made things more serious for everyone.
So, despite the inconvenience, we thanked the officer for doing his job and began the long walk to the end of the terminal. We made it fifty feet before I realized we were unaccompanied.
“Wait here a minute,” I turned to my wife.
“Where are you going?”
“No one’s coming with us. I want to make sure we understood.”
“He told us where to go,” she preemptively snapped, fearing an episode.
I said to hang on and marched back down the hall to the check-in guy.
“Yessir, what can I do for you?”
“Yeah, um, my wife was red-flagged a minute ago and you sent us down the terminal to have her bags screened.”
“And what seems to be the problem?”
“Well,” I explained, cocking my head over. “Nobody came with us.”
“Yessir,” he answered, pointing once again, as if I had been unable to follow simple instructions.
“It’s just inside and down the hall. If you follow th — ”
“I understand where we’re supposed to go,” I interrupted, incredulous. “What I’m trying to figure out is where your people are. I guess I’m really just hoping this red-flag security protocol isn’t based entirely on the frickin’ honor system.”
Now, dropping a near-F-bomb on a NTSB official at an airport is not quite the same as actually mentioning a real bomb, but it’s close.
“Sir,” he seethed, apparently emptied of his perfunctory ‘Yessirs,’ “I’m going to have to ask you to comply with regulations and make your way to the hazardous materials screening area.”
“I understand that, sir.” I answered. “But don’t you think you’re putting an undue amount of faith in the conscience of the prospective troublemaker?”
Deadpan.
“All I’m saying…” I continued. “What’s to stop a person from getting halfway down the hall and simply exiting the building, jumping in a taxi and trying their luck again tomorrow?”
He paused, pen in hand, and for a moment my words almost penetrated the fog. Sadly, any glimmer of understanding proved fleeting, but anxious to be airborne, we followed orders and eventually flew home.
A couple years passed before I again flew west — this time to Albuquerque, New Mexico — where I rented a car and drove north to Raton. My grandfather had recently passed away after a decade-long fleecing by his local movie-rental-store clerk girlfriend and left us his house in the mountains.
Raton is a coal mining town on the New Mexico-Colorado border, where the economy is in steep decline. Since my social network there consisted of my grandparents’ surviving friends — most in their sixties and seventies — I was hoping to hunker down and stare at the mountains and get some work done.
I got busy the first week, scribbling away on a ridiculous Shawshanky comedy script about a poker player who is Jedi-trained by an elderly prison drifter named “Shuffler,” later betraying his beloved mentor’s trust after discovering (and abusing) the poker-face-enhancing powers of black-market Botox.
Sadly, my powers of focus were directly proportional to the amount of single malt scotch in the cupboard and I was running out. Instead of simply restocking the bar, I called my buddy Dave and invited him out for a visit. We had both recently stumbled into middle age and were convinced golf was the answer to our insecurity. A few rounds at the local nine-hole course would do us good and provide some relatively booze-free brainstorming for my screenplay.
Two days later, I drove north to the airport in Colorado Springs to pick up Dave. Our plan was to take our time on the ride south, catch up, chew some beef jerky and avoid the police. The two of us were seasoned cop magnets and over the years had had multiple run-ins with Southwestern law enforcement. The most police encounter had been an unnaturally large speeding ticket I received in a 1991 putty-colored Ford Tempo with Maine plates — a car we were convinced was incapable of speeding until the officer explained we were going “downhill” when he hit us with the radar on the Raton Pass, one of America’s steepest highway mountain passes.
Dave’s flight was on time and I met him at the gate. He was traveling light with a single carry-on and a travel bag for five essential golf clubs. I offered to carry the clubs but he declined, unwilling to risk even the slightest voodoo-jinxing by my somewhat lesser golf skills.
We exited the airport in tandem, keys jangling in my hand and my buddy pulling his carry-on and his black golf-bag slung over his shoulder. The SUV I rented in Albuquerque had the added bonus of Colorado plates, considerably diminishing our chances of being pulled over. Walking to the parking lot, we joked about our chances of running into the law and agreed it was unlikely. We were older, more mature, and generally less inclined to raise hell in a rental car.
The Colorado Springs airport is small and we reached the SUV quickly. I popped the tailgate and got behind the wheel while Dave threw his bags in the back and climbed in. Looking forward to the drive south and the week ahead, you can imagine my surprise when a uniformed NTSB officer on foot suddenly appeared in my rearview mirror with one hand raised, the other hovering just above his sidearm.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“What?” Dave asked, lighting a cigarette.
“There’s a cop behind us. I think he wants me to get out of the car.”
“Seriously?”
Dave seemed less surprised, but being African American, he already had both hands on the dash, cigarette dangling from his lips.
The officer cautiously made his way to my window and I lowered it slowly.
“Sir, I need you and your passenger to exit the vehicle. Please keep your hands where I can see them at all times.”
My blood was rising but I was more confused than angry, so I followed his instructions and got out with my hands up.
