As you can imagine, when COVID first came around, life as a security guard changed significantly. The building I used to work in went from having a population of over 20000 to less than 100 during its busiest times. Therefore, it was unusual to have a person who was eagerly trying to attend a bank floor to hand deliver a package on a Sunday morning.

He arrived walking down the street on a cold spring morning and was wheeling a small black suitcase and holding an 8.5x11 manilla envelope. When he arrived at the locked doors, he knocked on the glass until a security guard named Gabe attended and asked how he could help. He said that he was a delivery person who had an envelope, and his instructions were to hand deliver it to the 15th floor. Gabe advised him that he wouldn't be able to provide him with access because the floor was locked and that he (the delivery person) would need to contact someone to come down and sign for it. The delivery person argued that he didn't have any contact information and then demanded that Gabe take the envelope. When he was told that security isn't allowed to accept packages due to policy, he decided to throw a barrage of curse words at Gabe and then the envelope which bounced off the glass doors and onto the ground. He left the way he came.

Gabe took a photo of the envelope and sent it to me via text and then called me to tell me what had just transpired. I considered the circumstances of this interaction; The "delivery person" was on foot and pulling a suitcase, he needed to hand deliver a package to someone at the bank on the 15th floor but had no contact information, it was a Sunday morning when the office is typically closed but also it was in the midst of a COVID lock down and the building hadn't been occupied in months, he then decided to abandon this important package which needed to be hand delivered and presumably signed for when he was denied access to the floor, I noticed that the address on the package was hand written and addressed only to "the legal department" with no return address and was spelled incorrectly. It was at this moment that I knew we had absolutely without a doubt just been delivered a suspicious package.

Having previously encountered suspicious packages in the past, I had the security operations department contact 911 and then quickly did what we had previously been trained to do (after being lectured by the fire department CBRN captain about pooching the last call). I attended the location and took a good look at the package without touching it, it was laying outside the doors face up and was sealed. It didn't appear to have any stains or liquids seeping from it. It was only a half inch thick and at 8.5x11, I didn't expect it to go boom but was concerned that its contents could be harmful. I covered it with an overturned garbage can and put caution tape around the area with a 50-foot radius. As the last step, me and Gabe isolated ourselves in the corner of the lobby from the rest of the team since we were within close proximity of it. Was all this overkill? Yeah, probably if it's a photocopy of the suspects posterior in an envelope, but if it's anthrax maybe it's reasonable. Who knows?

The 911 call taker was advised that they could attend the street behind the building which is a nice quiet alleyway and would have lots of room to accommodate emergency vehicles, but 15 minutes later a single cruiser pulled up in front of the building and waited. Five minutes after that, a second cruiser arrived and then the two officers got out and walked up to the building. A guard who was not quarantined with us directed them through the door and they started walking towards us. One of them was older with a round shaved head and the other was younger, he looked quiet and willing to take direction from his older co-worker.

My plan was to give them my phone number so that we could talk and as we got closer, I waited until they were about 30 feet away and said "Good Morning gentlemen, before you come any closer I want you to know that we came in close proximity to the package so we are isolating over here, I will let you decide if you want to come closer". The older officer stood squinting at me for a second before kissing his teeth and continuing without saying a word.

"I understand that you have a suspicious package or something here?" he said,

"Yeah," I said, "It's an envelope over by those doors.",

"Ok, and what makes it suspicious?" he mused through an infuriating grin,

I dove into all the reasons for us to be cautious about the delivery of the package. I explained about the delivery person on foot, with a suitcase, on a Sunday, to a building which is closed due to COVID lockdowns, who needed to hand deliver his package, which was addressed with spelling mistakes with no return address, to someone, but didn't have the name of the person, who then abandoned his package when he was denied entry.

He squinted at me for a minute without speaking, pondering my words ...

"So why is this suspicious?" he finally said,

"You don't find this suspicious?" I asked a little perplexed and frustrated,

"No, not really," he said dismissively, "why here? What is this place anyways?"

"Well," I replied, "It's one of the largest banks in the country, and I believe that whoever this is, is upset with the bank, and I am not sure how upset he is, is it an angry letter? or an envelope full of chemicals? I'm not sure",

"Ok, so what you're telling me is that you called us because you don't feel qualified to open an envelope? It's a slow morning I guess?" He said looking over at the doors where the envelope lay obscured, "Where is it?",

"It's over there, I covered it with a garbage can to isolate it." I told him while biting my tongue,

"HA! Look!" He said to his partner, "They set up a perimeter with caution tape and everything."

His partner had no expression as he stared in the direction of the envelope, and I sensed he may have seen the situation in a different light.

"Ok," the older officer said, "what is it that you want from us? How can we assist you today?",

"I want to know if it's dangerous," I said raising my voice, "All I want to know is if the contents are dangerous and if they are not then you can leave." Gabe stayed quiet but I could feel the heat coming off him,

"Ok, well ... I guess we can go open it." he said as he turned to look at the door shaking his head, "Come on," he said to the second officer as they turned to walk outside.

They walked out the original door they had come in on the opposite side of the lobby which was the only open door due to the weekend lock schedule. Gabe turned to look at me with disappointed eyes.

As we watched them through the window, they approached the garbage can and then looked back at us to make sure we were watching. They performed rock, paper, scissors to see which of them would inspect the envelope and obviously the older cop lost because he booted the garbage can off the envelope and scooped it up. He initially opened the letter and began reading it and as he did, he started to assume a softer posture as he put on his reading glasses and pulled out his phone to use google search. After 5 minutes of reading, they turned to come inside and report their findings.

"Ok so ... this is a really angry letter," the older officer said, "this guy thinks that the bank owes him some money? It's on some kind of legal document, have you ever seen one of these before?" he asked, I had not.

"Is It dangerous?" I asked,

"Nope, not dangerous" he said, "Do you have a contact at the bank that you can deliver this to on Monday?",

"Yeah, I'll make sure they get it." I said,

"You know, I didn't mean to bust your balls to much or anything, I know that you are probably just following your SOP's, but I just think all these policies are kind of a joke sometimes," he said while taking a seat on the desk to relax, "I guess you can't be too careful though. I remember right after 9/11 when all that anthrax was being mailed around, I attended a call just down the street from here for a report of some drugs that security had found. Back in those days we used to just bring it to the station and the drug team would weigh it for stats before destroying it. So, I go pick up this bag of coke or something, it was just a zip lock sandwich bag half full of powder, it was probably pretty expensive. I took it to the station and dropped it in the drug room and they asked me what it was, and I was like, I dunno. They were like, what you didn't Nik it? And I was like no, it's drugs, you are going to destroy it anyways what do I care? So, they ended up freaking out and evacuating the whole station because they thought it was anthrax," he laughed, "I had to get naked in the street and the fire department hosed me down while they put on hazmat suits and tried to figure out what it was."

I could see that he had built a solid pride in his air of stupidity. And as they left site, we took down the caution tape and returned to normal duties. I took the envelope to my office so that I could begin my report and start making phone calls to inform the appropriate parties as to what had happened, but then the phone rang ...

"Hey, it's me, the cop that was just up in the lobby there, have you still got that envelope by any chance?" he asked,

Of course, I did, it had only been 20 minutes,

"I was just wondering if I could get some information off of it, the same guy just dropped off a similar envelope at our station and I didn't bother to write down ANYTHING, not even his name," he said while laughing.

To protect and serve.