Police Beat: An historical record of the weird, wacky

A pig's head is found in a library restroom.

A man is arrested for soliciting oral sex from a herd of horses.

A student and a faculty member dressed as gorillas throw bananas at the crowd at a football game.

Normal campus activities? Perhaps not but they are not unusual entries for the Police Beat column published in the Arizona Daily Wildcat since 1982. Strange happenings on campus make for good reading.

One former Police Beat reporter recognized and tapped the popularity of Police Beat. Jon Burstein compiled the weirdest entries into a book that doubled as his senior thesis in fall 1994 and spring 1995.

"It was a popular feature in the newspaper and the idea was bounced around the newsroom for a while. It wasn't a priority. I did it in my spare time," he says.

The first 750 copies of "Police Have No Suspects" were printed in 1995 and sold out in a week and a half. The book was reprinted, and 500 out of 1,250 copies were sold.

A 1998 readership survey done by the Daily Wildcat's marketing department shows that Police Beat column is second in popularity only to campus news. More than 62 percent of students, faculty and staff said they usually read Police Beat, compared to 6 percent who never read the column.

The column's popularity is evident from the high demand for this page among advertisers who pay a 15 percent premium to be guaranteed space on this page. Police Beat takes up a third of page 7 in the Daily Wildcat. The other two-thirds is filled with ads.

For the full two-thirds of a page, advertisers pay an additional $100 to guarantee a spot next to Police Beat.

"We should raise the cost," says Jeannette Brauchli, advertising manager at the Arizona Daily Wildcat. "The demand is higher than the supply."

The most regular advertisers on this page include The Rock, Zip's Music, Gentle Ben's Brewing Company and Arizona Wildwear.

Police Beat may be entertaining at times and good for business, but there is more than that to the column.

"Police Beat is a serious service to the community," says Editor-In-Chief David Cieslak. "Granted, when a man streaks on the Mall, people will laugh. But the reporter has to remember he is not there to sensationalize but to report."

Most of Police Beat reporting is routine. Every day the reporter goes to the police station, plowing through the police reports from the previous day.

"It isn't as glamorous as people might think," says Joseph Altman Jr., a former city editor and Police Beat reporter at the Daily Wildcat. "But quite often you'll come across something unusual, and that makes the job fun."

Police Beat is a mixture of entertainment and public service, Altman says. "Some find it entertaining to read an item about a freshman who was arrested for stumbling down the street drunk and puking on someone."

But it should also serve a purpose by noting where a lot of bike thefts are occurring or warning people that someone was robbed while walking down the street at night, Altman says.

"I'm glad the funny items get people to read it, but I hope they read the not-so-funny ones too and learn something that can protect them on their property."

Because Police Beat is so widely read, reporters may be tempted to skip the bike thefts in favor of reports with f-words in them, says Tom Collins, who served as a Police Beat reporter in 1996 and Wildcat editor in chief in 1998.

Bike theft is among the most commonly reported crimes on campus. The UAPD's annual report on crime ranks bike theft in a category on its own. In 1997, out of 572 thefts reported on campus, 390 were bike thefts.

But bike thefts are not considered "pressing incidents," says Cieslak. "There are days when we have to print bike thefts," he says, days when there are too few pressing incidents to fill the column.

Incidents such as assault take precedence though. A three-year comparison for 1995 through 1997 shows that no more than 56 assaults were reported in any single year, compared to 390 bike thefts for one year.

Police Beat has evolved since its early years. In the early 1980s it was not unusual for the column to include the names of suspects, victims and witnesses. It also reported serious incidents on campus.

A story about a woman who discarded her infant son in a dumpster just hours after he was born ran alongside stories about a minor traffic incident and the arrest of a transient in November 1982.

In August 1985, a student was found dead from strangulation in her apartment. This story, too, ran in Police Beat.

"That wouldn't happen today," Cieslak says. Serious stories are given full coverage on other pages, he says. Police Beat typically carries minor petty crimes.

The Daily Wildcat doesn't use victims' and witnesses' names anymore either.

The names of people arrested are a different case altogether.

"Using suspects names is part of keeping the campus informed," Cieslak says. "They are part of the university community so people need to know what they do. We have no reason not to use their names."

Readers assume that people who are arrested are guilty when their names appear in Police Beat, says journalism professor Jacqueline Sharkey.

"Our whole system of justice is based on the fact that we are innocent until proven guilty," she says.

The Daily Wildcat has a legal right to use suspects' names, but there are ethical questions about naming people, says Sharkey, who teaches a class on media ethics in the Journalism Department.

Because the publication is online, someone's name is sitting in a criminal context online for future employers who do background checks to find, she says.

"The public benefit value can be preserved without naming the individuals involved," says Sharkey.

"The [Daily] Wildcat has already shown that it is sensitive to ethical issues by not naming the victims. The Wildcat might consider using the same ethical principles in discussions about people who are arrested but have not been convicted," she says.

Naming suspects is a common American media practice. Historically, American newspapers have considered it their responsibility to name people who are arrested as a matter of public record, says Mark Woodhams, director of student Media. "It's a way to hold the police and judicial system accountable," he says.

"What's in Police Beat is not something that's going to ruin someone's life," Cieslak says. "It's possession of marijuana or skate boarding on campus. Usually people wind up laughing about their names appearing on Police Beat.

Yet Police Beat is the main reason people go to the Daily Wildcat's office to complain, Cieslak says.

"They pound on the counter and threaten lawsuits," he says.

Altman recalls one complaint in particular when he was city editor for the Daily Wildcat in 1997.

"The Police Beat reporter at the time wrote a story about a UA football player who was charged with a crime based on information given to us by the County Attorney's Office. The football player came down to our office and was furious. He said it wasn't true. So the editor in chief and I had to calmly reason with this huge football player about it. It turned out the county attorney's information was technically incorrect but the gist of it was true. We corrected it in another story and that was the last I heard of it," Altman says.

Sgt. Michael Smith of UAPD is familiar with this concern for privacy.

"When we make an arrest, one of the first concerns is, "Is this going to be in Police Beat?""

"We have to tell them we have no control over that," says Smith. He sympathizes with suspects whose names appear in Police Beat. "It's traumatic and embarrassing," he says.

Dean of Students Melissa Vito, a UA journalism graduate, supports the Daily Wildcat's policy, which "appears to use names judiciously but not for every report."

"This still preserves the message of what crimes have occurred," she says. She has received only two complaints from students about their names being in Police Beat in nine years.

"I have occasionally had calls from students who wanted to alert me to a situation before I read about it in Police Beat. In that respect, Police Beat has also encouraged proactive communication," she says. "The fact that some students find it entertaining is not a bad thing. This would seem to encourage readership."

Reporter Tom Collins and another staffer once gave a fair warning to the university community when he worked Police Beat.

His colleague took out an ad with the title "Stop Right There" which promised that Collins would deliver the best of campus crime.

A photo of a bespectacled Collins appears in the ad in which he is quoted saying, "Friends don't let friends appear in tomorrow's Police Beat."