S.W.A.T!

So last night, while I was online watching the Super Bowl ads I missed because I didn’t watch perhaps the most exciting Super Bowl game in 15 years, I heard a loud – and I mean LOUD – bang. It gently shook my apartment building, and then I heard its echo off to the south from me.

My first thought was “gunshot,” but a gunshot wouldn’t have shaken the building. “Explosion?” Perhaps too small for anything destructive or catastrophic.

I looked out my window down to the parking lot. There were a couple of people walking from the parking lot who kept looking back to the east. I looked in that direction and saw a strange grey truck – think huge motor home – with the letters NIPAD emblazoned on its side, inching its way further into the parking lot, with a local police SUV inching a little more quickly past it. The local gas company is Nicor, so I made a connection there and thought, “Could it have been a gas explosion?”

Too curious to ignore it, I threw on some shoes and went out to investigate. Winter is in full swing here, and a storm was announcing its arrival with winds, freezing rain and general misery for anyone out in it…especially with no coat or hat…like me. But I did get to the eastern end of my building, and I was able to stare into the wind long enough to see two more people, now looking to the north, and the same police SUV, having made its way past my building. Unable to take the wind and the cold biting me everywhere AND the flying bits of ice perforating my eyeballs, I went back inside to get my coat and hat. The curiosity was getting to me and no one in my building seemed to have noticed the rafter-rattling noise that had started it all.

Back outside and properly attired, I returned to the farthest point I had reached, and looked north. There was a small U-Haul box truck parked against apartment regulations, and with its rear door open. Around the next building I could see the three red running lights on the top of another truck of some sort. I was within about 20 feet of the U-Haul truck when I saw movement to my left. I turned and saw a man in urban assault gear! Helmet, body armor, dark uniform, boots, and carrying a short, military-style assault rifle!!

The alarm bell in my head told me to turn around! I knew by the way he held the rifle – pistol-grip in one hand, ammo magazine resting on his belt, and the muzzle pointed to the ground – that he was a police officer. I had walked right into the middle of some sort of S.W.A.T. incident! I was two steps toward the warmth and comfort of my apartment when I heard a voice behind me: “How can we help you, sir?”

I spun back around. The voice had come from inside the back of the U-Haul truck, and now there was a man, dressed as the first, standing there. “I just heard a loud noise and I was trying to find out what it was,” said I.

To my left the first officer I had seen, the one whose appearance had triggered the first thrill of mild panic in me, spoke. “You’re gonna have to go back to your apartment, sir.”

“Thank you!” I said. You don’t need to tell me twice to get out of a potential kill-zone!

As I returned to the proximity of my building I peered more intently at the hulking, grey, motor-home-looking NIPAD truck. I couldn’t quite make out the smaller lettering beneath the acronym, as that side of the truck was half in and half out of the pool of light from the parking lot lamps, but it read “Northern Illinois somethingorother Police Emergency Unit.”

Sure. NOW you tell me!

Later, from within the safety and comfort of my apartment, I called the police department and demanded to know if the emergency was over, and if there had been any point in the evening that my building was in danger. The woman on the other end of the line told me that the matter had been taken care of, and there never was anything to be concerned about, safety-wise. Except, of course, I added in my head, walking into the cross-fire zone!

Now, about 12 hours later, I still don’t know what happened. I’m guessing now that the loud, edifice-shaking bang was a concussion grenade used by the police when they stormed an apartment in one of the next buildings over, to stun, frighten and disorient the suspects inside. What they were suspected of, however, is only my best guess. First thought is drug-bust. But there are a lot of Middle Eastern people in this complex.

I’ll let your thoughts run on their own from there.

I’ll post an update if I find anything else out.