From Tacoma with Love/Greenwood/Wed March 14/11:45 pm: Vice agent Umporowicz, who concluded last week's Police Beat by breaking up an erotic triangle that formed in a booth in a local sex shop, opens this week's Police Beat with the following adventures (or sexcapades, as Nabokov would call them). Around 10:40 pm, he and his partner, Officer Powell, began searching Aurora Avenue for illegal sex activity, and found what they were looking for on the corner of Aurora and John Street. Officer Umporowicz writes: "[We] observed two black females; one of the females wore a black leather jacket and red pants, the other wore a short blue skirt and white boots." Officer Powell drove up to the woman wearing the blue skirt and white boots, opened his door, and she stepped into his trap. After driving the unsuspecting prostitute around the block, he arrested her and brought her to Officer Umporowicz. When asked to reveal the truth, the prostitute immediately explained that she and her companion (who was picked up by a legitimate john earlier on) were not from Seattle but Tacoma, and had come here to work because Tacoma's vice squad was cracking down on illegal sex. She then promised that she would return to Tacoma as soon as her companion, who owned a car, "got done with her trick."

Officer Umporowicz released the prostitute in the white boots and began searching for her comrade in the red pants. Just before midnight, he spotted her walking with another black woman who was wearing "a black leather jacket and black pants." He drove up to the leather women, rolled down his window, and asked if they'd like a ride. The women looked at him, and, shaking their heads, said, "Hell no!" and walked away. Officer Umporowicz then sent his partner after them. In no time, the obviously charming Officer Powell captured both women and brought them to the obviously unpleasant Officer Umporowicz. Umporowicz interrogated them, determined their names and home addresses, and then, like the prostitute in the white boots from an hour before, and the participants in the love triangle from the night before, "released them from the scene."

The Sleeper/Central District/Thurs March 15/7:01 am: Today, Officer Upton (who, for the hell of it, we will call Uptown from here on) was dispatched to investigate a sexual assault in the Central District. When Officer Uptown arrived at the home in question, he contacted a man in his mid-60s who told him this bizarre story: While the victim slept that morning, his neighbor came into his house and ejaculated into the sixtysomething man's mouth. Officer Uptown asked the victim why his neighbor would do such a thing. The victim did not know. Why in the world would anybody want to come in his mouth? Because he could not find any evidence of the crime in the house (or the victim's mouth), Officer Uptown did not attempt to contact the suspect.

Unreasonable Nazis/West Seattle/Fri March 16/12:45 pm: This afternoon, a West Seattle woman found an envelope in her mailbox that contained pornographic photos and white-supremacist literature. She is not the first to receive such a package, which came from Philadelphia. Indeed, every week, three or so Seattleites find similar letters in their mailboxes. The reason why Police Beat is bringing attention to this ordinary incident is, we are fascinated by the link Philadelphia Nazis make between pornography and fascist literature. What is the connection between the two? We have no idea. The West Seattle woman who received the letter is amazed, not so much by this strange conflation of porn and Aryan theory, as by the fact that she, who is not "a minority, and does not have any political or social connections," would be the target of hate mail. We both suspect there is some meaning at the bottom of this incident, when perhaps there is really none at all.