Saturday, September 01, 2007

A Rough Script of Life, if Ever There Was One

The lives of the 5,600 residents of Chadron, Neb., unfold item by item,
week after week, in the police log of the local newspaper.
photo by
Angel Franco/The New York Times


Published: September 2, 2007


CHADRON, Neb.

Item from the blotter of the Chadron Police Department: Caller from the 900 block of Morehead Street reported that someone had taken three garden gnomes from her location sometime during the night. She described them as plastic, “with chubby cheeks and red hats.”

When you reach Chadron you’re glad for it, because this Nebraska town is a long way from anywhere. Drive north on Main Street, past the Police Department, and you hit prairie; drive south, past the state college, and you hit prairie. In between, 5,600 people embrace, avoid and endure one another in a compact place that began more than a century ago as a remote railroad town.

Here, as anywhere, the specifics of most encounters between residents evaporate with the moment, leaving only those precious, fleeting bits, snatched from the ether and pinned by some dispatcher sitting at a desk behind the Police Department’s service window. A call comes in, the dispatcher types and another brief paragraph is added to the continuing Chadron epic.

Caller from the 200 block of Morehead Street advised a man was in front of their shop yelling and yodeling. Subject was told to stop yodeling until Oktoberfest.

It is in this regard that Chadron is blessed. For here, life’s gradual unfolding is measured and honored by Police Beat, a longstanding feature in The Chadron Record, the weekly newspaper. It records those small, true moments lost in the shadows of the large — moments that may not rise to the Olympian heights of newsworthiness, yet still say something about who we are and how we create this thing called community.

Caller from the 400 block of Third Street advised that a subject has been calling her and her employees, singing Elvis songs to them.

Police Beat repeats, almost verbatim, some of the calls that the town’s police dispatchers receive and then dutifully log, often in a literary style that synthesizes the detached jargon of the police with the conversational language of the people.

Caller from the 200 block of Morehead Street advised that a known subject was raising Cain again.

Every day, except on those days when they don’t feel like it, the dispatchers fax copies of their calls log to the ink-perfumed office of The Record, just around the corner. There, a young reporter named Heather Crofutt selects the most interesting items, edits out the names and specific addresses and types them up for Police Beat. Although she is essentially transcribing the reports, she says, “People think I make it up.”

Officer on the 1000 block of West Highway 20 found a known male subject in the creek between Taco John’s and Bauerkemper’s. Subject was covered in water stating he was protecting his family. Officers gave subject ride home.

George Ledbetter, (pictured) the editor, says Police Beat rivals the obituaries in popularity, so much so that it has become an integral part of local culture. Not long ago, for example, the loud practice sessions of four Chadron State College musicians earned them a mention in the log. They instantly knew what to call their fledgling band: Police Beat.

Mr. Ledbetter struggles to name his favorite item; there are so many. But taken as a whole, he says, the feature is “such a reflection of human life.”



Over the years, Chadron police officials have had a tolerate-hate relationship with Police Beat. One top-ranking officer complains that the feature seems to minimize the difficulty of police work. She says that while there are plenty of calls about animal encounters (Caller on the 900 block of Parry Drive advised a squirrel has climbed down her chimney and is now in the fireplace looking at her through the glass door, chirping at her.), there are plenty of calls about far more serious matters: child abuse, domestic violence, you name it.

But Police Beat often reflects how heavily some of us rely on law enforcement for just about everything (Caller from the 800 block of Pine Street advised that she had just left someone’s home and she forgot her jacket, and requested an officer to get her coat), and demonstrates how deft the police can be at defusing potentially volatile matters:

Caller from the 100 block of North Morehead Street requested to speak to animal control because caller felt that someone was coming into his yard and cutting the hair on his dogs. Dispatch advised caller to set up video surveillance on his house. Caller said he planned on it.

What emerges, then, is a kind of weekly prose poem to the human condition, where annoyance about barking dogs is validated, where nighttime fears born of isolation are reflected, where concern about others is memorialized.

Caller stated that there is a 9-year-old boy out mowing the yard and feels that it is endangering the child in doing so when the mother is perfectly capable of doing it herself.

In short, Police Beat is a rough script to the tragicomedy that is everyday life. And if the details preserved in the ever-expanding Chadron epic do not always find us at our best, there are moments, recorded for posterity, when we seek redemption, we make amends. We try.

Two weeks after the theft of those three chubby-cheeked, red-hatted garden ornaments, a brief item in Police Beat reported a break in the case. Two girls refusing to identify themselves had “brought in some gnomes.”


