June 8, 1943
Secret of the breezy and homey style developed by Police Capt. Stanley Good in making out shift reports was discovered Monday.
The captain, usually a model of reticence and shy in the presence o reporters, confided that an allergic condition was the underlying motive for his all-inclusive shift reports, which group all basic details in black and white, complete with names, addresses and next of kin.
“If there is anything that ruins the day or night for me, it is for the telephone to jangle me into wakefulness to have me tell someone about something that happened on my shift,” the captain explained. In parenthesis, he added that newspapermen, policemen and detectives were the worst offenders along that line.
“Since the theory of allergy has come along, I have discovered that I am allergic to telephone calls and have attempted to perfect a defense against them,” he explains. “For that reason, I put everything in my reports that I believe anyone might think to ask me in case they weren’t there – if you follow me.” The reporter didn’t, but the captain went ahead anyway. “And you never can tell. I might be in the market for a job as police reporter some time, and it wouldn’t hurt anything to have a basic reputation to fall back on. A sheaf of shift reports might be worth something to me to show an editor.”
At this point, even the reporter recognized that the captain had strayed from the sublime and was rushing headlong toward jocularity. So, he glanced through the latest shift report and quoted Captain Good’s notation on the failure of an officer to report for duty on account of illness.
It read: “Mrs. -------- called me up to say that ---------‘s tummy was all upset and he didn’t feel like working.”
A South El Paso householder, nameless here for obvious reasons, “was raising a rumpus with his family, but members of the family don’t want to file a complaint.” So, the offending husband was “jugged” on a drunkenness charge, accompanied by a $10 bond notation.
An East El Paso fracas was noted as “------- ------- got slapped over by ------- -------. Said the fellow hit him with a bottle.”
“Besides,” said the captain,” I have a lot of fun writing them up.”
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