This was sent to me by an acquaintance down in the states who is a police EOD. Taken from the Times Messenger News

Tuesday, August 31, 2004

SPRINGVILLE - An Internet game called "Geocaching" caused quite a stir at the new Springville Community Park on Monday.

Several area departments, including a bomb disposal squad from the Naval Support Activity-Crane, responded to a suspicious object at the park.

"When I arrived, I went to where (an informant) advised me that the male subject placed the item by the tree stump," according to Lawrence County Police Department Sgt. Lonnie Johnson.

"I located it, and it was a round tube approximately 10 inches long and three inches around. It was covered with camouflage tape, and nothing could be identified as to what was inside."

Police then contacted the Perry Township Volunteer Fire Department, which blocked area roads. Another county police officer evacuated nearby houses.

"Crane EOD unit was contacted and arrived within 30 minutes," Johnson's report continued. "They used their robot to go and observe the item and then took an X-ray of the item to see if they could determine what was inside. The X-ray showed metal, what appeared to be wires, and some unidentified objects inside."

The EOD team exploded the item, and then it was determined that the item had small school supplies inside.

"The item was placed there for a game that is played on the Internet on a Web site," the report stated.

Geocaching is an adventure game for Global Positioning System users.

"The basic idea is to have individuals and organizations set up caches all over the world and share the locations of these caches on the Internet," according to www.geocaching.com. "GPS users can then use the location coordinates to find the caches.

A cache, the object GPS users search for, can contain a logbook and notes from other cache visitors.

Rules for the game are: Take something from the cache once you find it, leave something in return for it and write about it in the logbook.


Word to the wise: exercise some common sense folks. Don't put your geocache in anything that might be construed as looking like an IED, don't put it underneath a bridge, by a railway line, etc. You might even think about figuring out exactly where all the geocaches in your area are and getting in touch with the police in your area, explaining to them what geocaching is (don't assume they know) and providing them with a list of locations. That way if someone finds something suspicious, they will hopefully look on the list you provided first and save themselves a lot of trouble.