Silent Nights

Contrary to conventional wisdom, after six years as a night reporter covering a lot of crime, I can safely say that people don’t stab or shoot or strangle each other with any higher frequency during the holidays. It’s long been the belief among jaded reporters such as myself that if you pack a bunch of relatives in a house, add a rack of sharp knives, some cabin fever and a dash of financial stress, it’s a quick and easy recipe for domestic assault.

But after six years, I have to say that hasn’t been the case. If anything, it’s been quieter than usual around the holidays. I asked a few cops, long-time vets, and they said the same thing. Sucks that they have to work, but usually a dull night.

Which makes me wonder where that rumor came from. The fevered imaginations of night reporters perhaps?

Conflicting Stereotypes

So a unique conundrum at the jail. Apparently, prisoners that are brought in who want to go to the bathroom need to be watched. Legally, by a same-sex cop.

We’re talking temporary holding, not real jail.

In walks a person named Kai.

“I usually can tell the trannies,” says the female officer that has to watch. "I honestly can't tell if she's... he's a boy or a girl."

They still don’t know.

Kai: No help. Shaved head with earrings, no makeup, no bra, and none apparently needed. Still no help. Wore boxer shorts … and bikini underwear.

So finally, they think Kai’s a she (Kai’s license says so), and the female officer has to watch the person take a piss. But they stand with their back to the officer, and go standing up.

“She peed like a boy,” the officer says. "I'm dying to know." Still no confirmation, and she’s worried about being sued.

Crime and Politics

You kinda have to cover both at night, but given a choice, I’ll take crime every time. Honestly, I’d much rather cover the aftermath of a bloody shooting than listen to some blowhard city council members take rhetorical swings. You see the pure consequences of bad actions when you go to a crime scene. With politics, on the other hand…

So I went to a suburban meeting recently where they seem to love screaming at each other. This city has been qualified by a local weekly as the most dysfunctional suburb in the metro area. The mayor had to get up and close the doors, and looked like he almost came to blows with a couple people standing there. Everybody was denying the other sides’ facts (we’d already stated our analysis for the record; nothing seemed to matter to anyone).  People were calling each other communists or idiots. The topic: garbage hauling.

O.K. maybe it’s been worse lately, political climate and all, but I’ll say again: give me a shooting any day.

Immersion Reporting

So to get closer to my work, I decided to have somebody break into my house last week. Well, it wasn’t really my decision, but subconsciously I might've brought it on. It’ll definitely help out with interviews: "Oh, I know man, I just got broken into last night... So how did it feel when you got beaten up/stabbed/shot/robbed/stalked/spat upon?"

You know how people always tell you that it feels like your home isn’t your home anymore after it gets “violated?” Didn't happen. Maybe I have a high violation threshold. I’ll ask my wife about that. Could be all those times my car kept getting broken into/stolen in Chicago; this time felt kinda meh.

Actually, the second time my car got stolen in Chicago, somebody left something in it. I’ll say no more, but technically it was a net gain.

All they got was a HP Mini: in, opened a few drawers, took what was in plain sight, and then ran back out the busted up door.

Screw it, they said it

Intensely personal stuff. Ever feel the unprofessional urge to grab someone by the shoulders, shake them and yell, STOP TALKING!? People who tell you waaaay too much and you know you’re absolutely going to use it and they're probably going to catch some crap -- you know this because you’ve read way too many online comments sections over the years.

But they said it. Case and point: Double murder suicide and this married couple’s priest tells me all about all the problems they were having, how the guy used to drink and be violent (duh), and how he went away for a few months and then came back and thought she was cheating on him but she wasn’t and…oh and they were here illegally and slept in separate bedrooms and...

Oh my god you realize you’re talking to a reporter, right? Right?

But he said it, so… in it goes. That's the job.

Still, sometimes I do feel that urge.

On your deathbed, will you Google yourself?

I was kinda wondering that lately. Everybody in America googles themselves. I myself am surprised by what comes up. Really random things. I play-tested a board game my brother published, and he gave me a credit. I can’t seem to shake that from the top ten.

It’s really surprising because even my top e-mailed stories, my Sunday centerpieces – and my paper has hundreds of thousands of readers – never seem to come up. Instead, I get an obituary for an old appliance salesman I wrote really late one night. I get a story from a paper I used to work for, years ago; a not so big story that took me a couple hours to write. It's not worth explaining: a no-comment reaction to a conviction.

So I just don’t know. How do you create a legacy in digitalville, when it all seems so random? Legacies are out of your control, and they should be. Should it all be up to an algorithm? Maybe.

Crashes

Crashes suck. In a big city they happen every day, and you try to care, but they’re like wallpaper. Lots of tragedy you’ve seen time and again.

So I’ll never stop being shocked that they’re the most e-mailed story of the day. For reporters, they’re a chore.

Online rubbernecking – never understood it. I mean, you can download the most perverted porn or violent videos. 

You could conclude that people are genuinely worried, wondering whether it’s somebody they knew. Seriously, what are the chances? – I can’t imagine online browsing as remotely pure. Maybe that says something about me.

It’s antithetical to the pathos of the Internet: you’ve seen it before, you can’t see anything. You want to read a couple sentences about a stranger in a car crash more than anything else that day.

Watching

Believe it or not, a lot of people suck at watching. Even reporters.

Especially the T.V. guys – they just kinda gaggle around, looking where people point. Talking to people that don’t know anything. Kinda lose-lose there.

