Blotter Blogger -- May 22, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009

By request, I'm back with more from my local police/sheriff's blotter.

I'm sensing some patterns this week, and I've been wondering if the blotter has been thematic -- perhaps even prognosticatory -- all along.

Diving right in, then -- Perusing the top story this week (with exciting! photo), I'm concerned that my idyllic-paradise of a town may be sliding into a Cautionary Tale Vortex:

House destroyed in fire set by children playing with matches.

Digging deeper into blotter, I found further signs of CTV slippage:

Two women drove to a health club on Washington on May 16 and left a 1998 GMC pickup truck unlocked with the keys in the center console. Someone drove the truck to an uptown location and stole a duffel bag containing medications and other items.

A person reported leaving a wallet in a bathroom at a park-and-ride lot May 6, and the wallet was stolen.

Moving on from my ponderings about whether a wallet can be stolen if you leave it in a public bathroom, I was somewhat mollified by the burglary reports, which seemed to indicate that the status quo was being maintained:

Candy was taken May 2 from a Port Townsend home that was burglarized.

Police believe that an intoxicated person tried to enter an occupied room at a motel in the 1800 block of Water on May 10. An investigation found that someone broke into another room and apparently made a cup of coffee and left.

Casual-use burglary is a proud tradition in my little town. A couple of years ago, we had the Sandwich Burglar, who would break into people's houses, fix themselves a sandwich, and leave. These burglaries might have been nominated as "Perfect Crime" material, had the perpetrator's mother only taught them to rinse the mayo knife and crumb the counter. If you come to visit, lock up your bologna -- the Sandwich Burglar remains at large.

Just as I was relaxing a bit, thinking the CTV alert was a false-alarm, I noticed that the County Sheriff's office had apparently been issued an overabundance of "scare quotes", and had opted to discharge some of the surplus in this week's blotter:

A deputy contacted a marina manager to advise him that it was legal to shoot off a small cannon in the marina, which is within a "no shooting" zone, provided the cannon didn't fire a "projectile."

A deputy was asked to check on an "unruly, intoxicated female" who had been "ejected from an aid car" near Port Townsend on May 4. Port Townsend police officers apparently took her to Jefferson Healthcare Hospital so she could be with her husband.

(As an aside: You can't imagine how satisfying it is to place the words "scare quotes" inside "scare quotes". Really. You can't.)

I searched for more evidence to support my CTV hypothesis, but alas, the blotter revealed no more clues to unlock the code. Yet, as it returned to it's usual "An off-duty officer found a belt with geological tools near Blue Heron Middle School on May 13. The owner can claim the tools at the police department" and "A bobcat was chased from the Chimacum High School property May 2", I couldn't help feeling that perhaps I'd stumbled upon hint of some esoteric truth -- and I'll be watching my blotter more closely in the future. The lottery numbers are probably in there somewhere.

Blotter Blogger Parts One and Two at my home blog

Posted byPortlyDyke at 9:17 AM  

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