...
...
...
...
|
PoliceUFO.com - Project Overview
Copyright (C) 2008, Richard A. Jones.
Essentially PoliceUFO.com is a database of police UFO sightings and investigations with a focus on the Australian scene. Unlike similar listings compiled overseas, this database discloses not only sightings of UFOs by police officers, but also exposes case-by-case that, unbeknownst to the general public and even most police officers, the police in Australia have been quietly investigating UFOs for over 50 years.
With a background in computers, an interest in the paranormal, and a job with the police, the immergence of such a project seemed almost inevitable. Work on the project began in early 2007 when I suspected that, if there were UFOs, Police officers on the job might have a much higher probability of seeing them. At first I began to draft a research paper, but as more cases came to light, and in light of similar work done in other countries, by early 2008 it became evident that an online database was more appropriate to handle the volume of information, as a tool for advocating witness disclosure, and to get that information into the public and research arena in an effective format.
As research continued, it also became apparent that not only were police officers seeing UFOs, but that they were often the first point of call for citizens disturbed by the sighting of, or even interaction with, a UFO and UFO-related phenomena. From there came the realisation that the police were also investigating the UFOs, whether they liked it or not. Not quite news to some Australian UFO researchers, for after much apparent work and relationship building, the Australian UFO Research Organisation (AUFORN) managed to get the national UFO hotline number published in the May 2003 NSW Police Journal, all with this in mind.
Research and investigation was difficult at first, even drawing ridicule from colleagues. However, when the cases began to mount, in a surprise turn-around, some of those same ridiculing officers began to come forward with their own stories. As word began to spread of the work, grapevine networks of officers brought forward even more cases as officer-witnesses, unsure of where to turn to, had found a place to come-clean with their unsettling UFO information and stories.
And so it transpired, as the current record shows, that Australian police had been investigating UFOs in both an official and unofficial capacity for at least 50 years. Officially, many cases that already appeared in existing research literature, reappeared in fresh light in official archives held in various Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) base files, in the National Archives Australia (NAA), and by Freedom of Information Requests (FoI) to police departments made by various UFO researchers around the country, much of it due to the work of the Australian Disclosure Project.
Research into the police-UFO relationship, with respect to investigations, explores the elements of police investigation and compares them to the immerging techniques of civilian UFO investigators. Specifically, the police role is elaborated, considering for example, the implications of public service in the phenomenon, public safety and emergency response, coordination and tracking, maintaining law and order, call centre dispatch, investigating as a reporter, investigating as an interviewer and profiler, witness psychology, taking into special consideration the rising interest in the assessment of mental illness by police, and the multicultural aspects of UFO witnesses. Of particular interest to UFO researchers and investigators is the immerging use of Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) techniques, such as forensics, to examine physical trace, such as is used by Phenomena Research Australia (PRA) in the Kelly Cahill case in Country Victoria, and the immerging techniques of DNA forensics such as is used by Bill Chalker of the Anomaly Physical Evidence Group (APEG) in investigating the Australian abduction case of Peter Khoury on July 23rd 1992, as explored in Chalker’s recent book, “The Hair of the Alien – DNA and other forensic evidence of alien abduction.”
As for official police UFO procedure, despite official FoI requests which only uncovered a vague emergency response procedure to possible distress flares or aircraft in distress, it was learnt that state police forces definitely have been briefed on official UFO procedure, repeatedly, and via official police gazettes, however most officers have chosen to ignore the directives. Consequently, the common response from the average police officer is still along the lines of, “What do the police have to do with UFOs?”
Acting unofficially, there are cases on record of officers taking a personal interest in the subject. In one such case an officer even took leave from work to investigate the evidence – an apparent “Crop Circle”. In this particular 1971 case, the records show RAAF displeasure at receiving second hand news of the event, learning that, embarrassingly, “the bones had been picked clean” on the investigation, rebuking the South Australian police commissioner, J.G. McKinna, for the officer’s actions, and consequently motivating the commissioner to reissue UFO sighting directives.
