Blotter time
Every morning I come into work and sift through a small stack of papers that soon enough will be perhaps the most broadly read - the police blotter.
If only I could tell you the number of favors I could have cashed out by just letting one of these sheets slide off into the nearby garbage can. It would be so easy… and just think of all the rewards… true love, gold coins and immortality. Yes, the temptation to remove both friend and foe from the list has great reward. It’s tempting, but lucky for me credibility and honesty are in rare quantity. I’m sure if I just hold out a little longer they’ll just keep appreciating. Maybe someday when the weight of the reward outweighs the usefulness of such things, I’ll sell out and build a house on a magic cloud, riding my flying pig back and forth from Disney World every day. (Sorry for being so sarcastic, I can’t stand Disney… not since the Lion King anyhow.)
My favorites are the calls we get from people who demand not to be placed in the blotter and these calls are usually from the most guilty. It’s not like we were the one that sold you your crack and made you drive down Rt. 12 at 80 miles an hour with a license that was suspended because of your two prior DWIs, all since October. (Seriously we get a lot worse than that.)
Everyone goes into the blotter - EVERYONE. You, me, my neighbor, cops, judges and even my boss (holding my breath for that day.) If you get arrested, you get published. I can’t help it if people before me weed out their relations, but as far as I know every agency takes it very seriously and anyone who does “help out a friend,” shouldn’t.
I understand the appearance of guilt by being arrested, but remember anyone in the blotter is innocent and such assumptions of guilt are often made by the type of people who appear in it. So remember don’t be quick to judge because we all will be on the other end at one point or another. If any of you out there wants your dispositions published, please contact us. A disposition is the result of your case, however most don’t get them put in … geez, I wonder why. (That was me being subtly sarcastic because most people are guilty of at least something).
But if you refuse to give up the fight, here are my asking prices
Misdemeanor- 50 bucks and a monkey that can serve me coffee in the morning
DWI- Let me hit you in the face with a tire iron….. twice…. then maybe
Felonies - 200 bucks and I get to fire you out of a cannon. (Sorry our cannon is having technical difficulties so please provide your own)
Murder, Manslaughter, rape - No need to worry about the blotter, you’ll make front page news
Child molesters- let me hit you with my car at 70 miles an hour…. twice… then no.
“Life is tough, it’s tougher if you’re stupid.” -John (the Duke) Wayne
March 25th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
tyler arnt you being a little lenient on those dopes? i think your article was awsome and extreamly brave kudos to you and i cant wait for more!!
April 8th, 2007 at 1:55 am
How naive are you?
The only reason the blotter is in the paper is to sell more of them. If the Evening Sun were so concerned with actually getting the story correct, they could wait until those dispositions and publish the results. But that would require effort, when it is obviously so much easier to discredit someone to further sell papers. I have been in your blotter, once. I got a ticket, unjustifiably, and it was dismissed. Why should the onus be on the innocent party, when the Evening Sun felt so compelled by my seeming guilt in the first place, to contact you to follow up on the sensational story you created? When I received enough calls about it to try my patience, I responded by cancelling my subscription to your paper. (Ironic I ended up here, right?)
I refuse to read or discuss the blotter, 30 seconds, or the comics with anyone.
Everyone goes in the blotter? You know that is not true. You even contradict that statement in the same paragraph.
And Jane, please make the effort to make your posts not something so glaringly illiterate it gives me a headache. Thank you.
April 16th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
yeh what happened to innocent before proven guilty? People don’t need to know hearsay, they need to know fact. If you are PROVEN guilty, then it can be published. Why do people need to possibly ruin someones life over something that might not be fact. If you prove yourself not guilty in court, then you have to try to do the same to the public. Good luck with that, once people hear something automatically it’s the truth, whether it is or isn’t that person is screwed. This type of thinking could really ruin someone that might not deserve it. By the way, what gives you the right to say just because people ask not to be in the blotter they are guilty. Wait until it is you getting caught for whatever it is you’ve gotten away with for this long. Maybe then you’ll see things different.