26 comments:

marymurtz said...

I have not missed an edition of Police Beat since the Record went online. I left Chadron, my hometown, almost 20 years ago. Even when I was a kid, the Police Beat was what everyone looked forward to most in an often lackluster paper reporting on slow-moving news.

One year, they published a "best of" edition online that was simply hysterical. I love it! Thank you for posting this!!!

WTFWJD said...

I'm also originally from Chadron. The few quoted Police Beat entries are a few of the run-of-the-mill calls; some of the more bizarre calls (and there's always a few every week) make me glad to live in a large city where anonymity rules and no one cares what's happening up the street. On second thought...

Diane said...

I'm also originally from Chadron but moved away thiry years ago.. I read the Police Beat every week online. It's something I look forward to. I need a good laugh once in a while, but some of the reports are serious matters. I care what happens in Chadron because my elderly parents still live there. They love that town.

Diane said...

I'm also originally from Chadron but moved away thiry years ago.. I read the Police Beat every week online. It's something I look forward to. I need a good laugh once in a while, but some of the reports are serious matters. I care what happens in Chadron because my elderly parents still live there. They love that town.

Diane said...

I'm also originally from Chadron but moved away thiry years ago.. I read the Police Beat every week online. It's something I look forward to. I need a good laugh once in a while, but some of the reports are serious matters. I care what happens in Chadron because my elderly parents still live there. They love that town.

Anonymous said...

Having gone to college there and having been a part of the police beat on different occasions it's now nice to keep up on what's happening sometimes. Now that I work as an officer ina much larger city it's nice to read about what has occured and how much I sometimes miss the smaller places.

Anonymous said...

I love this article. My son is a student presently at Chadron State College. My husband and I had no idea about the size or the exact location of the town when my son made the decision to attend the college. The only thing we knew about the college was it was a division two school somewhere in Nebraska. So as good parents should do we started researching information about Chadron the college and the town on line. We found out the it was located with in just a few minutes of South Dakota at the foot hills of the Black Hills. We were able to view the college on line and find out all of the important information about the college and the college life at Chadron. However we could find out only limited information about the town itself. One day when we were searching my husband found the local newspapers, The Chadron Record and begin reading it. I was sitting and helping my son with college enrollment forms when my husband said, "Ya"ll work on that later, I need to read you something" and he begin to read the police beat from The Chadron record. Of course we read, and read and read, we spent hours reading the back issues. Some of the reports where humorous and we had a good laugh. But reading the reports began to bring me some peace about sending our child thousands of miles away to college at Chadron. When we would read the reports I got a feel for the people of Chadron. The reports painted pictures of the lifes of the people of Chadron. The words I heard when my husband read the police beat illustrated the characteristics of a concerned people who cared enough about their community to take the time to report things that effected their town and its people. The simple fact that the report that was given to the officers were taken down and recorded demonstrated that these were a people that took the time to listen to one another. I am sure Mr. Barry that after having read the Police Beat's recorded in the Chadron Record, that you, like my family, knew that the images in your head of Chadron and its people were just not sufficent and that something deep inside of you longed, as we did, to see for ourselves the beautiful pine covered hills of Chadron and the areas charming people. So one week after my son graduated from high school our family begin our pilgrimage to Chadron where we would leave our only boy to fend for himself, get an education and become a man. We traveled North, enjoying the unique beauty of many of our countries beautiful states until we finally reached Omaha,NE, now only eight more hours to Chadron...well where I come from ...it's live oaks and peanut. But in our eight hour drive between Omaha and Chadron it was coal trains and sand hills. And although it has its own unique beauty it is much different scenery for a boy from the northwest Florida Panhandle. But then we topped a hill and found familar vegetation, pine trees...I never knew how much I really enjoyed looking at trees until they weren't there. The next seven "peaceful" days in the Chadron area were spent getting school things taken care of, moving our son into his dorm, visiting many historical sites including the Bad Lands, Mount Rushmore, Hot Springs, The Agate Fossil Beds and Fort Robinson to name a few and experiencing first hand the culture and people in the Chadron area. We found genuine, helpful, interesting hard working people. The morning of our last day in Chadron, as our family stood in the parking lot of McDonalds hugging, crying, kissing and shoving our baby out of the nest, I knew deep inside that this town and it's people would give my son wings to soar like an eagle. And although not a day goes by that I don't miss him terribly, I know just by the stories he shares with us of his experiences in the Chadron that he is right where he is supposed to be learning and living with kind and conciderate people.

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