US Police Chiefs Org Issues Handbook on UAP
New Resource Provides Facts on the Phenomenon for Law Enforcement Personnel
The Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA), an organization representing the chiefs of police in the United States’ larger metropolitan communities, has released a handbook on UAP. The 11-page guide is intended to help police officers better understand the phenomenon in order to better serve the public.
Providing an information background to UAP to police authorities will help advance scientific investigation, in addition to informing readers, viewers and listeners. By helping law enforcement officers answer the questions of witnesses and journalists, even on a basic level, may provide important information to researchers.
Two UAP cases involving law enforcement officers are described below.
In June 2024, an association of police leaders did that very thing in order to raise awareness of the phenomenon. The MCCA Reference Guide to Unidentified Aerial Phenomena provides concise, and accurate overview on what we know about UAP — and what to do when a sighting or report is made to police departments and agencies. It includes a short history of UAP and investigations by the US Government, as well as links to additional resources of accurate information.
The guide also provides contact information to official UAP investigative programs in Canada, France and the United Kingdom, in addition to those by civilian and military agencies of the United States. The MCCA hopes the information will help police officers de-stigmatize conversations around UAPs.
The new guide also may represent an opportunity for future UFO investigations. Perhaps a future edition could include a number of questions an officer could ask witnesses. The answers may provide data that NASA panels and Pentagon scientists have such a difficult time finding. The updates also could provide a guide for getting good information for the investigators.
The police answer many UAP calls each year. The data they can obtain when interviewing witnesses may be important. It’s up to us to gather what information we can. The Phenomenon does not typically give advance notice.
Click here for a PDF version of the MCCA Reference Guide on UAP.
Young Chief’s Experience with a Possible Occupant
The image at the top of the page is a composite made from four Polaroid photographs taken by then-Chief of Police Jeff Greenhaw of Falkville, Alabama in October 1973. His report, from a retrospective article on the incident, “Do you believe in the Metal Man?”, by Christy Perry, published in The Cullman Tribune of July 10, 2021:
On an October night in 1973, the young Falkville Chief of Police, Jeff Greenhaw, was likely hoping for a quiet evening at home after a long day of work. Instead, he would receive a call that would change his life forever – an anonymous call to dispatch from a frantic caller about a UFO in a field just outside of town.
Greenhaw, who rarely gives interviews about that night, sat down for an interview with Red Water Filmworks less than a year ago to discuss what he saw that night. He said, “I was hired in January of 1973 and this all came down October 17, 1973.” He would resign from his position in the weeks after.
What did he see? His first thought was that he was simply dealing with “an idiot.” He explained, “After that, things were just so strange. This wasn’t real. It wasn’t really happening, but it was happening to me. Why me?”
He was looking at a figure, slightly taller than 6 feet, wearing a reflective material that Greenhaw described, saying, “My initial thoughts were maybe aluminum foil but there were no pieces around there after it was all over. I don’t know what to believe at that point.” He described the suit in his report from that evening saying, “It looked like his head and neck were kind of made together. He was real bright, something like rubbing mercury on nickel, but just as smooth as glass. Different angles give different lighting.”
The movement of the figure was not human-like according to Greenhaw. “Whenever I think about it, when I was a child, I used to watch the movie ‘Lost in Space.’ The robot in the movie, it kind of reminded me of that to some extent.”
Greenhaw grabbed his Polaroid 2 camera and snapped four photos of whatever was standing in front of him. Before he took the photos, he did speak to the figure. He explained, “I said something to the effect of ‘howdy stranger’ and there was no response at all. I didn’t push my luck. At that point, I reached in and turned the blue lights on the patrol car and seen how reflective the material really was. Then, when I looked back, it was moving away from me, so I decided to chase it down and, if I have to, run over it. That didn’t happen either.”
The report continues…
He took the photos and laid them out on the console of the patrol car. When he looked back, the figure was moving. He said, “It wasn’t moving like you or I would move. It’s like it had springs on its feet or something.” The strange being was said to have run away at speeds exceeding human capabilities. Greenhaw pursued the figure in his patrol car and although he reached 35mph in the field he was in, it wasn’t fast enough to catch the figure.
Greenhaw would eventually lose sight of the figure after crashing his patrol car. The shiny E.T. then faded into the darkness leaving Greenhaw to wonder what had just happened to him.
