Arcata, California is a place to which sundry oddballs and malfeasantly minor sociopaths are drawn like soothing mint raita to a fiery Lamb Vindaloo. We know this partly because there is a fine and noble tradition, in some of the nation's more piquant, if less-heralded community newspapers, of giving artistic license to police beat reporters covering man's foibles, follies and freak-outs in all their rich variety and compelling contusions.

This week's edition of the Arcata Eye has more, in the publication's justly famed police blotter. Selected highlights follow. And mind you, the first episode, while true, and surely evocative of this liberal burg's expanding law-and-order underbelly, is really just a set up for the second.

*An officer stopped at the intersection of Seventh and G streets watched as a bicyclist breezed through the G Street stop sign headed north, one hand on the handlebars and the other clutching a cup of coffee. "Hey, that was a stop sign!" yelled the cop from his car. "OK!" replied the cyclist, continuing up G and, demonstrating the regard for public safety that so endears Arcata's bicyclists to pedestrians (especially those pushing strollers) blowing right through the Eighth and G stop sign, too. The officer caught up with the reckless rider as he blithely blazed through Ninth and G, but despite honking his horn and flashing the cop car's light bar to get the guy's attention, he kept riding. Finally the officer blocked his way with the police car and issued a citation for blowing two of the stop signs, plus a warning for running the other. The biker said he'd read about enforcement of bike safety laws, but didn't think they applied, as traffic was minimal at the moment. A while later, the officer saw the same cyclist blow through the intersection of 14th Street and L.K. Wood Boulevard.

*Bicyclists think they aren't traffic, and apparently dope smokers think they aren't smokers and are thus entitled to toke in a non-smoking room in a Valley West motel. But they are, and they can't.

*A man was paintballed in the back as he crossed 11th and G streets.

*A man sleeping in bushes in the 700 block of 10th Street became belligerent when he and his Mohawk coiffure were asked to leave. And off he trudged toward the Intermodal Transient Facility.

What police blotter is complete without verse?

On Cropley Way, rock bands did battle

Inducing a neighborly tattle

When loud guitarations

Caused major frustrations

By drowning out televised prattle.

Talk about the human condition.....They oughta release a compendium. Ooops, what's that? You say there are already two volumes? By Arcata Eye Editor Kevin Hoover, that caped crusader for truth, beauty and The American Way? Well, hotcha!

TECHNORATI TAGS: ARCATA, TRUE CRIME, POLICE BLOTTER, KEVIN HOOVER

TO COMMENT: The regular "comment" feature is not in operation. E-mail comments to address under "Contact" on main page masthead, and I'll add them, here.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at September 21, 2005 09:53 PM