The purpose of this weblog, I think, is to provide a candid look into crime and the law and justice community on Whidbey Island, as well as the hijinks of the modest newsroom that covers these things.
One of the weirder stories I’ve covered was about a drunk guy who stole a dump truck, kidnapped a dog, took his pants off and crashed into another vehicle. His excuse for his behavior was that he was raped at McDonald’s, though he later recanted the story. Unfortunately, someone got hurt in the collision, which takes a lot of the fun out of a story.
It’s the odd details that make such stories interesting to me. The small population of Whidbey Island means there’s not a lot of juicy, high-profile stories to dig into. There hasn’t been a murder in Oak Harbor for five years. Stories about bank robberies, terrorism and bestiality are hard to come by.
Nevertheless, there’s more than enough to keep me interested. I write extensively about the kinds of crimes that other newspapers may not always cover, but they are the misdeeds that affect people the most and tell us the most about a community, both in what criminals are up to and how the law responds.
Just about all the crime stories I’ve ever written in the last 12 years are saved on my computer. Randomly clicking on the list brings up a story about about a man who was arrested for using meth after he pulled his hair out and told a deputy he was “allergic to isotopes.” A woman stabbed her boyfriend in the butt; a man burglarized a home for bananas and junk food. There’s a story about a man who was arrested for growing marijuana after his brother finked on him. There’s one about a judge ordering “no biting” as a condition of a suspect’s release after the man bit a jailer on the calf. And there’s one about a bouncer who was charged with assaulting a patron, but the trial was put on hold after the alleged victim beat up the bouncer.
I relish the quirky details that I ferret out of police reports. In fact, I love oddball stories of all kinds, whether it’s the Iraq vet who hunts for ghosts or a guy who makes a living impersonating Saddam Hussein. I still kick myself because I didn’t do a story about a mixed-up hen that crowed like a rooster.
Sadly, a large portion of the stories on my hard drive involve terrible acts of violence, from a handful of murders to the sad, perverted march of child molesters through the court system. While crime rates continue to drop, the number of sex crimes against children hasn’t seemed to wane.