By 
March 9th, 2024
Image credit: RPD/Sgt. Trong Nguyen
While the just-issued U.S. Department of Defense report on aerial strangeness found no link to extraterrestrial visitation, don’t tell that to the Roswell Police Department (RPD) in New Mexico.
Roswell is long associated with a reported 1947 site of an out-of-control UFO and its travel weary pilots. Dutifully, Roswell’s police have a new official patch – replacing an older emblem.
Older RPD patch.
Image credit: RPD
Small alien faces
“The new patch contains elements connecting it not only to the police department, but also the City of Roswell, the State of New Mexico and the Roswell community’s long association with UFO lore,”
The patch includes the city logo, a Zia symbol, a pair of small alien faces, and the phrasing, “Protect and Serve Those That Land Here.”
The patch also features the year the police department was established (1891), recognizing its 133-year history, and replaces a patch that has served RPD for more than 30 years and will now be retired.
Image credit: RPD
“The process to create a new patch began with an invitation to RPD employees – commissioned law enforcement officers as well as civilian staff – to submit design ideas,” notes an RPD statement.
Winning finalist
The new patch that will now represent the department was the one, from among the finalists, that proved the most popular among department employees who participated in an online survey. The chosen patch was crafted by Support Services Sgt. Trong Nguyen.
Distribution of the new patch to officers began March 6 “and will continue for some time as the department receives more patches from the company producing them,” the RPD posting adds.
Image credit: Roswell Daily Record
The ongoing transition to the new patch is expected to be completed by August 1.
As a new symbol of the department, the patch will be worn on the shoulders of officers’ uniforms and the image is to be used on various RPD printed and online materials.
No cover-up
Meanwhile, the DOD’s just-issued All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) report states that there is no verifiable evidence that any UAP, aka UFO, sighting has represented extraterrestrial activity.
In UFO lore, the “Roswell incident” refers to the July 1947 “recovery of metallic and rubber debris from a crashed military balloon near Roswell Army Air Field personnel that sparked conspiracy theories and claims that the debris was from an alien spaceship” and part of a governmental cover-up, explains the new AARO report.
Image credit: DOD/AARO
The AARO document, citing earlier U.S. Air Force looks into the incident, points out that the USAF’s research did not locate or develop any information that indicated the Roswell Incident was a UFO event, nor was there any “cover-up” by the U.S. Government (USG).
Test dummies
Rather, those materials recovered near Roswell were consistent with a balloon of the type used in the then-classified Project Mogul. No records showed any evidence that the USG recovered aliens or extraterrestrial material, as explained in the AARO document.
The USAF subsequently published a follow-on report in 1997, The Roswell Report: Case Closed, with additional materials and analysis which supported its conclusion that the debris recovered near Roswell was from the U.S. Army Air Force’s balloon borne program.
Image credit: USAF/Alderson Laboratories anthropomorphic dummies of the type dropped from balloons.
The alleged “alien” bodies reported by some in the New Mexico desert, the Air Force “case closed” document explains, were test dummies that were carried aloft by U.S. Army Air Force high-altitude balloons for scientific research.
“Reports of military units that allegedly recovered a flying saucer and its ‘crew’ were descriptions of Air Force personnel engaged in the dummy recovery operations,” the Air Force Roswell report points out. “Claims of ‘alien bodies’ at the Roswell Army Air Force (RAAF) hospital were most likely the result of the conflation of two separate incidents: a 1956 KC-97 aircraft accident in which 11 Air Force members lost their lives; and a 1959 manned balloon mishap in which two Air Force pilots were injured.”
Posted in Space News
