Because each Police Beat is organized around a theme (money, race, sex), a lot of great crimes don't make it into the column. I store these unused reports in a file behind my desk, and occasionally share them with close friends. This week, however, I want to share a few of these rejected, but still excellent, reports with everyone who reads the column.

Home of the Braves/Wallingford/Fri March 22/7:01 am: This morning, a Wallingford man found arrows in his backyard. The arrows appeared to be shot from a location south of his home. The man was certain that his neighbor's boys (aged seven and nine) were responsible for the unprovoked attack. At the victim's suggestion, the reporting officer, Officer Bell, went to the house next door to investigate. No one in the house responded to Bell's front door rings, so he went to the back of the house and knocked--still nobody. As Officer Bell turned to leave, he found next to the doorstep a piece of incriminating evidence: a "Li'l Sioux" bow. Officer Bell looked for other mini-instruments of war, but only found peaceful and constructive outdoor toys, like a sandbox, dump trucks, plastic buckets, and shovels. Officer Bell reknocked--again, nobody. He then left the boys' world and returned to the victim's yard. Officer Bell pulled the toy arrows from the ground and turned them into hard evidence.

Postcard from Star Trek/West Seattle/Thurs April 25/2:00 pm: This afternoon a West Seattle woman handed to Officer Guenther a mysterious postcard. The front of the postcard featured an image of a Lynnwood resort; the back had this rude note, signed by Dr. Spock: "Do you enjoy bringing up your daughter in your warm afterglow? Do you enjoy being the biggest loser of all time? Why don't you go into treatment? Your daughter does not want you as a mother. The smell your daughter had to endure coming out of your fish hole!!!!" Officer Guenther placed the spacy postcard into evidence.

The Irrelevant Stalker/Capitol Hill/Thurs May 23/7:00 pm: This report's value has nothing to do with the crime itself (stalking) but the way Officer Wong described the suspect. "The HM [Hispanic male]," writes Officer Wong, "was in his 20s and wore a vanilla-colored 'Gilligan' hat and an all-blue shiny warm-up suit.... The stalker did not look like a transient nor smell of alcohol." Though the Gilligan's Island reference is amusing, what's striking about Officer Wong's description is the importance he places on the stalker's condition (he "did not look like a transient nor smell of alcohol"). This exposes a common form of cop stupidity that is born of their bias toward those who are poor and those who like to party. Really, is there a difference between a stalker who is homeless and a stalker who is a homeowner? How does the victim benefit from learning that the stalker was not drunk, but sober? Clearly, the most relevant piece of information in this report is not the stalker's social class or mental condition, but that he dresses like Gilligan.