Greenhaw had the four photos he took in a safe place for several years following the encounter, but he claims that almost 10 years later to the date, someone broke into his home and stole the four pictures. He filed a police report in 1983 regarding the break-in. Also missing were his service revolver and a shotgun.
“I took them out and looked at them frequently for the 10 years that I had them. I thought, ‘That’s really weird,’ the only three things I had with me that night, the shotgun in the car, the service revolver and the pictures; all three of them came up missing,’ he said.
He said, “I pretty well withdrew myself from the public for years.” People made life difficult for Greenhaw after he recounted his experience from that night. “People who were supposed to be my friends, the only thing I found out is that I really couldn’t trust anyone. I withdrew, I ran and I went places to try to get away from it.”
Greenhaw and his wife raised five children, three of whom were adopted. He added, “I turned out to be a person I never dreamed I would be because of what happened. It made me hard, but it made me strong as well. I came close to losing my sanity, but my wife and God kept me from losing my sanity. That’s the only thing that kept me going. I am still a believer in life after death and at one point, I didn’t believe there was any other life source in the universe, but that really changed.”
Greenhaw never sought financial gain from the encounter. If anything, sticking to his accounts from that strange autumn evening has made his life incredibly difficult and left him isolated and ridiculed by many. Whether you believe or don’t believe that Greenhaw’s encounter was with an extraterrestrial being, one thing is certain – he definitely witnessed something strange in that field that night.
The remarkable story above was told by Chief Jeff Greenhaw and reported by Christy Perry, published in The Cullman Tribune.
It is a shame Chief Jeff Greenhaw did not receive the support he deserved in 1973 from his peers, government, and community. All he did as a law enforcement officer was his duty. Then, he reported what he experienced and told the truth as he saw it.
What Lt. M Saw
Decades ago, I was a reporter for a mid-sized daily newspaper working the criminal Justice beat. This story happened almost 20 years before I met Lt. Daniel M, an acronym for a now-retired law enforcement officer, peace keeper and gentleman. Lt. M answered the call in 1972 and he shared his experience with me in the early 1990s.
On a late fall night in the early 1970s, Lt. M was dispatched to a lakefront home in one of the communities north of Detroit in southeastern Michigan. The residents had called the township police to report a saucer shaped object, glowing with a pulsating white light. The thing, the dispatcher told the officer as he navigated the maze of roads that twist between various lakes and neighborhoods, was touched down on the lawn next to the beach.
As Lt. M (then Officer M) drove up, he reported seeing a bright light streak fast and low across the lake, angling away from the direction in which he was heading. The home’s occupants explained the object had been sitting and glowing on their property, just at the edge of the lake. They had watched it there, he said, for several minutes, telling the officer it took off as the squad car pulled up to the house.
Upon investigation, Lt. M found a patch of burned grass, shaped in a circle about 30-feet across. The area and surrounding vegetation were not smoldering, he said, but looked by flashlight as if it had been charred to a light brown-tan by high temperature. He said the circular area had a clear and distinct edge from the surrounding, undamaged grass.
Lt. M did not take samples of the grass or sand, nor did he take a photograph of the area. He did not mention any unusual smells. He did not report the reaction of pets or animals. He also reiterated that he did not see the object make the patch, but the homeowners indicated the spot was where it had sat.
Lt. M was a trusted source. Over five years at the paper with two on the night beat, the guy never lied by words or through omission on any crime report or story I was working on, including ones deemed embarrassing to public officials from his community. When asked a direct question or for background on a case, he never held back information I needed. There was no reason for me to doubt his story and integrity then or now.
It’s important to know,
when dealing with the unknown,
that one is not alone.
Looking back, I wish the MMCA or its sister organizations had created a pamphlet to provide solid information on UAP to law enforcement officers (LEOs) decades ago. Both Chief Greenhaw and Lt. M provided reports that add data to what we know about the UFO phenomenon. Thanks to the new guide for LEO, we may gain more information about extraordinary events.
Police officers and agencies receive many, if not most UFO reports from the public. The new MCCA publication provides specific information LEOs need to process what the officer had just experienced. Other facts might help them withstand pressure from fanatical skeptics and/or true believers they often experience after the stories are publicly shared.
The MCCA Reference Guide to Unidentified Aerial Phenomena can help bring about a methodical approach for information-gathering from UAP witnesses by police investigators. Thanks to the MCCA, we have a good start on gathering new, solid information and potentially important data, the keys for building understanding of an enigmatic phenomena.