Bangkok: Fake Police, another note on fakes I made an entry earlier today that seems to cause some confusion, though most people understood what I wrote. My point is that it is difficult to pretend to be a real UNIT of police. We have people in America who sometimes dress up like police or Soldiers, and they do fool people. But that is just ONE person. It is more difficult to have 10-20 people pretend to be a UNIT. And by the way -- always watch the footwear. This is where impostors often slip up. They do everything right except the shoes/boots. Notice that an organized UNIT typically all will have the same footwear. (As opposed to guerrillas, etc., who may all have different types.) This was one way to spot Taliban tracks, by the way. I have written about this extensively from Afghanistan. Notice the position of the policeman on the front left. (The policeman with the shotgun and mask with his hands on his helmet.) The position that he is sitting in is a position that US Border Patrol and experienced combat trackers will photograph people in. The trackers get the suspect to sit with the soles of his footwear and his face (without gas mask) showing to the camera. The trackers make photos like this to match footwear to faces. I was constantly photographing shoes and prints in Afghanistan, as were some trackers. Good trackers often make a catalogue of local footwear. What could a tracker do with this photo? Many things. He now sees the pattern of the police footwear. (Assuming he confirmed that the unit is all wearing the same footwear, which with organized units typically is true or nearly true.) Now when the tracker sees that track, and he knows that local people and Army do not use that footwear, he can not yet confirm that it was a police, but he now has a good piece of evidence that it might have been. This adds to a picture. Now, remember in the video where the policemen are kicking the cars with the soles of their boots? A tracker would have arrived and taken good photos of those kicks, and with that it can become easy. He might not match up specifically who kicked, but he might be able to discover strong evidence of which unit did it, based on that and other information gleaned from that day. Never miss an opportunity to photograph the bottoms of someones shoes. This is especially true, too, of your children's shoes. Every parent should have high quality photos of their children's shoe soles. When kids get lost, those photos can be decisive in ruling out all the other prints and looking for the specific shoes. My apologies if this rambled, but I love tracking and find it very interesting.