Quotes From the South: "It's better to light a candle than to curse their darkness"

Happy Belated Independence Day! 

I started this past week with an exciting 4th of July shift out at Fort Sumter- Ready to serve the people and defend the fort from drunk boaters. The neighboring sand bar is a normally a common place for recreational boaters to anchor, but during the 4th of July it’s decorated with tiki bars, dogs, american flags, and twice the population. While people are often respectful of the sign reading “Do Not Enter”, they’ll take special care to avoid it when inebriated. And unsupervised kids and young teens love climbing up the dunes into the fort, though their bare feet and swim suits make it quite obvious that they haven’t come in on the ferry. 

The day was full of special events like a fly-over of an air force fighter jet and a C-17 Globemaster, and ended with the folding of Major Anderson’s 33 Star Union Garrison Flag.  

It wasn’t all fanfare this week. In the last half hour of a calm day. we noticed an entire family, 7-10 people, walking along the restricted portion of Battery Jasper. This was an unusually large group to just bypass the “Do Not Cross” chains lining certain areas of the battery.  Chief Byrnes approached them as they came down, quickly noticing the group’s confusion at being contacted. The entrance they used had been completely, misleadingly open. Upon further inspection, the lock originally keeping that door closed had been cleanly, freshly cut. As Chief Byrnes and an assisting Ranger cleared the battery and I watched the area for fleeing suspects, one of Charleston’s classic storms barrelled in.  No one was inside or outside the fort, leaving only a few ideas for who the perpetrator was (Battery Jasper is a popular break-in spot for ‘urban explorers’ and teens), as they had clearly come earlier and either fled at the site of LE or had planned to come back later. We needed to look for bolt cutters the perpetrator could have left behind, but the radio was full of traffic discussing whether or not to close Fort Sumter because of the worsening storm, and asking Chief Byrnes’ opinion on the matter. Fort Moultrie was already requesting our assistance in shutting its doors since lighting had been spotted, and we were notified a private boat was beached by Fort Sumter with passengers who definitely needed to be included on the Ferry back to the mainland. Before we could dredge through the rain around the battery in search of bolt cutters and move on to closing the forts,  we got a call from a Ranger bringing down the flag at Fort Moultrie, letting us know our BOLO (back from a few blogs ago) had stopped by and offered the employee his umbrella to shield him from “God’s Wrath”. 

Our main priority became reaching our BOLO, or at least making our LE presence known while getting his vehicle information. We succeeded in the latter, pulling into the parking lot as our BOLO entered their vehicle, speeding off once they noticed us. We concluded the evening by closing up the forts (a safe call given the record flooding that followed), organizing a safe return trip for those beached passengers, and taking down an official report from the Ranger our BOLO contacted.  Later the next day we got in contact with local PD again, letting them know about our encounter and checking information on the license plate.