Sometimes reporters get assigned to just stand in a spot. I remember going to a fire, and there were three reporters from a competing (crap) paper, each designated to a spot. News tip: their story sucked. I heard one dude on his phone, begging to go home.

So watching. You can’t do that talking. The little things are the only thing readers remember anyway.

We're all a bit safer now. Maybe.

Kevin Costner is promoting "The BodyGuard" -- an idea "hatched on the back patio of my (Kevin's) house."  Hatched not by Kevin, but by a music video producer. So it might actually gross some money. 

It's kinda like a batman glove, with a stungun, camera, laser pointer and flashlight. 

http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2011-05/2011-invention-awards-stunning-development


Slightly less painful than the movie, I'm sure.

Late Night Calls, Ch. 3

“This is Todd, your tipster… got a four-alarmer over in Cambridge!”

Tipster Todd refers to himself as just that. He listens to his scanner, every night, and calls with the goods.

I actually like Tipster Todd. At first I thought he was annoying as f---. But as one of the few regular callers who actually relays factual information, he’s gotten to be a relief. I mean, compare him to that other lady who calls up to recite some political talking points -- I mean, literally reading them off some print-out from her tiny church or action committee -- and Todd’s a Godsend. Despite my editors’ efforts, I’ve tried hard to stay in a job where I report on anything but politics -- and Todd’s my man.

I often wonder what Todd gets out of it. I mean, he’s not paid; he never stays on the line long enough to thank him. He gruffly gives his facts and moves on to the next scanner scrap.

Cops: the whiners and the pros

I always get a kick out of attending a press conference and listening to some sheriff or police chief complain about how cops are portrayed on television. What televisions shows do these guys watch?

Shows I’ve seen, they’re pretty much a combination of Clooney, Schwarzenegger, and Gandhi with a gun. Well maybe not the Gandhi part.  Across the river Styx, journalists are portrayed as scheming weasels that can't wait to butcher granny in the back so they can talk about how it changed the town forever. If anyone at a press conference should be complaining about how they’re portrayed in the media, it’s the media.

You know how helpful a ranking law enforcement official will be by how many words it takes them to answer a simple fucking question. There are some that reach for a manual when you ask if they have cream in their coffee.

The guys that have been sipping cold sludge for years know the world won’t end if you release the name of the suspect old Danno just booked -- like they're supposed to under the law. The folks that haven't, well, they’re the ones that are always talking about the media and how horrible it is.

Crime scene etiquette 101

Never brandish your “reporter notebook.” It’s a sure way to piss people off.  Avoid vulture-like questions or mannerisms, like “how does it feel?” Never smile. Don’t stand around with other reporters and joke. Don’t be afraid to shed a tear or two on occasion -- you’ll feel the need, and when you don’t, get another job.

“What happened?” is the best conversation starter. People often mistake me for a cop; I look a little like one, and don’t discourage it. Swearing is pretty much mandatory in most instances. When I say I’m a reporter, I often add that I just want the basics. It’s mostly true: the copyeditors really don’t WANT a big story to break up their neatly arranged pages late at night. It’s the biggest misconception most people have about us: that we really WANT that piece of misery. Believe me: we’ve written dozens of stories about shootings; we’re not dying for another one.

Out of the dozens, perhaps hundreds of late-night crime scenes I’ve visited, the first story I’m told is true about a third of the time. Kids and teenagers are easily convinced gossips: the least trustworthy. Curious, elderly neighbors are only a bit better -- they’re opinionated, but know the neighborhoods, know when people moved in, and who plays loud music, and who fights. Plus, they'll invite you in.

Late Night Calls, Ch. 2

This one’s weird. For the last several days, I’ve been getting messages I’m not sure are human. They sound like an old radio transmission when I pick up the phone. Kinda sounds like somebody’s saying something, but barely. Scratchy, from past Pluto. Can’t make out a single word. Lucky lottery numbers and stock tips, probably.

Late Night Calls, Ch. 1

How's Godwin's law go? Wait I'll wiki it. "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”

O.K., well, so maybe not totally applicable (since I’m not talking about anything online), but I still think “grammar Nazis” are aptly named.

They usually call late, when they think you’re not at your desk. They try to sneak a message onto your phone. Sometimes they e-mail you. You’ve seen them in discussion forums, of course – maybe, if you’re lucky, they’ve given you some unsolicited advice.

As reporters, we hear from them a lot more than you do. Trust me. They’re usually very old, you can tell, and polite enough that you probably shouldn’t call them Nazis to their faces. Probably.

Let off some steam

When you write leads like this every week…

“Firemen pulled the beaten, bloody body of Henry Hickman’s wife from under a flaming mattress.”

… you tend to need something to help you let off some steam. That’s not even the worst one, believe me. The worst one was about two Wisconsin grave robbers who tried to dig up a body and have sex with it, because the obit photo looked cute.  The lead was about “stopping at a WalMart to buy condoms,” before all that other stuff. But I digress.

… you tend to NEED something to help you let off some steam.

Being the closet geek that i am, I like to watch English commentaries of Korean Starcraft matches. If you don't know what that is then... well, honestly, it's probably exactly what it sounds like. Think chess on crack. Very relaxing late at night.

One of my compatriots across the phone lines, our night watch commander, is addicted to Dancing with the Stars. So that's how she deals with things. I'm not that far gone yet. Life still has meaning. She's starting to insist I watch too, which takes the reporter-source relationship to a level I'm not really all that comfortable with. I told her I hoped Bristol didn't win, and that seemed to placate her.

The room they sit in doesn't have any windows.