While waiting for some carryout food in Columbia, SC, another guy entered to get food. He had a six-pronged badge on his belt on the right side, and a windbreaker jacket that read “USRS AGENT” on the back. I didn’t see a sidearm, though one could have been on the left side or a shoulder holster.
I couldn’t figure out in the store exactly what agency “USRS” could be, and now that I’m home with internet, I’m still coming up dry. The closest Federal body I can find is United States Bureau of Reclamation, formerly the United States Reclamation Service. But 1) they don’t appear to operate along the eastern seaboard, 2) their mission does not appear to need credentialed agents, and 3) they haven’t been the USRS since reorganization efforts in the early 1990s.
Hmmmm. Never heard of that acronym. Could the jacket have been folded over so that you misread it, and it was actually USMS (Marshals Service)? Or was it some private security firm with the initials USRS that was trying to “look official”? (A friend of mine used to work for U.S. Cargo and Courier Service, a private shipping firm that had nothing to do with the U.S. Government).
BTW, sometimes Federal agents wear windbreakers that don’t exactly describe their particular agency but are meant to get your attention quickly. Some even say POLICE even if they’re not actually “police.”
Not a good look, no. It was round, six-pronged, “star” instead of “shield” design.
The jacket was a dark blue windbreaker, and I’m certain that it read USRS. Mostly because, trying to guess in the restaurant, I’d briefly settled on “United States Revenue Service” before remembering that it would be “Internal Revenue Service” for their agents, and that I’ve seen video footage of IRS agents wearing the IRS windbreaker.
It doesn’t rule out the possibility that it was a collection agency pretending an air of officialdom with a crackerjack badge and official-looking windbreaker. The badge graphic on the linked website does not match up with what the guy was wearing, but their description of
goes along pretty well with the idea that this doofus was just wearing a faux-official windbreaker and badge in his job as a repo man. Having myself previously worked for a non-government company that wanted to sound official by having US as the first part of their name, it’s not a stretch.