Thursday, January 31, 2008

Police Log

I just now got done filing my taxes for 2007. I think this is the fastest I have ever gotten it done, and I am surprised that I got all my documentation on time this year. I'm getting a good refund, which makes me happy...but it is almost all spent already. I have to get new tires and brakes, plus a new water heater.

Anyhow, I don't do a lot of web surfing. This is because once you see one website, you've seen them all. Well...almost.

While reading a favorite blog, Jalopnik...the blog for cars, there was a link to a newspaper in a small town in California. Arcata, California, to be exact.

The newspaper, the Arcata Eye, bills itself as "the mildly objectionable weekly newspaper for Arcata, California." This is a great independent newspaper that has news in it that real people could get in to. I wish the papers here in the Dayton area were so good...

Anyhow, the best part of the paper is the Police Log. Every small newspaper has a police log that points out some of the more interesting pieces of information that the local constabulary makes available from their reports.

This is some of the funniest stuff that I have ever read. It is filled with gems, like this...
2:16 p.m. She’s not getting along with her ex-boyfriend, and now her rear-view mirrors are broken. Coincidence? One wonders. Well, she does anyway.
8:59 p.m. He may have been the most drunken man to ever stagger the earth, and he added to his repertoire of senseless activity by banging on the walls of his Alliance Road apartment and screaming. Police advised silence as an alternative to jail.
12:06 p.m. In retrospect, it was sheer foolishness to leave a portable computer, wallet and other valuables in a car at Fourth and J streets over the weekend.
• Sunday, January 6 10:24 a.m. A damaged raccoon on Samoa Boulevard was ministered to (see story, page B4).
6:12 p.m. A man in a red jacket ranted and raved at an electrical box on H Street.
3:34 a.m. A man on the Plaza had an argument with himself until asked to debate his inner demons elsewhere.
2:07 p.m. He left his wallet in his sweatshirt with his backpack in front of a Westwood market for “just a minute.”
4:41 p.m. A suspected sub-genius in a long black trench coat whiled away the afternoon pointing toy guns at cars entering a Uniontown parking lot.

Makes you think that police work in Arcata, California is really fun!

The author of these tidbits of gendarme reality is Kevin Hoover, and he apparently has several books out of his famous police logs, detailing some of the greatest bits and pieces of Arcata police history.

I must warn you, however, that if you go to the website to read the funniest police logs you will ever read, you may just spend hours reading. You have been warned!

2 comments:

Shari said...

Heh, saying you don't surf much then posting something which someone can spend hours laughing at sort of undermines the notion that you don't spend much time on the Internet. ;-)

I'm just joshing you, of course. If I had time (if I were still working in an office, for instance), this is exactly the sort of thing I'd meticulously read through. I hope to find some time to peruse it though. Thanks for the heads up!

badmoodguy (Бадмўдгуи) said...

Ok...you got me...I guess I should have said that I TRY not to spend much time on the internet! :)