UFO Sighting in Seal Beach, California on 1973-04-30 03:00:00 – Space vehicle observed entering earth’s atmosphere, descend and hover a few feet off the ground near where i was standing, beside my police unit

The following exert is an eye witness statement. Please read into it what you will. This has been reported to mufon who I am sure are investigating:

I was a police officer on duty, about 0300 hours, sunday morning, seal beach, southern california. less than a mile off the beach, parked in the north american aviation parking lot observing the stars. earlier it had rained and washed the smog away revealing an incredible sky seldom seen in southern california in the 1960-1970s. it was probably april or may 1973.
i observed to the northwest at an unknown but very high altitude what initially appeared to be a shooting star rapidly approaching my location. at that time it appeared to be bright white. it rapidly slowed, then came to a stop, probably above 75,000 feet. this only took a few seconds. next, it began to descend at a moderate rate of speed, straight down, coming to a hover less than 500 feet from me. color was dark gray, then began to pulse the same three colors in the same order. it was only a few feet above the munition bunkers at the seal beach naval weapon station. it remained stationary for perhaps ten minutes while i observed it through my 10×50 binoculars–it was so close and so large that i had to turn right and left to take in the rather large space vehicle. i noticed the navy security vehicles keeping a respectable distance from the vehicle. i later determined that the main gate had been closed while the incident was in progress.
the vehicle did not project light, it merely changed colors. after about 10 minutes it appeared to set up a search pattern over the munition bunkers, very slowly traveling over each row. then it gradually increased speed and appeared to follow power lines toward the ocean.
i asked dispatch to check with huntington beach and see if its helicopter could assist. i did not reveal over the radio what circumstances lead to this request. 4210 henry (helicopter) was down for the night. i attempted to follow the space vehicle but lost it as it entered huntington beach city limits.
i logged the incident and turned the log in at end of shift. the watch commander called me in and i gave him a brief explanation. he did not want me to do an incident report, which would have triggered an entry in the department daily log that was read by journalists on a daily basis.
weeks earlier 2 lapd officers on graveyard shift observed a space vehicle up close and personal. they alerted the media which brought in air force investigators which rapidly led to the usual inane nonsense whenever turning back a ufo sighting. so i elected to avoid the nonsense.
weeks later the orange county register put out an afternoon edition that had a large photo of “my” space ship. no article but several lines of print under the photo revealing that a company photographer took the picture of the space ship hovering over power lines just off an orange county freeway–i believe it was the newport beach freeway. traffic had come to a stop, meaning that at least hundreds witnessed, up close, this hovering space vehicle and thousands more observed the photo, page one above the fold.
many years later, after medically retiring and becoming a journalist a researcher was sent to orange county and spent days going through the o.C. register files. the space ship photo was not located.