If you follow this here small town, Annapolis gossip blog on Facebook, you may have noticed a picture we snapped of post-altercation-activity in the lobby of Mariner Bay at the Towne Center the other day. The text we uploaded with the picture referenced the Anne Arundel County Police not being as cool as the APD.

As a friend and I were leaving dinner, we drove past a fight in the lobby of Mariner Bay. Naturally, we stopped to gawk – and we weren’t the only ones. There was a couple filming it so we asked what was going on. They just stared at us. (We believe that if you’re going to film a fight, you’re probably the type that would talk about it, too, but apparently not?) But I digress. We were able to decipher that a 50 something year old man was fighting with an early 30 something year old man after one of them called the other a few colorful names. I wish I could make this up. To add to the chaos, every tenant was trying to take their dog for their night walk. I thought we had a lot of dogs downtown… we got nothin’ on this apartment complex!

And then three County cop cars showed up. We took it as our cue to move, so we circled around to leave the Towne Center and figured we’d get a pic on the way out. Not so much. I will be the first to say I’m not completely up to date on the laws of photographing random activity, but I do know that my cell phone camera gravitates toward police activity. And never once have I been yelled at while being directed to move along. So it begs the question, are you allowed to legally film police activity? I wanted to tell the cops that my hobby was writing a gossip blog so I needed this information. But it reminded me just how great the APD is.

Yes, we love to make fun of them. On the blog. On Facebook. To their faces. But we appreciate what they do… and although sometimes they can be a bit slow responding to things (thank goodness we don’t have real emergencies that often) we appreciate that they  (usually) show respect to the citizens. And we appreciate that they are trying to engage us and keep us informed via their Facebook page or through myAnnapolis, an email information service. So we hope they are able to find the jerk that sexually assaulted the young lady this weekend and increase their presence in the neighborhoods being burglarized.

If they keep up the good work, we may just have to throw a party for them. Complete with lots of donuts. Of course.