Even by small town standards...

...This is weird.

I mean, this is really weird.

In the town of Hardin, Montana, a development group called Two Rivers Authority sold a bunch of bonds and built a 464-bed jail, for no apparent reason. It was finished several years ago and is still empty. Okay, well, little towns do weird things.

But now it seems this empty jail has been taken over by something called American Police Force, the logo of which, I shit you not, goes like this:


According to their web site, which plays a truncated version of Bolero at you while you read it,

American Police Force is dedicated to maintaining our well deserved professional reputation as a results oriented full-service private investigative and security agency by way of commitment, diligence, unique resources, creativity, and tenacity on behalf of our clients.

Uh, yeah. Okay. APF seems to be (or seems to be presenting itself as) a low-rent version of the Company Formerly Known as Blackwater, which according to William Grigg, "Never heard of them."

So far it's strange, but stranger things have happened. Subsequent rumors abound: TRA's website has a streaming banner with the following:

There is no fence or gate being built around Hardin.
People are not being put in jail for refusing the swine flu shot.
And our city is not being taken over by a private police agency.

:-) Y'know, when you need statements like that, you may have a small public relations problem.

There isn't a helluva lot of news about this, though (as the rumors prove) the black helicopter crowd is orgasming continuously and may simply explode at any moment. What actually is going on, is confusing. APF brass showed up in black Mercedes SUVs with "Hardin Police Force" decals. The decals disappeared, but the SUVs remain. A mayoral candidate named Kerri Smith, the wife of the TRA executive director, (who has been put on 'adminstrative leave' for unspecified reasons that I'm guessing have something to do with the aforementioned public relations problem) is making all sorts of soothing public statements that manage to sound pretty damned ominous: "'Don't panic, just go with the flow and everything will be fine,' said Smith."

In the meantime, a private police force either is or is not patrolling the streets of Hardin, Montana. The town has no official police force, and it's probably not true that the county sheriff's department has been disbanded because I'm pretty sure a city council can't do that. One thing we know for sure is that:

There is no fence or gate being built around Hardin.
People are not being put in jail for refusing the swine flu shot.
And our city is not being taken over by a private police agency.

UPDATE:
Maybe just a little skepticism out there about "American Police Force"...

And it would seem the skepticism is entirely justified...