"I am... THE LAW!"

[JasonV]

has anyone had (especially in the US) any run ins with police officers or other forms of authority while using/due to their laser device? I would really like to hear stories about it. Kind of nervous to use my x65 for pointing out stars now cuz its so powerful and i dont want to hit a plane by mistake. Discuss. :-/

 

[Daedal]

Common sense... use it

No cop will come running after you with a baton just because there is a green laser in your pocket... (s)he wouldn't even know... unless you are asking for it. Don't point at planes... and there is no such thing as pointing on a plane by mistake... it's not like you need to be pointing in the same direction as the plane is or even the same area... And the sky is too big to have your laser flaunting all over the place to accidentally hit a plane... Try pointing at satellites instead

--DDL

 

[SenKat]

I used my pointer last new Years eve and got some fantastic photos - pointing at the top of hte tower of the americas here in downtown San Antonio - cops flooded me as soon as I did it, wanting to BUY it from me ! LOL They were not the least bit worried.

 

[marianne]

becky got in trouble today!!! she was sitting at the train station shining a <5mW green at people's shoes as they walked past to confuse them. an elderly-ish train station guard (who seemed to at least have some sense of humour) came up and asked what was in her hand, she told him it was a laser, asked what she was doing, she was again truthful and said "i'm shining it at people's shoes to confuse them, because it's funny", and he told her to put it away. i commented that green lasers were pretty and he went "no, blue is better!" and walked away.

 

[Milos]

I had NYPD knock on my door this year. I wrote about it on LC.

It was actually pretty funny now that I think back on it ;D ;D
Here is the link and some of the story below for those who are banned.
http://www.lasercommunity.com/nypd-interrupting-my-fusion-collimation-t11823.html?highlight=nypd

********

I just had two NYPD cops knock on my door asking me questions!!!!
Someone reported me shooting my green laser at the brick wall 105m away from my window and they say they thought I was aiming to shoot someone.
I use that wall because of distance and because its made of same exact bricks and spacings as my building so I can do divergence calculations easily.
So much for that wall...
Damn man, person can't even collimate a greenie in peace anymore.
Unbelievable

They were cool though. Didn't take my lasers away. Just looked around the room as I invited them to ease the tensions.
They even said that my neighbors must be bored to death reporting me.
I don't think they were aware of what power lasers they had in front of them.

I did get my old CNI down to 1.22mRad with new lens from Edmund, but I cant use this convenient wall anymore Mad

Damn, that was a close one!
_________________


nes_ds
Wicked Lasers God
Joined: 02 Nov 2006


PostPosted: 3/06/07, 7:27 PM Post subject: Reply with quote
WoW, that is funny Laughing

Good thing the cops didn't look into it Laughing

Milos
Wicked Lasers Master

PostPosted: 3/06/07, 8:04 PM Post subject:

man.., the more I think of it now, the more I'm getting stressed out. Everything went well though.
They came twice actually. First time they asked if I had any kids playing with lasers and why I use lasers. I told them that I'm working on "science" project Laughing , and that everything is under control blah, blah, blah.. They were cool enough with it. They came back 5 min later asking for my id, to verify I live there and thats when I invited them in.

I actually had BoomDog's Wicked RGB video playing at the time on my laptop when they saw my work bench!!


PostPosted: 3/07/07, 7:50 AM Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Vic
PostPosted: 3/06/07, 10:51 PM Post subject:
What do you think the police would doif you told them you were colliminating your laser, lol.


Actually, i did say that at one point. Laughing I said something like " I just got new parts and lenses for laser so I was testing it and collimating it against that wall because I know exact distance" They were just cotiosly listening and checking me out. It was a guy and a girl. She was doing most of the talking.

Quote:
... how the hell did you keep calm..if you even did ahahha

I was calm for the first 15 sec until my brain went into sort of hyper mode thinking how they can just walk in now and confiscate all my stuff. I think I even said at one point that I work for Edmund instead of I replaced lens from Edmund and tweak lasers. Edmund shipping envelope happened to be on my desk too Laughing
Second time they knocked, I was calm and asked them to come in. My wife played cool sticking to what she was doing pretending she's all right with the whole thing. Rolling Eyes

When they left, she told me "great milos- I knew it was matter of time someone was gonna knock on our door over this"


Quote:
But after this, they won´t come anymore.So good luck.

I hope you are right that if someone calls them next time, they will just tell them not to worry, guys is a freak, but things are cool with him.

*********
Luckily, its been quiet ever since..

 

[LaserCo]

I have two police stories.

1)
It was back around 1987 before there were laser pointers, the movie Terminator had recently came out (I will get to that)...
I had built this helium neon laser with this tiny tube and very small flyback transformer into a kids squirtgun, I dont know a lot about guns so I may incorrectly say it looked like an oozie machine gun yet more of a handgun style. The two NiCad RC batteries were taped on the outside with black cloth tape and it all looked pretty cool

Anyway, I think it was the Bob Dylan or SRV concert at Riverfest I took it along with me to, I had it in a knapsack thingy that I carried my school supplies to college with and had the barrel barely sticking out an opening while i triggered it thru the cloth. I was sitting on the bank alongside the main area amongst thousands of people and shining this thing over peoples heads and at signs and stuff, people were grabbing for the beam
After maybe half an hour all the sudden I hear "There it is!" and theres these two big dudes and they grabbed my bag and confronted me, I cant remember what the initial questions were yet they did say that with the release of the movie The Terminator and his little red beam of light I was scaring the hell of people at the show this evening. They asked me to get up and come with them.
I did ask them to show me some ID and they showed me some badges. So I went with them.
It was rather embarassing as we walked because one or both of them had a grasp on my arm(s)... I said "Hey!, everything is cool, I am not going to run away, after all its YOU that have MY laser that I BUILT and spent a LOT of time on... Im going nowhere, you can let go, you take off and I'm chasing YOU!!"
So the three of us peacefully walked to thier trailor setup there as a police station, they said I can come back after the show tonite and get it on my way out and to NEVER bring it back again!., When I returned for it an asshole cop came out with it, as he was aproaching me he was turning it on and off shining it on the ground, he musta pulled very hard on the trigger cause I heard the SNaP and broke it (kids toys!) , this laser was eventually stolen from me while in a cave by some people that eventually later killed some guy down there in the caves. baseball bats , several people and thier maglites leave a person defenseless, I had one friend with me yet we were also very drunk.

2) a couple years later I had built this RGB graphics projector with an omnichrome 532 argon, HeNe & GS 120's etc and was shining cartoons and stuff out onto the building across the street. I somehow sensed light or something from down below, looked down onto the street and there is a police car.
The cop shouted up at me what the hell is that?, I said "my laser setup!", he said "Cool!" and drove off

 

[Milos]

I am not going to run away, after all its YOU that have MY laser that I BUILT and spent a LOT of time on... Im going nowhere, you can let go, you take off and I'm chasing YOU!!"

Thats pretty funny man. I totally feel you ;D ;D