Anyone who participates in Geocaching thinking that their activities will not arouse suspicion is deluding themself.  For many years, the only people who put little tins under a park bench with a magnet were spies.  They used them to pass messages.  This is know as a "dead drop."  I'm sure they are still using them.

In addition, hidden "caches" are used by drug dealers and their customers to exchange drugs and money, and these people often use a GPS to further their criminal activity.  If you are a buyer, you get money to a drug dealer and then someone else calls you to give you the GPS location where you can go and retrieve your goods.  This makes it harder for law enforcement to get the chain of evidence they need to make the charges stick.  In court, it is easy for the dealer to say you were just paying back money you had borrowed and he has no idea who called you about the drugs.  The person who took the money, the person who placed the drugs, and the person who called with the location are all different people, and it is not easy to prove the connection.  It isn't even easy to catch the person who places the drugs since locations are not usually used more than once.

Because of these activities, a police officer who observes you retrieving something under a park bench or looking for a hidden box in the woods may well suspect that you are a spy or a druggie.  The fact is, you are acting like one.  His suspicion is justified.

I agree that the officer should be polite and not make threats like those reported in the recent incident, and if a cop gets out of line, report them.  They take these reports seriously.  However, to say that law enforcement should just ignore you when you act like a druggie or spy is certainly not the answer, either.  Right now, many don't know about geocaching, but even when they do, it won't make a difference.  If I was a druggie out looking for my goods and I was approached by a cop, I would tell him I was geocaching.  It is unfortunate, but our sport provides an excellent cover for those engaged in these illegal activities, and it is naive to expect cops to ignore us.

Bill in Willcox