For several years now, my New Year’s resolution has always been to not make resolutions. This tradition has worked because, let’s face it, most New Year’s resolutions are forgotten weeks before Valentine’s Day rolls around.
This year, however, I’ve received a request from my editor/friend/arch nemisis Dennis Kaiser to be more positive.
This could be a challenge. I’ve been pessimistic and cynical for for most of my life. A former employer once called me “The Dark Cloud.” I cover crime and city government as part of my job. In fact, I cover local government in four communities for three newspapers and two websites. My work occassionally touches on county and state agencies. Government reporting does not encourage positive thinking even under the best of circumstances.
Covering crime, even the comparatively easy work of compiling the Crime Log, can give you a distorted impression of the human race. Quiet as Seal Beach and the larger Sun Region are, a Crime Log is a running account of thefts (mostly petty), vandalisms, family squabbles, drunken foolishness, petty assaults and sometimes debateable calls to law enforcement—occassionally interrupted by silly incidents and even less frequently interrupted by crimes that break your heart.
Fortunately, one of my favorite assignments is the end-of-year Crime Log, part one of which appears in this week’s Sun on page 10. (Because of space limits, I had to cut some material I wanted to keep. You can read the complete January-June, Seal Beach, Rossmoor and Los Alamitos 2012 Crime Log on the website.) It isn’t easy to compile the end-of-year log because some of the entries require “tweaking” with a clever tagline. In fact, it takes about three weeks to complete the end-of-year log. It’s always worth it for the pleasure it gives both readers and me.
Looking at the lighter side of things is a reminder that even the crime beat is not a steady diet of misery. People turn lost wallets into the police far more often than they pocket the contents. My favorite story this year was the case of the stolen bicycle—because the Los Alamitos Police found it and brought it back to the victim. (Before that, my favorite story was the 2007 incident—or was it 2008—in which two women fought over the fate of a leopard shark.) One of the nice parts of my job is that I get to pick the best crime story of the year—and I’ve decreed that one the best of 2012.
I’m not going to pretend bad things aren’t happening—it’s my job to report good news and bad. I’m just going to see if, for a change, I can refrain from dwelling on the bad news when it comes up. Wish me luck.
Assistant Editor Charles M. Kelly is the Sun’s crime correspondent. His blog, updated Fridays, is at blog.sunnews.org.
