The Police DO care!

Here’s what happened:

Sunday morning we stopped for breakfast at Denny's before we made the drive to Portland.  As we were coming out of the restaurant, there was a car parked in the driveway right in front of the newspaper box.  A woman was loading all of the newspapers from the box into her car.

I thought it was a bit strange to be emptying the box of unsold papers at 9:30 in the morning but didn’t say anything.  As we walked back to our car, I said to Russ, “I think she was stealing those papers.”
This car had to pull through the parking lot in order to exit onto the street so I decided to follow her (I always thought it would be fun to be a detective!).  She went directly across the street to Elmer’s, another popular breakfast spot.  Darned if she didn’t go to their paper box and do the same thing.  I watched her put in just enough quarters for one paper and then she emptied the box and loaded the papers into her car.

This made me MAD!  Sure it’s just newspapers and on the surface, it appeared no one was getting hurt.  But someone WAS getting hurt.  This was someone’s livelihood she was taking.  Especially in this economy, how dare she take something that someone may have been depending on to put food on the table?  Russ wrote down a description of the car and license plate number and I took a good look at the woman so I would remember what she looked like.  If only we had taken a picture…but, we are only amateur detectives LOL!!

It’s been very interesting in the Eugene area lately.  The newspaper reports that crime is up and jail bed spaces are down.  Lane County reports that they cannot prosecute property crimes as they just don’t have the manpower.  Of course all this gets lots of press whenever there is a new tax measure on the ballot.  It has made us somewhat jaded regarding law enforcement in this area.

I have long ago accepted the fact that I can't change the world.  I can’t do much about all the idiots in Washington, except to vote.  I don’t rail against politics or politicians as I know my input is limited and I refuse to let them steal my joy.  I don’t even think too much about all the bad things that go on in the world because the sad fact is, I can do little to affect any of it.  But I can change MY world and when I see an injustice, no matter how small, that I KNOW I can do something about, then I feel I should do what I can.

I reported the theft to the Register Guard (the newspaper) the next day.  Russ didn’t think they would care and that reporting to the police would be a waste of time.  Yesterday I got a call back from the newspaper thanking me for the report and stating that they did take this type of thing seriously.  Today I got a call from a very nice officer of the Springfield Police Department verifying the details of my report.  He was very grateful that I had called and assured me they will follow up.  Guess the city of Springfield has more manpower than Lane County!

I don’t know what will happen to this person.  The police officer told me that the car is registered to an address in Salem.  I think this woman may have a small store and was reselling the papers she stole – why else would someone steal a bunch of newspapers?  Can’t beat 100% profit!  But even if the police only give her a good scare, maybe she will think twice next time.  At any rate, I am glad to know that, at least in Springfield, the police do care.