Opinions Wanted: Socks & Cops

By NJM -

You might’ve read a story in today’s Register about a man who allegedly broke a police department holding cell toilet using his socks (he, uh, allegedly flushed the things down there).

That incident happened on Monday after an arrest for allegedly threatening a local business owner; it was actually the man’s sixth arrest since mid-December.

With that many recent arrests, it’s safe to say it’s been a tough couple of months for the guy. We wrote a story was because public property got broken. It took your tax dollars to install that toilet, and now it’ll take your tax dollars to fix it.

But what I’m wondering, citizens of Milford (and any other community, really), is whether you think that stories like this should be in the paper at all. Are you more interested in whom police arrest (and the alleged crime), or what police do with their time?

I think that reporting on police activity can give you readers two types of information: first, what kind of crime(s) might be happening in the community (but remember police don’t charge you, they arrest you on suspicion of a crime and leave the criminal charge to the prosecutor). Second, it tells us what the police are doing with their time.

So, please let me know what you think about news stories that involve crime and police. Do stories like the one out today turn you off? Do you want more reporting on crimes, or more reporting about the police department?

Leave comments, email me at nmcnamara@nhregister.com, or follow me on Twitter, @Neal_McNamara. 

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