Police Blotter
Despite the fact that I was warned against the practice by several friends, I have continued to read the Hamilton Spectator fairly regularly. The fact that I can pick it up for free in my wanderings helps. I doubt if I would pay for it. I might choose a different paper if I had to pay for it. There’s something about newspapers that I like. It’s the bigness of them and the flipping action. It’s the freedom to roam and quit reading as soon as you don’t feel like it anymore. It’s something about finding out a little bit about everything that’s going on. It’s also about local news. I love local news, the minutia of mundanity, the little tragedies. Fairly recently, the Spec changed its design. The new and improved Spec. It really makes it just a lot less wordy and bite sized and easy to skim. Which is good when you get to the Go section page 3 and you really don’t want to read about Brangelina or Bruce Willis or Lindsay Lohan, you just want to skip it altogether but then you decide, for future small talk reasons that you probably should know a little bit about what’s goin’ on. Or, at least, look at the pix and see if you can read drug addiction or jail time or new diet in their faces. But, that aside and to get to the actual point, my favourite new part of the new Spec is the weekly "Policeblotter" published every Wednesday. I love it and read every word of it. There’s a numbered map that goes with it and it shows the locations of various petty crimes that constitute a “roundup of police calls”. They are simultaneously tragic, petty, horrific, ridiculous, boring, salacious, serendipitous. My favourite this week is #24.
Melvin and Adair, Monday June 4, 3:15 a.m. Police respond to an alarm at a bowling alley and arrive to find the back door is not secure. It’s not known what, if anything, was stolen.
And there’s a further history to all of this. The Guelph Mercury used to (maybe still does) publish a similar column called “Royal City Roundup”. The Mercury actually printed the names and ages of the people arrested in these various situations and my dad used to read out the names and ask me if I knew any of these people. It was surprising how many I did know – many of them seemed to go to my high school.
Despite the fact that I was warned against the practice by several friends, I have continued to read the Hamilton Spectator fairly regularly. The fact that I can pick it up for free in my wanderings helps. I doubt if I would pay for it. I might choose a different paper if I had to pay for it. There’s something about newspapers that I like. It’s the bigness of them and the flipping action. It’s the freedom to roam and quit reading as soon as you don’t feel like it anymore. It’s something about finding out a little bit about everything that’s going on. It’s also about local news. I love local news, the minutia of mundanity, the little tragedies. Fairly recently, the Spec changed its design. The new and improved Spec. It really makes it just a lot less wordy and bite sized and easy to skim. Which is good when you get to the Go section page 3 and you really don’t want to read about Brangelina or Bruce Willis or Lindsay Lohan, you just want to skip it altogether but then you decide, for future small talk reasons that you probably should know a little bit about what’s goin’ on. Or, at least, look at the pix and see if you can read drug addiction or jail time or new diet in their faces. But, that aside and to get to the actual point, my favourite new part of the new Spec is the weekly "Policeblotter" published every Wednesday. I love it and read every word of it. There’s a numbered map that goes with it and it shows the locations of various petty crimes that constitute a “roundup of police calls”. They are simultaneously tragic, petty, horrific, ridiculous, boring, salacious, serendipitous. My favourite this week is #24.
Melvin and Adair, Monday June 4, 3:15 a.m. Police respond to an alarm at a bowling alley and arrive to find the back door is not secure. It’s not known what, if anything, was stolen.
And there’s a further history to all of this. The Guelph Mercury used to (maybe still does) publish a similar column called “Royal City Roundup”. The Mercury actually printed the names and ages of the people arrested in these various situations and my dad used to read out the names and ask me if I knew any of these people. It was surprising how many I did know – many of them seemed to go to my high school.
posted by Anne @ 3:05 PM
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