Armed police...fake guns and tunnels...
Before 'urban exploring' was known as such, we used to find old buildings, tunnels etc... and go exploring ourselves.
One morning we set off, many of us having never done anything like this before, to find some old WWII tunnels. One chap, we shall call him Howard, as that is his name, had been before and knew these tunnels quite well. We stopped along the way to pick him up. I was driving.
Howard got into the car directly behind me, and that now made 5 of us.
A little while into the journey he pulled out a Beretta 45 imitation gun to show us. As he passed it around one of the lads put it to the back of my head and said "Drive us to the tunnels, NOW!" in a fake menacing manner. A little further along the road, he also pointed it at some poor old dear walking her dog.
This was long before mobile phones were commonplace...and yet, the car behind us had a 'car-phone' (remember those?).
Unknown to us, he immediately called the police and reported a car load of young lads with a gun.
A little further down the road, I started to notice that there were no cars on the road...but didn't give it much thought. A little further still and a lone police car was driving in the other direction at a snail's pace. Two coppers smiled like Cheshire cats at us as we drove onwards.
As we neared our destination we had to drive up a steep hill, as we got to the top coppers in Kevlar jackets seemed to appear from nowhere - at least 50 of them!
One pointed a gun at my head and shouted "put your hands on the windscreen", and various other shouts of "You, out of the car, on the floor...." and "Where's the gun? Where's the fucking gun? Now!" etc...
They searched the car shouting more things like "Where's the masks?" - it was then that we twigged; they obviously thought we were going to rob a bank or something.
Eventually, after finding no masks, and they now being in possesion of an obviously fake gun, things calmed down enough for us to explain that we were in fact NOT going to rob anything or anywhere and were simply going to find some old tunnels...hence the rope and hooks in the boot.
Oddly, they told me to follow them in my own car to the police station, which we did.
They offered a deal: give us the fake gun (this was in the days before all the hysteria) and be cautioned for breach of the peace, or keeps the gun and be charged with it instead.
We, of course opted to the former, despite Howard's argument that the gun was his and they had no right to it etc...
As we left the station, the coppers' last words were, "Next time, leave the cops and robbers stuff to us..."
(dchurch bah, Mon 20 May 2013, 11:03, Reply)