Eye in the Sky

"Dude, you know what I'm thinking?" my roommate asked me at about 12:30 this afternoon. We had just finished the second episode of Season 4 of Lost, which we have been binge watching on Netflix. After I got home from doing errands early this morning, we shot the shit a little bit, talked about how Christopher Lee, the world's best movie badguy, World War veteran who taught Peter Jackson what someone sounds like when you stab them and fucking metal musician, had died, and finished Season 3 of Lost. It was lunch time. "Let's go to Bosa for breakfast sandwiches!" My Monster was wearing off and I was getting hungry, so breakfast sammiches sounded pretty awesome. We took a few minutes finding our keys like we usually do, and walked out to our parking lot. It was bright, and kinda warm. I expected a bit hotter from Phoenix for this time of year, to be perfectly honest. Though it has been a few years since I lived in the desert, the summer doesn't feel as hot as it used to. And Flagstaff's last two winters definitely hasn't been as cold.

When we had our typical "Should we walk or should we drive?" discussion on our way to walking out the apartment complex, and we both took note of how it was hot, but not quite hot enough for this time of year. But we only walked for two minutes before I spotted a firetruck in my complex. The lights were flashing. Shit, did anything happen? we both seemed to wonder at the same time. We didn't stop for long, but we barely walked another 20 feet before I spotted 3 squad cars further up. Something was definitely wrong.We kept walking, only to find an uncomfortably higher amount of squad cars, and yellow tape cordoning off part of the parking lot. Something was going on, but we didn't see any ambulances. Just fire, and LOTS of police.

What the hell was going on? we wondered as we crossed the street on our way to Bosa. No amount of police activity was going to excite me enough to not want to get food. I'm American, god damn it, it's in my DNA. We're known and celebrated eaters. The the sausage-egg-bacon bagel was calling my name.

And more and more police cars were coming out way. From all angles, too. The entire walk consisted of my roommate and I speculating on what was going on. When two SUV's labelled for Immigration sped past us to go cut off a parking lot, we assumed it was an ICE raid in our apartment. The low whir of a helicopter overhead reminded me of my childhood, where every weekend featured a helicopter with a spotlight on a manhunt. Something was definitely up.

One time, they crashed and everyone died on live TV.

Despite the fact that my apartment complex was swarming with cops, a cordoned off crime scene, tons of emergency vehicles from multiple law enforcement agencies, it was just another day in the Phoenix metro area. Luck of the draw, I guessed, this time it happened close to me. No, nothing really disturbed me until the air traffic arrived. Now, everyone knows what their local news helicopters look like. They market the shit outta that. Local news is big business, with big audiences. They aggressively market their products, and they're gonna make damn sure if you look up in the sky while one of their flying machines is up there, you're gonna know which channel owns it. 

Squad cars, fire trucks, inmigración, concerned onlookers; everything was going to plan. Sure, something fucked up happened, but it was being corrected. Everything was right, until the helicopters came. They hovered in place over where we were, which means clearly they were looking for someone on foot. It's nothing new, nothing I haven't seen. 

But it wasn't a police helicopter. Nor was it a news helicopter.  

Black, red and orange, it was devoid of any sort of logo. It was clearly not meant to advertise a news agency, as I got a good look at it looking for a logo. It was not the typical colors of a police helicopter either, and was not identified as a police helicopter to the public. 

After a few minutes of watching the bird in the sky and deliberating our theories about the situation at hand, we decided to finally go in for our delicious breakfasty goodness that is Bosa. In the last 10 seconds we were outside, I witnessed yet another helicopter come swooping into the area. It was much smaller than the regular choppers you see associated with the news and police, and all white with some green writing I couldn't quite make out on the side. Again, no news logos, no police logos. 

Anyway, it wound up being some kind of stabbing involving people in a drug deal. 

Stab people all you want, you're still a manlet.

You can slice it any way you want, but when the government starts hiding the things that it does in plain sight, or doing it in a misleading way, there's reason to be worried or afraid. An open, honest, transparent government has no need of this kind of behavior. I wanted to take a picture of the choppers, but I left my phone at home. I think that might have been the right choice given some things the FBI has recently admitted to doing with civilian marked helicopters.

These are the types of flight patterns that people are noticing

on online flight trackers. This one was clearly scoping out a few

specific spots, and hilariously came out looking kinda like a 

giant dick. 

But I'm just some dude writing his observations. Draw you own conclusions.