Harriet the Spy, the Cops Report and the Power of Words

Years ago, when my editor sheepishly mumbled something about budget cuts and asked me to write the police blotter in addition to my column at the newspaper, I was intrigued. Titillated even. Get clearance to the hidden recesses of the police station every week? Have access to the gritty details of my suburban underworld?  Um...let me think for half a second...You bet!

It took me back to my nine year-old self who loved the novel Harriet the Spy. After Harriet, I created my own spy route. From the bushes beside my house, I’d slip my binoculars out of their brittle leather case and scan the block, my composition book tucked under my elbow. 

The man who lived across the street from us was a magician. I’d watch him rehearse tricks in his garage while his mourning doves filled the neighborhood with their plaintive song.

PEOPLE THINK MAGICIANS ARE DIFFERENT THAN ORDINARY PEOPLE. BUT THEY AREN'T. THEY JUST STAND IN THEIR GARAGES IN OLD SHIRTS AND PRACTICE PUSHING BIRDS UP THEIR SLEEVES OR INTO THE FAKE BOTTOMS OF THEIR TOP HATS. (THE BIRDS HATE IT.)

...

EVERYONE SAYS MRS. WEDNESDAY IS A WITCH. I THINK SHE IS ONE OF THE NICEST PEOPLE I’VE EVER MET. I WALK AS SLOWLY AS I CAN WHEN I PASS BY HER HOUSE. TODAY SHE GAVE ME A DOLL WITH A CHINA FACE THAT’S AS CRACKED AND FRAGILE AS HERS.

...

THESE GIRLS READING TIGER BEAT THINK IF THEY MET SHAUN CASSIDY IT WOULD BE LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT, BUT IF THEY EVER DID, HE WOULD TRY TO GET AWAY FROM THEM AS FAST AS HE COULD. ESPECIALLY THAT ONE WHO KEEPS PULLING THE GUM AWAY FROM HER MOUTH LIKE A STRETCHED OUT RUBBER BAND. 

I forgot about how closely I identified with Harriet until I started to cover the “cops report.” For several months, I signed in at the front desk of the police station, was given access to the elevator, and then sat across the hall from the police chief and read through incident reports. Sometimes I was moved to offices down the hall and heard police officers talking about cases. Needless to say, the Harriet in me was fascinated.

Of the 50 or more reports I read every week, I had to choose about a dozen to summarize and submit to the paper. I read about stolen bikes. DUIs. There was usually some kind of retail theft -- someone stole two dozen donuts from Dunkin Donuts once. Someone else took vintage baseball cards from a game shop. More and more often, people were wheeling carts of food out of grocery stores. The undernourished economy was affecting the whole community.

As time went on, I felt twinges of guilt about my job. These were most acute when I saw the way people responded when they found out I wrote the blotter. There was a kind of crass delight in the way they spoke to me. "The blotter? You write the blotter? It’s the first thing I read in the paper every week," they’d say.

Sometimes they’d sing a few bars from one of my "greatest hits." (To amuse myself, I did try to include at least one item that contained a peculiar or comic detail every week.) 

"I loved the story of that guy who was driving drunk and hit that woman’s mailbox and pretended he was delivering the mail when she came out of the house at two in the morning. Classic!"

"Those stolen garden gnomes that later appeared on people’s roofs. Hilarious!"

As the months passed, I began to wonder about the person who stole that cart of groceries or was arrested for public drunkenness. To whom was this person connected?  What sort of desperation was flowing through the veins of his or her life? And then one week, I submitted the details of an incident involving someone in my neighborhood. It wasn’t intentional: I hadn’t recognized the name and knew of the family only remotely. A few days later, standing on the playground waiting for school to be let out, a woman who had identified herself some weeks earlier as my “number one fan” approached me. She wore a grave expression. "Why did you have to put that in?  That whole thing was incredibly painful to the family," she said.

I asked her which incident she was referring to and she believed me when I told her I didn't know the family. She said the arrest and then the publicity had "absolutely wrecked reading the blotter for her." Reading about someone she knew "took all the fun out of it. I mean, when you see how embarrassing, how awful it is for people," she said.

Not long afterward, I bowed out of the job, relieved not to have that weight on my shoulders, newly impressed - again - by the power of words. 

Dr. Susan Smalley writes about words being "alive":

I never thought about a word being 'alive' but then I thought of words spoken 3,000 years ago, written down and passed through many generations, and they seem quite alive when read or spoken today, having lived 3,000 years. As I ponder the power of the word to incite and divide, to calm and connect, or to create and effect change, I am ever more cautious in what I say and how I listen to the words around me.

(Me, too.)