An intoxicated man called to report he had committed a crime and needed to go to jail. Investigation revealed however no crime had occurred. Insisting on going to jail, the man took his pants off to try for an indecent exposure charge. This didn’t work either. The man then threatened to punch an officer in order to go to jail. Police instead took the man to a detox center where he could sober up.
I grew up in Walker, MN (pop. 941), a wide spot in Highway 371 in northern Minnesota. Situated approximately halfway between Fargo, ND, and Duluth, MN, Walker is notable for…well, for being a place I escaped from when I was 15. It’s a town so small that it has a newspaper- the Walker Pilot (now the Pilot-Independent)- that’s only printed once a week, mostly to advertise smelt fries, lutefisk and spaghetti feeds, and obituaries. Once upon a time, my mother worked at the Pilot, which, given that we lived in the middle of something close to nowhere, wasn’t exactly a hotbed of journalistic excitement.
One of my favorite parts of the Pilot was the weekly police blotter, which gave readers the opportunity to see who got busted for speeding, DUI, public intoxication, or drunkenly stumbling around their backyard in their underwear while discharging their shotgun into the sky. The police blotter was an occasional source of embarrassment for some, but for an excitement-starved small town it was as close to taking a walk on the wild side as you were likely to find. Now the Pilot features the Cass County Sheriff’s Report, which reads like a laundry list and is every bit as (not very) exciting as you might expect. Back in the day, no one worried or much cared about the privacy of others, and so we took vicarious enjoyment from the not-so-brilliant moments of others.
The Oregonian now runs a weekly list of calls from the Forest Grove Police Department, which is even more entertaining than what I grew up reading in the Pilot. If you ever need to feel better about your own miserable, pointless existence, I’d highly recommend reading what Forest Grove’s finest have been up to. I suspect it will leave you with a smile on your face.
