On Jan. 8, 2008, a Stephenville, Texas, area law enforcement officer on patrol used his police radar system for tracking speeders to measure the speed of a huge unidentified object in the sky.

"I had to swivel my radar head up into the sky. And I knew I got a good hit on it. It showed 27 miles per hour and was accelerating slowly."

This element of the observation of a UFO by several peace officers and dozens of citizens was reported March 30 on StephenvilleLights.com by journalist and radio station news director Angelia Joiner.

Joiner previously reported that more than one officer captured images of an unidentified object in the sky on the videocameras mounted on patrol car dashboards.

In this new account by an officer who requested to remain anonymous because of his professional duties and responsibilities, Joiner reports that, "He said he was unable to position his dash cam in a way that video footage could be taken, but he did manage to lock it in on radar."

OFFICERS SEE OBJECT

Joiner refers to this public safety officer as "Officer X." He did not initially step forward when he spotted a huge object over Stephenville Jan. 8.

However, he casually mentioned it to another officer, then read reports in the local newspaper, the Stephenville Empire-Tribune, by Joiner who was then a reporter at the paper.

"I want people to know that the citizens are telling the truth," Officer X told Joiner.

"They're not lying," he said. "They are telling the truth. There was something there. I think it's stealthy. It has a stealth capability. I think it can change colors with the sky. It was as dark as the sky until it lit up."

He confirms that several other local officers also witnessed the craft.

Regarding a diagram of the craft based on observations by officers and recently made public, Officer X told Joiner, "The diagram I did shows 400 feet [from wing tip to wing tip], but looking back, I think it was larger, maybe between 500 and 600 feet."

In the diagram the craft was described as a somewhat flat octagonal shape with raised portions on the top and bottom. Various light configurations with different colored lights were observed by the officer.

When he first observed it, the craft was hovering in a horizontal position. It was approximately 100 to 500 feet off the ground, based on reports of other officers.

The officer told Joiner, "My estimate is the object was about a half mile away at the most. At first, I thought it was a big aircraft, but then I realized it was hovering. I then thought, 'An aircraft that size doesn't hover.'"

Joiner quotes him as saying, "It started out horizontal, went up to the left at 30 to 40 degrees, and stopped for about five seconds. Then it went slowly vertical. It took about another five seconds to do this; then it slowly moved away to the northwest. It was one big craft."

The object eventually slowly moved away from the officer's position, remaining at a low altitude, and he was no longer able to observe it because it went behind tree tops and he was required to respond to an unrelated official police call.

MEDIA, WITNESSES, THEORIES

According to Joiner, the officer began to think more about discussing what he had seen after reading articles in the Empire-Tribune about witness reports of an unidentified object.

The first of a series of articles, written by Joiner, was published in the paper Jan. 10.

Upon learning that other officers were talking about it, he contacted them. One officer was Erath County Constable Lee Roy Gaitan, who was quoted in print articles and appeared on camera in local and national TV news reports at the time.

He told Joiner, "I thought, 'Okay ... Lee Roy (Gaitan) is talking, and he's a good friend of mine. I've known him for years and he's a credible, good person.' The other two officers had already talked about it, so I went straight to them."

"The first night I talked to them was Jan. 12. They described what they saw and I did a drawing on Notepad and took it back to them, and they said it was how they saw it."

Constable Gaitan was not the only local credible witness who had stepped forward early in the incidents. Local businessman and pilot Steve Allen came forward. So did machinist Ricky Sorrells.

Other local citizens and law officers chose a more low-key stance. Some talked only with friends, family and professional associates. Some spoke confidentially and off-the-record with Joiner.

When the Associated Press picked up the story in January, other major regional, national and international print, broadcast and TV cable news organizations reported professionally on the situation in Stephenville and Erath County.

As Joiner points out in her March 30 article, this resulted in the evaluation by many that the Stephenville case is the most significant public UFO case since the so-called "Phoenix Lights" incident March 13, 1997.

In that case, although some witnesses saw only huge lights in an apparent shape, hundreds or thousands of other Arizonans reportedly saw a huge V-shaped or boomerang-shaped object.

According to witnesses, it cruised slowly and silently at low altitude over rural Arizona and metropolitan Phoenix in the early evening, moving in a southeasterly direction.

As others concluded from the Phoenix Lights case, Officer X in Texas stated, "I think what we saw wanted to be seen."

Another similarity: People considering the Phoenix and Stephenville cases wondered if these craft were advanced U.S. technology of some kind, maybe from classified facilities in the Southwest.

Officer X told Joiner that he and another officer initially felt that the object was military.

However, he said a third officer "was pretty adamant that it was not." That officer's reasons for his conclusion could not be revealed to maintain his anonymity, Joiner reported.

Officer X said, "The more I thought about it ... I thought, 'They just don't fly secret projects in free air space.' If it's military, they made a big boo-boo by flying it into Stephenville, Texas. The Air Force knows better than that. It leads me away from the Air Force."

He told Joiner he didn't know if the craft was extraterrestrial in origin.

"How does a person know? How do you know without something landing and somebody walking out of it?"