January 1, 2009

"A woman called at 10 p.m. from the 11000 block of Mooney Flat Road to report a person was causing an argument and throwing cheese in her eye."

"A man at the house also called. He sounded as if he had been drinking, and he said a woman was throwing cheese all over the house and his wife was acting 'nutso.' The man said the fight was not physical, but a woman could be heard in the background saying, 'yes.' A deputy determined the fight was not physical. No arrests were made."

Don't you love the old "police blotter" feature in newspapers?
Posted by Ann Althouse at 6:17 PM
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7 comments:

reader_iam said...

Nostalgia.

1/1/09, 7:18 PM
Kev said...

This stuff is indeed very funny. If you'd like some more of the same, James Lileks culls some of the better stories from his own paper's police blotter and publishes it weekly on buzz.mn under the name of "Miscreant Roundup" or "Miscreant Bouillabaisse." Here's the most recent example.

1/1/09, 7:20 PM
Anonymous said...

My wife has some relatives who live in Grass Valley, part of the area covered by the newspaper. Lovely area.

But it IS California, which explains why the reports verge on the surreal more than they might elsewhere.

Here in Massachusetts, we still have a police blotter in our local paper. The difference is that everybody knows everybody else, and knows exactly who any given story might refer to, unless, of course, some scumbag from Billerica was caught DUI, but then we know what THOSE people are like, don't we?

1/1/09, 7:26 PM
reader_iam said...

I dunno, Theo; having worked a cop beat for a bit (and edited many more such briefs) NOT in California, it strikes me that the surreal is just part of it. That, and the banal.

1/1/09, 7:29 PM
Anonymous said...

Well, maybe I've just gotten used to tight, little Massachusetts, but we definitely go for the banal around here.

Unless you're from Billerica. But we all know what Billerica people are like. And if you're from Woburn, just keep driving. You're not our sort, either. And you'll get a ticket for going 5 mph over the speed limit when you get to Lincoln.

Despite Massachusetts' reputation for lax liberality, the tonier Boston 'burbs are the most thoroughly policed, uptight places I know of in the country, save gated communities.

We like to keep it that way, too.

Police blotter? Save it for lost cats.

1/1/09, 8:32 PM
SteveR said...

Here's from my local police blotter:

A 2006 Toyota Avalon(my wife's car) was struck at the Mesilla Valley Mall on Christmas Eve by an unknown driver in a black Chevrolet Corvette, which fled the scene. Police are concentrating their efforts by staying by the phones 9am-4:30 pm M-F waiting for the perpetrator to call in and confess.

1/1/09, 10:23 PM
dick said...

Theo,

Check out a few of the tonier NY suburbs sometime. I used to live in a very rich suburb in NJ and the people there were absolutely unbelievable. They were so busy patting themselves on the back for being compassionate liberals who cared for the illegal immigrants to the detriment of their own areas that they never noticed that they were sneering at all the people who worked in the place. I could not wait to get away from that place.

1/2/09, 12:01 AM

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