I was going to write my blog entry on Monday except that the day after that was already National Night Out for neighbors and law enforcement and my mom and my brothers and I waited all week for National Night Out to happen because we wanted to attend. Anyway, I asked my mom if I could borrow her Nikon camera and she said yes, so we went to National Night Out together to say hello to lots of important people in our community.
Besides wanting to see Pigeon Forge Police Chief Catlett and Officer Cruise and Pigeon Forge Fire Chief Watson and his Administrative Assistant, Ms. Jaimie, the next most important person to find was this officer.
I had a hotdog and water and a bag of chips and I can tell you that my hotdog was superly delicious. Josh had a hotdog and so did my mom, and wasn’t hungry so he just had a bag of chips and a fountain drink in a can. It was like going on the best picnic ever.
There were lots of things to see at National Night Out in Pigeon Forge. There were K9 demonstrations and SWAT demonstrations and drone demonstrations, and tours of the police department and lots of tents with different things at them from the Police and Fire Departments. When I heard a funny sound I looked up and when I saw what was making the noise, I took a picture of it. This is what I heard and then saw.
When we went to one of the tables, they had police weapons on them. This is not for regular police work but for very dangerous situations where the police have to have these weapons with them in case they get forced to use them. I didn’t want to just take a picture of these guns without permissions so I asked if I could take a picture and plus I told the officer what I was going to do with the picture. He said I had permissions for the picture and for putting the picture on my blog so thank you for that.
And then I saw on another table this equipment. It’s part one of two pieces. The other piece is a old-timey telephone receiver inside a heavy case like this is in a heavy case. When there’s a hostage situation, the police can throw the first part inside the location of the hostage situation and it lets the police and the people at the location talk to each other. The telephone receiver has to be inside a heavy case so it does not get broken when they throw it inside the location.
Then the second of the two pieces is for the police to use to talk to the people on the telephone receiver of the first piece. It looks a little bit like a small recording studio in a heavy case and they wear headphones with a microphone on it so they can write down what the people on the telephone receiver say to them.
Sometimes when I watch television crime show, the people breaking the law that talk to the police want a helicopter to get out of the country and a bazillion dollars. That’s just television but I know in real life that it’s important for the lines of communication to stay open because the police don’t like it when someone gets hurt. The police want everything to work out so nobody gets hurt and everybody is safe including the police.
There was a CSI table and CSI stands for Crime Scene Investigation. I was really excited to find out my mom had a excellent crime camera I can borrow from her and when I showed the police officer at this tent that my mom’s camera is a Nikon camera just like their superly high-end camera is a Nikon, the police officer said my mom’s camera was a excellent starter camera for someone like me that’s going to grow up to be a undercover private eye supersleuth detective!
And plus, if you’re wondering about the yellow plastic thing with the number on it, I got the background information on that, too.
Here’s a close-up of what that is. On television crime shows, sometimes they have numbers on their markers and sometimes they have letters of the alphabet. I think numbers are better because there’s only 26 letters in the alphabet but there are as many numbers as a investigator needs to make sure everything at a crime scene is properly documented. So when a investigator puts these down, not only does it show where important clues and evidence are found, but it shows how big everything is. That way when the case goes to court, nobody has to say, “When did you find this?” or “Where did you find this?” or “How big was what you found?” The marker has boatloads of information!
When I was taking pictures like I think a CSI person is supposed to take pictures (some close up and some far away), I took this picture and it was amazing because there’s lots of stuff going on in that picture. There’s the long ladder from the firetruck that gets used when they need to use a ladder to go really far up a building or if they can’t get too close to a short building but they’re saving people inside. I was really surprised the firetruck did not tip over because to me that looked like it should but there’s a reason how come it doesn’t tip over and if I never asked the reason, I would still worry about it tipping over. I’m happy I asked the question.
Then there was the Pigeon Forge Fire Department tent and that’s where there were four four firefighters and plus Ms. Jaimie. They were answering all kinds of important Fire Department and fire questions and plus they had great stuff they were giving away.
Also you can see the tan vehicle and it looks like maybe the Army came to visit and they came in that big thing but no it belongs to the Pigeon Forge Police Department and the Pigeon Forge Fire Department was okay with them parking their tan vehicle close to the Pigeon Forge Fire Department. It was superly cool to see inside and out because, you know, they were letting people go inside to look at it from close up. One thing I thought was funny was the top speed of this tan vehicle and the top speed is a whole 40 miles per hour.
Probably what I liked best was listening to the police officer explain about how the Pigeon Forge Police Department takes care of suspicious packages from X-raying it to see what’s inside all the way to using PAN disruption device. PAN stands for Percussion Actuated Non-electric and I know that because I wrote it down in my notepad when the officer explained what PAN stood for (I’m happy I wrote it down because that’s hard to remember correctly).
If you want to be a certified Bomb Technician that uses those pieces of equipment, you have to go to the FBI Hazardous Devices School for a bunch of weeks to learn everything about making sure as best you can that you know if the unknown package is a bomb and if it is, the best way to make it not go off and hurt people. I learned a lot of other important stuff about what a Bomb Technician does and I can say for sure that if I have to pick a part-time job when I grow up, then I want to be a undercover private eye supersleuth detective and plus a certified Bomb Technician.
I also watched the K9 demonstration and got some video but I want to share that on my Facebook page so I have other stuff to share that’s not here on my blog.
Before we left, I stopped at one more table: The Pigeon Forge Public Library table and guess who was there?
If you missed going to the National Night Out this year, don’t worry for two reasons:
- Police officers and firefighters are your friend; and
- National Night Out happens every year.
Just so you know, you don’t have to wait for National Night Out to talk to police officers. The Pigeon Forge Police Department has events like Coffee With A Cop at different times throughout the year, and plus the officers go to a lot of community events and also talk to kids and teens at their schools and stuff like that.
Missy Barrett's Adventures 
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