Nickster’s View

My friend Neil and I both own full sets of Star Wars stormtrooper armour. It has taken literally months to get together all the parts and accessories needed to pull off the look of an authentic stormtrooper, so after having bought the armour in December last year it has taken us until today to wear the armour outside. There are still a few fitting issues and each set of armour needs to be customised a little so that they can be worn for extended periods of time without bits falling off or coming loose. So, today was a quick beta test to see if we were ready for the outside world…and boy, what a beta test it was. It culminated in an armed response unit (SO19) coming to my home - but before I go into the detail you need to see a photo of what we look like in armour, and what the gun looks like:

With this image in mind, the two of us, both wearing armour, set off for short local stroll at about 2.30pm today. We walked out of my cul-de-sac, turned right and walked for about half a mile down to the traffic lights, turned around and came back. The whole way cars were honking at us, people were taking photos on their mobile phones, kids waving at us - we were having an absolute ball underneath our helmets - and no-one could see the massive grins. EVERYONE was enjoying it.

We got in, took off the armour and watched the football. Just after half time there’s a ring on my doorbell. It’s the police - they want a word. I open the door to be met by four armed officers from the armed response unit of the police. They tell me that they have had reports of a firearm being waved around in public. Completely dumbfounded I invite them in to show them our prop guns and stormtrooper armour. At this point there are about 10 officers in my living room, half armed to the teeth, and the other half regular police officers - and RIGHT in the middle of the 2nd half of the Spurs game (critical game, much tension).

Someone had reported our guns as being real, despite being dressed literally head to toe in stormtrooper armour. I had never considered the fact that anyone would have taken our very real looking props as real live guns in the context of obviously science fiction costumes. The police and armed reponse guys were all very amicable and the whole incident was actually very good natured - but the fact remains that there were a serious amount of police resources wasted on a pair of geeks living out star wars fantasies.

I still cannot believe that our guns were threatening or dangerous. Every single car or person that stopped to take photos didn’t shout ‘LOOK OUT HE’S GOT A GUN’ and run away - they came up to us and loved every minute of it.

The sad fact of life these days is that any gun, real, prop or toy in ANY context is considered dangerous. People are living it that much fear of terrorism that common sense has gone. Either that or I have a malicious neighbour who has nothing better to do than to mess up our fun.

What a day. No more prop guns in future, and I hate the fact that this is the world we now live in. I won’t live in fear. I certainly won’t live in fear of stormtroopers carrying guns. Morons, I tell you…morons….

N

EDIT:

My learned friend, Evz, has just highlighted an issue - when the police turned up they had no idea that we were wearing stormtrooper armour. All they apparently had been told is that someone had been waving a gun around. When we told them that we had been wearing the armour and helmets from the moment we left the house until the moment we returned, Neil said that one of the police had said ‘i’d love to know who called this one in’. At the time we thought nothing of it - but now in retrospect it makes complete sense. The armed response unit had been sent with limited information…i.e. the caller had only reported the fact we had guns, and had omitted the fact that we were wearing outlandish costumes. They clearly didn’t give an accurate description to the police and as a result lead the police on a wild goose chase because they were surprised to find that we had been wearing shiny white plastic armour from head to toe.

The bottom line is that either I have a paranoid schizophrenic or absolute killjoy living in my road. I just hope the police were pissed off enough to take it up with the caller who wasted everyone’s time.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 7th, 2006 at 10:04 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.