“Can I ask what this is about?”
“There’s been a report of a sniper in the parking lot matching your description.”
Despite the seriousness of the situation, Dave and I both laughed out loud, which the cop clearly did not appreciate, because the next thing he did was un-holster his sidearm and draw down on us.
This can’t be happening, I thought. I’m going to die in an airport parking lot.
Let’s pause for a moment, while I offer my theory on what may have triggered these events.
The first factor to consider was our location. The city of Colorado Springs — flanked by Pikes Peak and the picturesque Rocky Mountains, home to Colorado College and several Air Force bases, a city that for much of my childhood was small in size — was for many years, a generally pleasant town to visit.
Sadly, “The Springs,” as it is referred to locally, has transformed over the years into one of my least favorite places on earth. The suburban sprawl has metastasized unchecked, requiring over an hour to cross town on the interstate.
Even worse are many of the people, as seemingly every Bible-thumping fanatic somehow read the same pamphlet a few years back and promptly relocated to Colorado. Stopping for gas in the new semi-gated and self-contained communities just south of Denver draws suspicious stares, making you feel a like Donald Southerland’s character in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Couple the body-snatch vibe with a fierce and unhesitating loyalty to all things military and “anti-terrorist,” and you get a community of people on the way to their car at the airport who see a black man with a golf bag and immediately think, SNIPER!
While I would like to ignore race as factor, anyone who’s spent any time at all in Colorado, or much of the West, for that matter, will admit there’s a ways to go before the folks out there will be comfortable with minorities.
Even if we assume Dave’s complexion had no bearing, you still have to wonder at the logic of our mystery civil-servant tipster. Assuming our “sniper rifle” was successfully snuck off the plane and through security, what could we have been thinking by carrying it over the shoulder into the parking lot? Would not a sniper be better off concealing the gun in a big duffle, or better yet, a full-sized golf bag, and removing it later when closer to the target? And if we were terrorists, why pick a town with more military personnel per capita than virtually any city on earth?
Then again, we were in Colorado, a state with a checkered history of gun stuff.
Of course, none of this mattered when the rent-a-cop-turned-homeland-security-dude drew a bead on my chest with his pistol and demanded we open the lift gate.
“They’re golf clubs,” I offered venomously, popping the latch. “Whoever called this in has clearly mistaken my friend’s bag for a rifle.”
“Sir, please step away from the trunk.”
I popped the gate and stepped back and the cop lowered his gun and looked inside.
“Wow… This doesn’t look anything like a rifle,” he concluded, searching the bag.
“Glad you agree,” I sniped. “Like I said, golf clubs. Can we go now?”
“Just as soon as I see some ID, sir.”
Now I was really pissed. I had no confidence this cop wasn’t going to put my name on some list as having been involved in a “homeland security airport incident,” and I would be forever red-flag-screwed in my travels.
“Why do you need my ID?”
“Regulations,” he answered, pulling out an official looking pad of paper.
“What regulation?” I pushed back in righteous indignation. “The regulation where you scare the crap out of two innocent guys with golf clubs in their car?”
“Excuse me?” the officer asked.
“All I’m saying is this is your mistake, not mine,” I continued. “I’m a law-abiding citizen picking up my friend at the airport. I see no reason to give you my information simply because you found golf clubs in my car.”
“Sir, I’m following procedure here, and we have to file a report, no matter what the circumstances.”
I could see the lack of headroom, so with great reluctance I handed over my license. The cop plucked it from my hand and began scribbling.
“You’re going to put the part about how you just found golf clubs in there, right?” I asked.
“Mm-hmm,” he murmured.
As I watched him scribble far too many words to describe “Complete False Alarm — Golf Clubs,” my blood rose again, and of what I said next, I’m not proud.
“I don’t know why you need my ID, anyway,” I whined, glancing sideways at my friend. “They were his clubs.”
Dave’s eyebrows popped and he choked on his smoke. My only saving grace was that I could see that once it had become clear we were out of any real danger, Dave had been thoroughly enjoying our latest run-in with the law, especially since it was, at least up to this point, wholly centered upon myself.
The cop looked up from his pad and weighed my words.
“Good point,” he said lightheartedly, looking over at Dave. “Better get your information, too, just to be safe.”
Dave shot me a death look for the ages as he handed over his license. In retrospect, throwing him under the bus was doubly stupid. Firstly, it was not as if the cop was going to erase my name from his leger just to add Dave’s. And secondly, because David, God bless him, was far more likely to have had outstanding warrants, a situation that would have seriously ruined our day.
Luckily, we both came up clean in the computer and I drove the speed limit south to New Mexico.
In my current home of Dubai, the police are less intrusive, but that does not mean they aren’t paying attention. Cameras are everywhere and there is a zero-tolerance policy on drunk driving, which will land you a mandatory jail sentence. Get caught with drugs or a gun and forget it.