In an attempt to truly examine the relationship of police officers with the UFO phenomenon, the database does not throw the baby out with the water, so to speak, and keeps on record those cases which have been explained away by conventional means – meteors, strange weather, misperceptions, and the like. Further the research is not restricted to state/local policing, but also federal, military and intelligence policing. And while the focus is on Australian officers, the research done is not isolated by the watery borders of the Australian island-continent, but in the context of police officers the world over. This research also puts under the microscope not only the officer’s experience with both the sighting and the investigation of UFOs, but also the surprising implications of disclosing the phenomena.
For example, the public record shows that police who come forward inspire others to come forward too. The disclosure by two officers, in July 1983, of a sighing of a UFO on Channel 7 News inspired others to come forward: In 1983 on July 18 in NSW, in Kincumber, near Wyoming Green Point, The Central Coast Express of Wednesday 27 July 1983 reported a spate of UFO reports on the coast, including a Kincumber family of four and a Wyoming resident who saw a half-cylindrical object with five white and two red lights, on the front, sides and back, travelling at a low altitude, just above light clouds, and making “a soft sound like a jet, but not as loud or as high pitched.” The object was about the size of a large house and it was seen travelling slowly in a north-northwest direction over Green Point, towards the Punt Bridge. The front had two red lights, and according to varied accounts, possibly a green light. A reporter noted that he had seen a flashing white light on the back of the craft, while other witnesses had not. The family went home and listened to the local radio station to find if others had reported the object. Nothing came over the radio. Later when Channel 7 Television News reported the UFO sighting by two Victorian policemen which had some similarities, the family then came forward to report their experience to INUFOR.
It is not lightly that officers come forward – the consequences can be serious. The witness ridicule factor is powerful, and officers fear making official reports, especially to their own force. At the more extreme of the spectrum of consequences, like most professional UFO witnesses, their jobs are on the line. Along with police training to observe and report, this makes their disclosure even more credible. The reluctance of officers to come forward has been problematic to UFO researchers because the Police play such a critical role as UFO data-collectors, and as high-calibre observers that they often rate close to the astronaut, aviation professional and the scientist/engineer throughout research literature, yet both the hesitance of officers to come forward, and the official protection afforded to police officers, makes it almost impossible to access official police data. National intelligence forces, here and abroad, certainly have not ignored the implications of the place of the officer in the UFO saga.
For example, in the US, the February 1975 FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin4 states, in J Allen Hyneks article, that, “For many years, local law enforcement officials have borne the brunt of public concern in the persistent mystery of UFOs … Sometimes, UFO witnesses have been under great emotional stress, and have turned to the police for urgent help and guidance … Law enforcement agencies have been repeatedly involved with people who have reported unidentified flying objects (UFOs)” Inviting police participation, the bulletin also states, “It is natural for law enforcement agencies to solve mysteries. Now, they can help solve what may be one of the greatest mysterious of all time.” Great effort was made at this time to brief police on UFO procedure in the US. A toll-free UFO hotline number had been distributed to several thousand police chiefs and sheriffs around the country, and it was urged that this phone number be widely disseminated to all lawmen in all parts of the country. Aside from dealing with public concern, this same FBI bulletin makes note that officers also feature as witnesses themselves, and further, this document makes note of the place Australian police have in the field of UFOs: “Many other police reports are on record. And, these experiences are not uniquely American, - French, Italian, English, Canadian, and Australian police have frequently been involved in UFO sightings.”
Also, in France, for example, officials publicly acknowledged their support of cooperative efforts when investigating serious UFO reports. The '"Gendarmerie Nationale," an official publication of the Gendarmes (a Paramilitary National Guard branch of the French National Police), discusses procedures which French police should follow upon receiving a report of a sighting, procedures created during the French UFO wave of 1951.
