Foul Play in Funland

While most of us are at work or school, a team of specially trained agents from the Oakland Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) are busy driving the streets of East Oakland in a high-tech vehicle known as the Mobile Command Post (MCP). The members of this elite team go through a rigorous selection process based on their technical skills, street smarts, and ability to blend in with the locals. The team usually consists of four federal agents, two men and two women, often with a canine companion in the mix. As they cruise the neighborhood in their MCP equipped with the latest equipment, their job is stop crime before it happens. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security believe this will be the future of the JTTFs, small teams that interact and engage in the neighborhoods.

In East Oakland, the team is on a mission to collect and assess neighborhood graffiti. Graffiti, or tagging, has been used by gangs to send messages for many years. However, members of the Mobile Investigations (MI) team believe that it may recently have taken a more sinister tone. Freddy Jones, a MI team member, is convinced that secret graffiti messaging may hold the key to stopping crime. “We collect photographs of the graffiti and then use advanced photo analytics to decipher any hidden messages. Some of the messages are pretty scary.” Officials within DHS believe that domestic terror groups may be using graffiti as calling cards and directions on where and how to organize. These hidden messages, known as graffiti steganography, can only be extracted if you know what to look for. However, the technology onboard the MCP allows for resource pooling of the entire Federal Government to decipher these enigmas. It seems to be working. They netted their first arrest last November thanks to the skills and perseverance of the team. Charlie Johnson, a transient believed to be a member of Sovereign Citizens, was caught after graffiti art led investigators to his RV, ironically named Funland. Inside they recovered several illegal fireworks, an unregistered pistol, and half a pound of unlicensed marijuana. Also of concern, the tags on the vehicle hadn’t been renewed in two years. Mr. Johnson admitted to being a miscreant and stated “I might have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for these meddlers.” Officials declined to comment concerning this ongoing investigation but DHS hopes to expand these efforts nationwide.

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