The Limits of Cop Consciousness/Columbia City/Sat Feb 10/4:11 pm: Officer Carver was driving down Rainier Avenue when he saw four black men cutting down a tree that stood in front of a church. Officer Carver thought nothing of it and drove on.

Shortly afterward, two officers (Officer Monroe and Officer Settle) were driving past the same church when they saw four black men pushing on a tree, trying to get it to fall. Recognizing the tree as city property, they immediately turned their squad car around to investigate the matter. But when the crime scene came into view, they found the broken tree was now standing alone and the black suspects had vanished! Officers Monroe and Settle stopped, stepped out of their car, and regarded the church. It seemed empty, but something was not right; something was suspicious about it.

They walked up to the church and saw that a black man was staring at them through a dirty window. They knocked on the church door, and the black man opened it. They asked him about the broken tree in front of the church, and he said he knew nothing about any tree, anywhere. The officers, however, were alert and immediately noticed fresh sawdust on the suspect's shoulders, and a handsaw and ladder standing next to the door. There was also a thick line of sawdust trailing into the church. Somehow, someway, this black man was involved in this tree business, but the cops couldn't prove it.

They asked him about the incriminating sawdust. The black man denied the existence of the sawdust. The cops pointed at the sawdust, but the black man refused to acknowledge it. He did, however, admit that the church was a mess, if that was what they were referring to. Officer Monroe was referring to the sawdust, but he decided to change his line of inquiry and asked instead if there was anyone else in the church. Indeed, if there were four black men in the church then he would have evidence that this church and man were directly connected with the destruction of the tree. The man denied the existence of any other person in the church but himself. The cop hit another dead end. Officer Monroe asked one more question about the cars in the parking lot and finally gave up.

The defeated cops left the church in a dejected manner. But they still had the trail of sawdust that led into the church, so Officer Monroe decided to get a camera and validate their sanity with photos. But when they returned to the church a few minutes later with a camera, the sawdust trail was gone! The sinister church had done this! It had thrown doubt and mystery into their once stable world. All they could do now was to file an innocuous "suspicious circumstance" report and take down the license plate numbers of the cars in the parking lot. Sane Sgt. McGinnis was the approving officer of this insane report.

Obscenities Forever/West Seattle/Sat Feb 10/4:30 pm: "[A witness]," writes Officer Sylvester, "complained that a man and woman [she lives with] have been yelling obscenities at each other forever. She states that it is verbal abuse and wants the police to stop them. All parties state that it was verbal. I noted no evidence of any crime. I also noted that all parties concerned continued to yell obscenities."

Death and the Block of Cheese/Green Lake/Sun Feb 11/10 pm: "[A man] returned home at 1000 hrs," writes Officer Turner, after patrolling the dangerous streets of Seattle, "and noticed that someone had used cheese to write the word 'DIE' on the driver side of the window of his truck." The man knows who wrote the wicked word and wants the police to protect him because he believes that any man who has the nerve and patience to write a death threat with cheese is clearly "unstable."