What a difference a year makes.

During my first year on the crime beat for Mesquite Local News, the process was always the same.

I would roll up on a crime scene with my little reporter’s pad and camera.

And armed police officers would run for cover as if my deodorant had failed and that they would instantly be turned into pillars of salt if they were caught even looking in my direction.

And in a way, that was right, since officers were warned by their superiors not to even think about talking to the press unless they were interested in a new career that involved investigating whether a customer “wanted fries with that.”

Last week, I rolled up to the crime scene where MPD officers had stopped a couple of guys that Las Vegas detectives wanted to talk to.

By the time I got there, the crime tape was still up and handcuffs were already applied, but the guns had been put away.

My greeting was different.

Instead of trying to pretend I wasn’t there, a couple of the officers actually came up to me and started shooting the breeze about the lack of a breeze in Mesquite.

They let me know they couldn’t say anything official about the situation quite yet, but they would fill me in as soon as all the information was gathered.

And they did.

The attitude and atmosphere among Mesquite police officers has completely turned around, thanks to a new, more open approach instituted by Chief Doug Law and embraced by a patrol division that recognizes I’m not the enemy.

(It’s ironic…over a year ago, City Hall used to give me every scrap of info I needed, and even some I didn’t need, while police officers wouldn’t speak to me. Now, the police department provides plenty of information, and I can’t get the folks at City Hall to return my calls.)

Anyway, after a while talk turned to my car, a Dodge Magnum.

(It just goes to show what a nerd I am…now that I’m old enough to be able to afford the insurance on any car I want, like a Camaro or a Corvette or Mustang convertible, I choose a glorified station wagon.)

A couple of the detectives were kicking around the idea of getting a Magnum for the detective bureau, thinking it might have enough space to accommodate their guns and investigative equipment.

They started asking about the car’s size, and how much space it had in the back.

I gladly took them over to the car, opened up the back hatch, and let them check it out.

Now I want you to see this in its proper perspective.

There are no less than four police cars surrounding the scene, some with lights still flashing.

Uniformed and un-uniformed officers are everywhere you look.

Crime tape is blocking off half the road.

And there I am, the back hatch to my car open for inspection, standing outside my vehicle while two armed detectives poke around in the back and occasionally point at different sections of the cargo area.

It didn’t hit me how all this looked until I saw the gaping face of a passerby driving past the scene.

Needless to say, I wasn’t under arrest for transporting drugs, mostly because traces of dropped McDonalds french fries are only considered illegal substances in the state of California.

Also, the detectives decided that the Magnum wasn’t the right car for their needs.

That might be due to the fact that, based on the number of people staring as they drove by, the car seems to draw too much attention to be used for undercover work.