Police Notes

Yesterday, I went to the police station to get the police notes. In order for the press to get access to the arrest records, we have to wait in this tiny little room in the police station for up to 40 minutes. When I first got there, the reporter I was with picked up this phone attached to the wall and said "This is the reporter from the Gloucester Daily Times, I'm here for the (insert names of specific documents that I have no idea what they are called or what they meant)." We can't actually take any of the forms out of the police station--I guess for confidentiality reasons, since they have names, phone numbers, addresses, and social security numbers on them--so we had to sit there and copy all of the interesting things down into a notebook. The first thing we looked through was the arrests for today. The whole thing basically consisted of one guy who got pulled over, then picked up by the police for an unnamed outstanding warrant and one other guy who was arrested for what the reporters here call the "trifecta"--namely, operating on a suspended license, operating a motor vehicle without insurance, and operating a motor vehicle with an expired registration. We also noted that the man had a HUGE amount of money on him, which was suspicious. The next thing we looked at were all the 911 calls over the last 24 hours. To be honest, a LOT of them were to report "suspicious vehicles" or people who were driving erratically. Some highlights:

• A man who would identify himself only as "Glen" called in to report a suspicious vehicle. He provided a license plate number, which the officer ran: it came up with nothing.
• A woman called in to report her dogs, Rocco and Bruno, as missing. She left the house at 11 a.m. and when she returned at 11 p.m., the dogs were gone. Nothing else was reported missing.
• A man crashed his mother's car. He was heavily intoxicated.
• A woman called the police to request house checks during the day. She had received a call from someone claiming to be with ADT security a few days before, and the person had reportedly asked several questions about the home. A few days later, she called ADT and found that no one from the company had contacted her.