Historically, as the database currently stands, the first recorded Australian police UFO witness case appears in 1954, and is especially weighty when one considers that it contains statements by two South Australian Police Officers, along with a civilian, and it can be found in archived Federal investigation records. According to the RAAF report, two policemen and a woman saw a white light at 10-15 degrees W that eventually faded from sight, near Port Pirie, in South Australia, a sighting that lasted for approximately 15 minutes (RAAF: Reference 5/3/Air (8a) Mallala). As an official record in RAAF archives, it also has the elements of an official investigation, of police, but not by police.
As for the beginning of police investigations, the following case begins its course in officialdom when civilian witnesses reported their experience to police. However, from the beginning, we get the conspiratorial feeling that there were greater policing forces at work. We have in our first case, not only the police investigating photographic film of UFOs, we see that film confiscated and disappear into higher officialdom. In Eucla, in Easter in 1954, three young men travelling by car related that they were followed by a saucer shaped object for some 50 miles. Occasionally it was so low that they could see portholes. A total of 92 exposures were apparently taken of the object using five cameras. The men reported their observations to police, and then were interviewed by the RAAF who allegedly took away the cameras. Later the cameras were returned minus the films.
One of the observable threads throughout the examination of the history of the Police-UFO investigation saga in Australia, and one that may seem obvious to some, is that they often involve some of the most dramatic, and often disturbing, of UFO events in Australian UFOlogy. We observe police in some of the most well-known of UFO cases in Australia such as the Tully QLD Saucer-Nest incident of 1966, the Bent-Headlight-Beams event in Bourkes Flat, Victoria, 1966, the suspicion of Police involvement in the landed UFO incident in Westall Victoria, also in 1966, the encounters of Maureen Puddy in Victoria in 1972, the UFO/Humanoid sightings in Kimba, SA, in 1973, the Knowles Family Incident in 1998, the Bronte Lloyd Encounter in SA in 1988, and Queensland’s Gundia-Tiara Abduction hoax in 2001, to name a few.
Usually however it is the Police-Witness cases that are of most interest to UFO researchers, such as the case of the four officers that observed and gave chase to a UFO in Victoria in 1983 that made TV headlines, or the UFO madness that erupted over Gosford during the UFO wave of 1995-1996.
Often the distinction between witness and investigator becomes blurred, almost as blurred as the UFO phenomenon itself, and this in itself is explored. One must consider not only the appearance of UFOs in police cases, but also the suspicion of UFOs in investigations. This leads one to consider bizarre animal mutilations, crop-circles, the strange disappearances of livestock, crops, and most of all the mysterious disappearances of people, entire airplanes and massive shipping vessels without a trace.
And finally, one must consider the appearance of the police in the worst case UFO scenarios, from panic, to all-out alien-invasion, as well as the government politics associated with the directives pushed down to the police, and the grandiose conspiracy theories that go along with it all.
The establishment of an online Police-UFO database has not replaced the original research paper. To the contrary, the database represents a compliment to the ongoing research, which as it is planned, is hoped to be available as a book, possibly in electronic online-form, as well as making available updated complementary database summaries.
As it stands, the goal of PoliceUFO.com is not only to build-up a database of cases, but as stated on the website, PoliceUFO.com is “the UFO information centre for Police Officers and UFO researchers. Although the focus is on Australian officers, all Police officers are welcome. PoliceUFO.com aims to collate information about UFOs from police officer witnesses and investigators. Currently hundreds of police officers from around the world are on public record, yet countless more have yet to come forward. The disclosure of Police UFO information forms part of a growing global movement to disclose not only the reality of UFOs, but to pressure those-in-the-know to come clean with the vast amount of information that is believed to have been kept from the public.”
“PoliceUFO.com – Advocating Officer UFO Disclosure”
All Officers are urged to come forward with any information. Personal details will only be disclosed with expressed permission.
|
Cases
Resources
