The Sting

Yesterday (tuesday the 10th) I left work at a reasonable hour excited about the amount of day light left due to the recent "spring forward" time change.  I came home and there was an occupied, idle-ing car sitting in the driveway to the back house, which was and is currently vacant.  At 1st I thought "oh, James must have a new car!" since he was going to be paying me a visit and I had told him 30 minutes prior that he could park in the driveway because no one was living in back.  After surveilling the situation further, I realized that it was not in fact James who was sitting in the car.  The simplest explanation was that this person was waiting to be let in to view the vacant residence.  When I exited the car I was about 5-7 ft away from this person and we just looked at each other.  I walked up to the window, which was about half-way open, and said,

"Hello, can I help you?"

"Is it alright if I park here?", he replied.

Being met with this unexpected answer perplexed me.  There were plenty of open spaces on the street.  It seemed very suspicious that he wanted to be in my driveway.  So I came back with

"Well that depends on why you are here."

At this moment he flipped open is wallet revealing a police badge and said...

"I am doing some surveillance"

I told him it was fine to park there and that he would not be blocking anyone in or out.  I went into the house a phoned both James and Brian to tell them not to be alarmed by the man sitting in the car in our driveway.

I couldn't fight the curiosity.  I went into our den where all the blinds are closed.  I peeked through one of the blinds and couldn't help but notice the "shady" looking guy across the street talking on his cell phone.  

Then I notices James coming down the street to the house so I went to greet him.  We immediately began talking and joking about it.  Curiosity had flanked our minds.  I started to wonder if I was in any danger...I mean who was it that lived in my neighborhood that required such a stake out?

We left to get some pizzas and noticed that a different person, in a different car was sitting in the drive way now.  

"Whatever", I thought.

We picked up the pizzas and Brian called asking where we were.  I told him we were at the store and asked him if anything had happened.

He got excited and said, "Maaaaan, some shit went down!  All of a sudden 5 unmarked police cars came out of nowhere on this one guy, the cops were yelling 'put your hands on your head' and the whole street is blocked up".

This is the 2nd major police operation I have missed that has occurred in front of my house.