Small Town Crime

Small Town Crime

Small town crime - MayberryI’ve lived in major metro areas my entire life – Albany, NY, Columbus, Miami, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and most recently, Seattle. They all had one disturbing characteristic in common – high levels of crime. Every year, it seems, the rates of homicides, drug-related incidents, home break-ins, road rage, and jaywalking go up. I hate to admit it, but even I eventually succumbed to my base criminal instincts. Last summer, I paid for three hours of parking in downtown Seattle, but left my car in the spot for three hours and 12 minutes. I know I should have turned myself in. It’s something that will eat away at my conscience for the rest of my life.

So when my wife and I moved to a small, idyllic community (population ~ 15,000), I was relieved that we’d finally escaped the urban world of unbridled crime. Or had we? We now live on Camano Island, a seemingly tranquil, semi-rural community with rolling farmland, rugged beaches, and views of snow-capped mountains. But lurking underneath this deceptive façade of serenity, I’ve discovered an insidious underbelly of rampant crime.

The island’s longtime elderly residents remember nostalgically a more peaceful era, when the main activities were crab fishing and sitting. The island only had one stop light, one gas station, and almost nobody with a last name that was hard to pronounce. But now the island has four stop lights and three gas stations. Thankfully, with the exception of Lucjan and Konstantyna Chmielowski, who were born in Poland, we can still pronounce most people’s names. However, along with this community’s spiraling urbanization (recently they even opened a drive-through espresso stand, can you imagine!) has come previously unheard of levels of crime and disorderly behavior.

The following is a list of infractions reported for the month of March. (All of the following items are based on actual police reports found in the local paper, the Camano Island Hopper.)

March 4: Mail was stolen from 115 Paradise Lane. The homeowner is only asking the perpetrator to please return the Wednesday Flyer section of the paper. There was a two-for-one coupon on flank steak she had planned to use. (more…)

Dear American Refugees, Welcome to Canada

Dear American Refugees, Welcome to Canada

welcome-to-canada-welcome-sign-updatedGreetings, American Refugees,

On behalf of the people of Canada, we would like to welcome you to our country. We hope you’ll enjoy your stay. We heard about your recent election, and, frankly, we’re starting to worry about your nation’s apparent complete psychological breakdown. What exactly were you folks thinking? You were doing so well these past eight years with President Obama. He seemed like an awfully nice fellow. We’re not quite sure what has caused your country to go off the rails, but as we watched your presidential election results, the only plausible conclusion we Canadians can come to is that millions of your fellow Americans have gone utterly bonkers.

Oh sure, for a while there, we’ll admit, we were highly amused watching your presidential contest, featuring a carnival of candidates, from a narcissistic billionaire / Reality TV show host, to a rightwing evangelical Texan universally disliked even by his own party’s colleagues in the Senate, to a prominent neuro-surgeon who believes Egypt’s pyramids were built to store grains, not pharaohs. Where on earth did you find such a zany cast of characters? But we figured that eventually your countrymen would come to their senses and realize that perhaps the most important criteria for selecting your next head of state should be something more substantial than the size of the candidate’s privates or the relative hotness of their spouse. Apparently we were wrong. And for that, we deeply apologize.

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