APB On a Missing Table Skirt

I am old. It's official. I just wrote (ok, emailed--I'm not 80) a letter to the editor of The Gresham Outlook, my hometown paper. And it's not as if I don't have a million genuinely pressing things that actually need to get done.

But I had to ask why they don't publish their police blotter online. Their sister papers like the lovely Lake Oswego Review and The Oregon City News do, and I became infuriated yesterday morning that I couldn't be soothed by crime, East County-style. You don't understand that extremely petty crimes committed in towns that I know are one of the few things that can make me laugh out loud.

I haven't attempted to check out their police log in years (it used to be online) and it really upset me that I had to settle for other Portland suburbs' misdeeds. This is some serious stuff. Here is a sampling. I apologize for only being able to narrow down to 15 because each time I found a doozy, a better one appeared.

• 6/23/08 10:46 a.m. A strange odor was reportedly coming from a Port-a-Potty on Sixth Street.
• 6/23/08 10:49 a.m. Some sort of animal was living in a woodpile on Kokanee Court.
• 6/24/08 5:59 p.m. A creekside-walking couple were hollering at each other on Middlecrest Road.
• 6/25/08 2:55 a.m. An apparent domestic squabble inside a car on Highway 217 turned out to be two men and a woman having a tickle fight. Police located the trio in a hot tub of a hotel.
• 6/25/08 5:00 a.m. A table skirt was found in the road on Kruse Way.
• 6/25/08 9:21 p.m. Teens suspected of breaking windows behind the Speedy Linguine were really just smashing a television set.
• 6/27/08 2:36 a.m. An intruder in a house on El Greco turned out to be a very drunken man who had gone into the wrong home. (this is how my mom met her husband, and I am dead serious)
• 6/29/08 4:17 p.m. A woman driving a black Toyota was reported going door-to-door trying to sell strawberry jam.
• 7/2/08 9:46 a.m. Public defecation was reported outside of a trailer located near a motel. An investigation found that the defacator was apparently a dog. Extra patrols were requested.
• 7/3/08 1:54 p.m. A catheter bag was found in the road on Kerr Parkway.
• 7/3/08 10:29 p.m. A suspicious- looking youngster was seated near a bank of mailboxes on Carman Drive, working on a laptop. As it turned out, he lived in the area and was playing some kind of computer game.
• 7/4/08 11:57 p.m. Teens at Oak Creek Elementary school, including one crying one, were not having a medical problem, as reported. Instead they were gathered around upset because one of them was going out of the country.
• 7/5/08 2:31 p.m. A 9-1-1 call from a pay phone on A Avenue turned out to be from a person who took the wrong bus, got lost and had no money. Police gave the caller a ride home.
• 7/5/08 10:42 p.m. A possible domestic disturbance on Meridian Court turned out to be a boy playing guitar.
• 7/6/08 10:28 a.m. An overly aggressive cat was accused of injuring its feline neighbor and then attempting assault on its owner.

Oh, this was my response, "We don't usually put police logs online yet. We're trying to get some software to make putting things online easier. As it is, we put what we can online." Doesn't sound like they're trying hard enough to me.