Government regulation in the United Arab Emirates, however, while at times swirling in bureaucratic perplexity, is often refreshingly direct.
For example, attending a camel race outside of town one afternoon, I struggled to read a sign along the track’s edge. Curious, and ever wary of inadvertently breaking the law in a foreign land, I zoomed in with the long lens on my camera.
In America, where our “freedoms” are lauded and debated ad-nauseam, the sign in question would likely read something like this:
Notice! In accordance with municipal guideline #745, it is unlawful for any person or persons to congregate within 15 feet of posted signage. Violators are subject to removal from race grounds and a fine of no less than $500.
Americans are used to reading signs like this, which is perhaps why we often pay them little attention. At the camel track, I pulled focus and read a very different type of signage — one more akin to how things work in the UAE. It read:
DON’T STAND HERE.
The sign made no mention of why, or what might happen if you did disobey, simply because the government does not feel compelled to explain. They own the racetrack and expect people to stand where they are told.
If you are bold or foolish enough to buck the system, you might get away with it, but if they bust you, do not expect a fancy lawyer or legal precedent to get you off. You will pay the fine or go to jail, or both — and if you make a stink, they will eject you from the country.
As I mentioned, I have been somewhat of a cop magnet throughout my life and the move to Dubai was daunting. I have kept my head down and avoided confrontation so far, refraining from flipping off iPhone-wielding drivers with unbelted toddlers hanging out of sunroofs who try to run me off the road with their sparkling silver Maseratis, neon green-wrapped Lamborghinis, and bedazzled Hummers. I do my best to obey the signs and toe the line. One day, however, early in my time in the Middle East, I brushed up against that line in dramatic fashion.
It all started when I tweaked my back stepping off an elliptical machine — one of those deals where everything is just fine and the next moment, you’re on your knees in agony. The injury was compounded over the following weeks as I packed up furniture from two apartments in New York and unpacked all of it into a new apartment in Dubai. Every time my back was almost healed, I would heft some ungodly ten-foot glass tabletop and the injury would return with a vengeance. Eventually, even simple tasks like unloading the dishwasher became miserable. My wife was also seven months pregnant, and not that I would normally have her lifting couches, but the fact that she wasn’t supposed to lift anything, had not helped speed my recovery.
It was with this in mind we found ourselves in a pharmacy aisle shopping for back braces in a Dubai mall. (And yes, I was made aware of accounts of men unconsciously mimicking their pregnant wives’ condition, but this was not that.)
My extremely pregnant wife was in the market for a baby-belly sling that straps around the waist to support her lower back. I was in the market for a similar device, but much stiffer, with wide Velcro compression straps. We soon found what we were looking for. Her back-brace was pink and mine was black and we carried them out to the car with our trolley full of groceries.
I was looking forward to getting home and putting my feet up, but we had one more stop and drove across the parking lot to the hardware store. Our terrace needed extra privacy and fake trees were on our list. I grew up in Maine and the very concept of buying a tree (let alone a fake one) was alien. Trees, however, are quite scarce in the Arabian Desert and a real one goes for hundreds of dollars.
We exited the car and walked toward the entrance, when it dawned on me that I had no idea how much a fake tree might weigh. I had not planned on using my new back brace so soon, but figuring it was better to be safe than sorry, I asked my wife to wait up.
I beeped open the SUV and whipped out the support brace. I was wearing an undershirt, so I took off my button-down and wrapped the big black brace around my mid-section, pulling the wide Velcro compression straps tight. I looked ridiculous in my industrial man-girdle, but my back immediately felt better, and once I put my dress shirt on, the edges of the brace were barely visible about my waistline.
As I mentioned, there is a refreshing lack of ambiguity in the signage in Dubai, but even so, certain things should require no instruction. What I had just done resided squarely in this category and were it not obvious, would likely be prohibited in a posted notice that read something like this:
Patrons: Please do NOT attempt to put on large black vests with multiple Velcro straps beneath your shirt prior to entering a crowded shopping area in The Middle East.
Now, if that old airport cop in Colorado Springs had jumped out from behind the car and drawn down on me for something like this, well, in that case I’d have been obliged to respond with something more like, “You have a point, officer… My bad.”
But we were not in Colorado, or anywhere near Colorado.
Suddenly realizing what this must have looked like, I panicked and opened both doors and slid in between, which only added to my conspicuousness.
My wife and I were now drawing some serious stares from people entering the store. I tried to laugh it off and look “un-terroristy,” but the damage was done. I could not decide if it was better to take the damn thing off and risk even more exposure, or simply get in the car and drive away. I eventually got back in and slithered out of the brace under cover in the car.
We drew a few more stares on the way in but no one called the police.
On the plus side, I found three lovely fake trees that are now carefully placed to keep neighbors from surveilling on us on the balcony. Still, if they do manage to catch a glimpse of me hanging laundry, it will likely be sans-brace, because my back has healed, which I’ve taken as a sign.
