Over the weekend we trooped at an event for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. They have an annual Missing Children’s Day festival of sorts, and since one of our group’s members used to work there, we’ve been involved. It’s somewhat fun: assorted local police agencies show up with this or that bit of equipment, they answer questions, give out freebies to the kids, that sort of thing. The overall aim is for parents to get their kids set up with a fingerprinting kit to have their prints and info on file in case of kidnapping or the like (and not, you know, so they have kids identity data as they get older and start causing trouble).

Anyway. It was interesting. They had a huge grill with which they prepared lots of free hot dogs (they were good, too), and someone donated a pallet of Gatorade. They had a state patrol helicopter, a couple of police horses, a bomb squad truck, and, dominating the parking lot, there was a HUGE mobile police command center thing. That one was owned by the least populated, smallest, poorest county in the state. Our GBI friend saw me staring and whispered at me “Federal money. The GBI never got toys like that, but we do all the leg work on the big investigations. How fair is that?”

The crowd was very, very small, though. This had a lot to do with the huge dark storm clouds on the horizon. The weather had been threatening all day. With about three hours to go we got together and took our group picture by the bomb squad truck, and immediately after we were done they evacuated the helicopter. Within two minutes the sky opened up and we were all getting drenched.

Still, fun stuff. Erin took some great pictures. http://s159.photobucket.com/albums/t147/jed-mcb/501st/2009%20GBI%20Event/