Law, A Note To Follow So

At no time did I think surveillance in motion would be a slam dunk but, seriously, I never thought it would be quite so challenging. In the beginning I even added a few points to the degree of difficulty considering who my targets were and had still apparently been off the mark on the devil of it.

Early on, after enough recognizably sorry failures shadowing Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement, I’d gone and done some eyes-to-paper research on the subject. In my opinion nothing beats true hands-on experience -- you know, “live and learn” -- but I poured over dozens of articles and scanned countless books regardless. It never hurts to study.

I came away with what I thought were especially handy pointers from a hardback written by a private investigator, and smart tips from an editorial that, even though it was geared towards a person on the receiving end who wanted to lose a tail, could apply to what I’m doing.

I’ve also spent an entertaining amount of time trying to ameliorate my driving skills. Just me in my car, a couple dozen fluorescent orange and white barrels, a very remote abandoned parking lot, and I’m good to go. Okay I did have to repair that one blowout. And maybe I can’t make a J-turn as good as this but I in spades do better than this. Will I ever need to rapidly whip my car around to go in the opposite direction? Doubtful. Is it fun to practice anyway? You betcha.

With each effort, I imagine I get a tad more knowledgeable and figure I’ll do at least a tad better. The ideation has proven to be true in most cases of me following the Drug Enforcement agents, albeit pre-established stupid things occasionally trip me up when, by now, really they shouldn’t, and I often stumble into unforeseeable problems, thus reminding me of the fundamental cognitive latter portion of live and learn. Mistakes induce improvement.

Sometimes they whom have unwittingly taught me most of what I know about pursuits have themselves made repeated errors. I’ve been multi-subjected to a few tricks JADE has that I feel they ought to smoosh back in the hat with the rabbit as the illusions are arrant cheezball. Such as…

• Using a left blinker then making a right turn, or vice versa. I am not following your turn signal; I am following your vehicle.
• Using a blinker, then not turning period. Again I am not following your turn signal; I am following your vehicle.
• Two or more JADE automobiles enigmatically diverging to an impasse? I am not following your turn signals; I am not following your vehicles. Yeah, not even after hell freezes over would I fall for that one.
• Inexplicable U-turns. Those are the biggest waste. I’ll just pull over up the road a bit and wait for you to pass by me, oh, usually less than a minute later.

I understand what they’re aiming for by executing these, and some other equally retarded things, but the moves are simplistic as far as I’m concerned and I’m not about to cooperate with their expectations.

Needless to say tracking them isn’t getting less manageable, though the mechanics are definitely changing. Most of my undoings in the hound dog department are admittedly unintentionally self-inflicted but in recent commentary I touched briefly on the amplifying complexity of the Task Force Officers. Their above idiosyncrasies aside, I believe it’s safe to assume that they are indeed stepping up their game. I’ll try to keep up. If I can’t, there’s always extant document invasions.