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Letter: Waste of police time

I’m a metal detectorist, it’s my hobby and I clean my gear when I’m done hunting.

Monday evening, a Sooke RCMP constable knocked on my door. He asked me if I drive a (he described my car), and was I in the area of Logan Lane about half an hour before. I said yes. He said they received a report of a man wiping clean a big knife and disposing the wiper in a litter bin, and the man had some sort of metal detector with him.

I told him what I was doing there. I’m a metal detectorist, it’s my hobby and I clean my gear when I’m done hunting. I showed him my detecting gear and the garden trowel I was seen cleaning by an apparently easily excitable Sooke resident walking down Murray Road. It’s a garden trowel, not a knife. Big difference. The constable left satisfied.

Whoever it was obviously got my license plate number. They watched me clean my digger. Why couldn’t they have watched me when I was picking up surface litter and bringing it to the litter bin, or saw me 10 times before in the same place, doing the same things?

Most passers by in that area are great - friendly, interested, and they approve of my personal policy of cleaning up and leaving things better than before I came. I go there to simply to look for coins or rings, etc. lost in the grass over the years.

The residents of Murray Road and the streets below it are great people. Even the teens are polite and friendly ... but someone walked by who wasn’t all that friendly. Not all that smart either.

My apologies first to the Sooke RCMP, you have better things to do. Secondly, my apologies to the caller ... your anticipated drama scene never came to fruition.

G. Saunders

Sooke