Common roles for auxiliary police officers include crowd control and traffic control during big events, like parades. July 4th fireworks is another big one (scroll down for pictures from last year’s Thanksgiving parade). This year my patrol during the fireworks was right next to the water.

I took a video toward the beginning (after ensuring it was okay with the officer I report to). Should I say it’s only a minute because the fireworks went for half an hour, or it’s a full minute, because even a few minutes would seem long for fireworks in most places.

In any case, I love volunteering, all the more when I’m fulfilling what feels to me like civic duty.

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Here are two pictures from before the fireworks started. The boats with the bright lights launched the fireworks, to show you how close we were.

The third picture below shows the fireworks still going after we left the waterfront. We could see them going off between buildings.

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Thanksgiving

I didn’t post these pictures from serving during last year’s Thanksgiving Parade since it didn’t seem worth a solo post, but as long as I’m posting pictures from serving on crowd control, here are some. Oh yeah, it was also cold, which doesn’t bother me that much for Thanksgiving, but wet, which is annoying. I’d prefer slightly colder and snow.

Oh yeah again, now that I look at the pictures, I remember I didn’t like that every float was an advertisement. There were high school and college marching bands, which seemed not commercial, but the advertising disguised as fun for kids got under my skin.

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Here I am, in the yellow jacket on the right, facing the camera:

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