These are excerpts from the my town’s police log, from five random days this past summer. And as it says right there in the paper where I see it each week, all police logs are available to the public anytime.
So here’s what went down in my this little burg with its pretty town center dominated by the highly-aspiring steeple of the First Congregational Church:
- “A woman from O. Street [as I will call it] found a wallet on the town Common belonging to a man [several towns away.]” But HOW did it journey all 11 miles, hmmm?
- “An unidentified woman gave police [another, unrelated] wallet that she found in the town center.” This wallet was the property of a woman some 20 miles distant. Related wickedness? The plot thickens!
- “An injured raccoon was found at the Transfer Station [what we call the town dump.] The animal’s front leg was missing and one paw was injured. Police euthanized the raccoon.” The are a good-hearted force but they do what has to be done.
And finally this, again in the police report’s exact words:
- “A Main Street man was stopped for colliding with a telephone pole. On observation he smelled of alcohol but said he had not been drinking. A bottle of liquor was found in the back seat of his vehicle.” We make no judgments as you can see. There’s no need to jump to conclusions – and anyway the man could be a local big-shot.
Six miles away in a small and multicultural city however, the assumptions reflected in that paper’s police blog seem to lie in a different direction.
I especially like these two entries, recording some hi-jinks that took place there just a few weeks further on:
- “A drunk who got into a fight and picked up a steak knife to threaten a relative was arrested on August 17th.” Hey the guy was a drunk, so let’s call him a drunk.
And,
- While trying to control an unruly man on August 15th police found him hiding weed and cash in a winter glove stuffed into his pants, according to a report.”
These are both exact quotes. I emailed the pal of mine who’s the editor of this paper to congratulate her on having such a free-swinging and jaunty person covering the police beat. She shot back a good-natured response:
“Yeah, that reporter is new to the paper and new to the country. She tries hard though.”
She’s got the lingo a little wrong is all. So she doesn’t realize that exactly no one in officialdom goes on the record calling marijuana “weed,” so what? But the fact that she has the guy hiding the stuff it in his pants? That’s just good reporting (never mind evidence of a fine comic sense.)
Meanwhile back in my town this week, the tame and plodding finally took a turn toward the slapstick in candidate for the police blotter item, fattened and fleshed out into more of a news story:
- “At 8:17pm an ‘excited’ C. Road caller reported that her husband was locked in the bedroom and not responding. The caller was ‘hysterical,’ police said. When police arrived, they found a woman on scene ‘crying and yelling ‘Please help my husband!’ A patrolman followed the woman to the locked bedroom door. He shouted to rouse the man several times, but got no answer. He then proceeded to kick the door down. After the door sustained heavy damage, the man who was believed to be unconscious on the other side of the now-broken door, ‘walked up the stairs to inquire what all the commotion was about,’ police wrote in their report, on file at the police department. Police said the man told his wife, ‘I thought you knew I ran down to the pharmacy to get my medications.’”
I just love stuff like this. And I don’t know how many readers in my snoozy small town read this stuff – maybe I can take an informal poll.
But my pal over in that busy little city says they track such things on their online version of the paper and hands-down its the police blotter that gets more hits than any other place, which you can totally see. Every day God gets up and decides once again NOT to squash us like bugs it’s gotta be because humans are just so gosh-darn human. I bet he’s keeping us around just for the entertainment value.
