Heres a story of what happened to me at a district convention this year.
An unbaptised publisher and I travelled to Wolverhampton district convention in England. This wasnt our district but Id been on holiday and had missed my own district convention (how unspiritual of me). So me and this friend decided to go to this convention and was also hoping to meet a friend there.
On the Saturday morning we were delayed in traffic and we eventually arrived at 11.30am, paid our 3 for parking (I wonder if they had the use of car parks for free?) and walked into the corner of the football stadium at 11.45am. neither of us had convention badges on. We stood at the corner of the stadium and decided not to sit down because the baptisms were taking place and lunch would only be in a few minutes time.
While we were standing there, an attendant came up to us and asked if he could help us. We said we were just waiting for the baptisms to finish. He asked us where we were from and we told him that we were bros from such and such a place. He then said oh ok and walked off.
Baptism finished and lunch commenced so we went to the supermarket just a few hundred yards away and got ourselves a bite to eat. We came back to the stadium and had a wonder around as is the custom, and we were stopped and asked for the second time who we were. We said who we were and the attendant said fine no problem we just werent sure cause you werent wearing your badges.
Well we started to get a bit paranoid now because we could see other bros walking around without badges.
We were outside the stadium when it was time to go back in as the afternoon programme had started. As we were entering the stadium we were stopped by the official stadium security staff. They asked us who we were and was their any way we could prove ourselves to be JWs. We told them who we were, where we were from and I showed them my bag with my books in. they said that it was not good enough. They said that wed been seen handing out apostate literature at some turnstile. Well we absolutely dumb struck. We said that other than what we had in our bags there was nothing with which to prove ourselves as JWs. We protested our innocence and the security staff called over certain attendant which I was latter to learn was a so called Watchman. He came over and said wed been see handing out literature etc. and I said we hadnt and we want to see the person whos making that accusation against us. He said that we couldnt and we would have to prove our ID or we would have to leave the stadium.
We stood there in disbelief and I suddenly remembered that I had my AMD in a pocket of my bag. Just at that particular time a bro turned up who had met me before at some party a while ago and remembered me and told the watchman that I was a bro.
I took the AMD out and showed him he began to read it and I snatched it out of his hands. I said to him that I wanted to see the person who has made this accusation. He refused. I said to him you would have thrown us, brothers at that, out of this stadium if we couldnt have proved our identity! I want to see that person! he said we couldnt and that he was informed over the radio and there would be no way of tracing that person. I said rubbish. I said I want to see the person whos In control of the radio communications. He said that I couldnt and that the matter was sorted out now and that we could go inside the stadium and forget about it. I said that there was no way I was going to do anything until I see the person in charge.
Well things got very heated, and there was no way Id let this one go. My friend who was with me didnt want to know and wanted to go in and sit down. I told him he could do what he likes but Im going to sort this out.
Someone standing by said to cool it because there was apostates stand just a few feet away. I said that I didnt care and that I was going to see this guy in charge. Well the watchman walked off and started talking on his radio, and everyone was telling me to go inside and forget about it. Which was making me even more annoyed.
After a couple of minutes he came back over and said that he was taking us to the guy in charge. Great I thought. My friend was moaning that he didnt want to go and he was advised to with me. The moaning git, he was only making the problem worse for me.
We went up some steps into the executive suite of the stadium. Went up a flight of stairs and entered a corridor and was shown a door which had the title watchmen on it. We were asked to wait here as there was a meeting going on. I was all quite tense at this time and agitated. After what seemed like an hours I was asked to go in.
The room had a table with some chairs around and a tall dark guy in his late forties came up to me and shook my hand and asked me to sit down. He told me he was the head JW man in charge of the stadium. He explained a bit of what he does and his responsibilities and the communications network they use. He also talked about these so called watchers who keep a watch over people in the stadium. I later learned that these guys can be identified by a black dot on there badge. He went on to say how they keep a look out for apostates which includes spying on JWs who they may think are slightly suspicious. From the advantage of the executive rooms they use binoculars to scan through the crowd. He also went on to say how that they dont let the JWs know this goes on because, in his words, they wouldnt be happy knowing they were being spied upon.
He told me how this whole situation had been a mistake and that someone he had got his wires crossed. Apparently we had been watched from the moment we had arrived in the stadium, which explains why were being asked who we were. A bonus for us was that we had evaded their surveillance for a good quarter of an hour and they didnt have a clue where we had gone.
There had been 2 women apostates that were also being tracked who were the ones who handed out the literature in the stadium. When the guy who was meant to have tracked these two women spotted them again he told the Chief that they had been spotted at turnstile 3 handing out literature. The chief then assumed it was us that had done it and that was why were challenged. After telling me this he then apologised for the mistake. I told him what I thought about the watchman who challenged me and how the whole situation was crazy considering that we could have been ordinary civilians just coming along to see what JWs were about. He said sorry again and said he hoped wed enjoy the rest of the afternoon. I said there wouldnt be much chance of that. Needles to say we didnt bother going back on the Sunday.
Well thats my run in with the WTS secret police. I hope it wasnt too long winded for you. But it certainly added to my sense of distrust of the WTS. In fact from then on decide never to attend another assembly. Some of my elders told me to tell the CO so that things could be improved, but I certainly didnt have any faith that that would happen, and wasnt prepared to go through all the usual questions to see whether any of it could have been my fault. So I never bothered.