Air force bases are some of the most heavily policed societies in the free world, where the ration of cops to population is very high.
I worked the mid shift at RAF Bentwaters. My best friend and I got off at 7am, and I was driving him home. He asked to stop at the post office so he could check his box. The tiny parking lot was full. I pulled up to the curb, and he jumped out to run in real quick and check. The passenger door was open, the car was in gear and my foot was on the clutch. My friend was gone less than 30 seconds.
A skycop came over and cited me for "parking in a non-designated spot." Dick. I wasn't "parked". He made me pull into an empty spot that opened up while I was waiting.
So I sat there fuming while he wrote my ticket. When he was through, I stirred the gears to back out, and flipped him the bird behind his back in anger.
Next thing I know there was this gorilla master sergeant cop at my window screaming at me, something about UCMJ articles for provoking speech and gestures.
I got arrested. Taken to the cop shop, where they processed me through the whole works. I had to laugh, I could see the supervisor of the cop that cited me as he "evaluated" the guy as he processed me. I was a friggin training dummy for their Career Development Course objectives.
They released me and told me I had to report to my commander immediately. By the time I got there, my shop chief, Eddie Carlisle, was already in the office, and had clued the commander in that I was key to their operation and if I copped an attitude, they could kiss their 90% operational readiness rate goodbye. The commander, Major Humphries, was a great guy, a KC-10 pilot who had developed hearing trouble and was grounded and sent to a Component Repair Squadron. They had to do something to tell the Wing King that I had been properly disciplined. They didn't want to do a letter of Reprimand or anything that would follow me on my record, and they knew a letter of counseling wouldn't satisfy the Man. So they invented a "Letter of Admonishment" for me.
