ROTARY NORTH NEWS

"HOLY MACKINAW DID YOU SEE ALL THOSE "pieces?" was a comment heard over and over as the Rotary Club of Sault Ste. Marie North toured the Sault Ste. Marie Police Services "tactical squad" on Wednesday the 19th day of November. We had lunch at the Watertower Inn as we do each week but this day we had a quick soup and sandwich, gulped down without much thought of etiquette and certainly without the usual blessing to which The Rev. Dr. Bryan Lapier had agreed to bless but alas never got around to (and to my way of thinking the darned food seemed to taste just as good as the blessed food of a week prior). With our guest Capt. Steven McNeilly and Richard DeLorenzi from the downtown club in tow, we hustled over to the police station not knowing how many people were in attendance and not being fined or having our usual 50/50 gift subscription collected from when I left the meeting until it ended. And for those of you who missed not singing the anthem, seeing the flags flying, having no name tags hearing grace, being fined, having absolutely no chance of winning the 50/50 gift subscription and having the time to chat it up with your newest best friend Rotarian -if you think for a minute that the program committee is going to apologize for that this is what we have to say "sucks to be you" !!

We arrived at the door of the police station to be greeted by Sgt. Marty Rowe who would be our guide for the two (yes brothers and sisters) two hour tour which followed. Keep in mind that his 15 co officers who helped with the display did it just for us. We had a most interesting time seeing, touching, feeling all the weapons used to help people get through a very difficult time. ( I for one did not ever think that this unit's mandate was to hurt people the least) but as explained to us this is the very essence of their mandate. Poor old Ken South still had it in his head that he really was going to be the target of the tazer gun display and it was only after the chief negotiator of the police services talked him out from under one of the vehicles where he was so desperately trying to hide did he finally relax and enjoy the tour.

It was a quick (two hour) tour of what we have in our community to protect us from the criminal element and more importantly ourselves. Now for those of you who were not there I don't believe there was much business done unless it was in the 3 1/2 minutesUntil next week remember this "we can all sleep better tonight because we know that if Don White climbs a tree with a weapon and can't get down we have a "unit who will go and get him" whk P. S. A special thanks to all our members who attended the tour. It is not easy for some the take this much time and we as a program committee appreciate your support.