Perry Police Report July 7

5
1986

July 6, 2016

  • A caller said she found a green golf cart near her yard. Officers responded. Investigation revealed the vehicle was stolen from Windsor Heights. Arrangements were made, and “Golf Carts of America will come to pick up the golf cart.”
  • A caller said “she smells a strong odor of marijuana coming from the downstairs apartment.” Officers responded but “could not locate odor of marijuana.”
  • A caller said he found a bicycle “inside the dumpster at the apartments where he lives.” An officer responded, and the bicycle was “tagged and secured in bike shed.”
  • Joshua Cole Fintel, 21, 806 William St., Perry, was arrested on a charge of simple assault.
  • A caller said a dog was running at large. An officer responded and located the animal but “couldn’t get near it.”
  • A caller said someone “who used to live in her apartment complex was just looking in her window.” An officer responded but did not find the peeper.

*A criminal charge is merely an accusation, and the defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.

5 COMMENTS

  1. For the love of all that is good in this world, please start using quotations correctly. I enjoy your website as it allows me to keep up with my hometown, but the plethora of misused quotation marks is worse than nails on a chalkboard.

    • We covered this ground March 10 but are happy to address the question again. As we said then, we regret any confusion or irritation that this style of reporting causes you in reading. Perhaps repeating a word of explanation will help: In the Perry Police reports, the words placed inside quotation marks are indeed direct quotations from the department’s call records, and these are written from a third-person point of view and not a first-person point of view. We are all used to first-person pronouns appearing inside quotation marks and not third-person pronouns, and we understand that the latter might cause pain to some readers’ style sense. In this case, veracity must trump pleasure. As explained previously, the Perry Police Department’s call records are presumably a summary or paraphrase of what callers and others have said, giving the gist but perhaps not the very words themselves verbatim. Rather than our creating a paraphrase of a paraphrase, ThePerryNews.com chooses to quote directly from the call records when the details in question seem important or interesting. For example, an item in the July 7 police report reads: “A caller said ‘she smells a strong odor of marijuana coming from the downstairs apartment.’” A direct quotation of the kind you prefer would read: “A caller said, ‘I smell a strong odor etc.'” That is of course the form of direct quotation that readers are used to. But in the case of the police reports, we are never quoting the callers’ words directly. What we are doing is quoting directly from a third-person account produced by the person who received the call. What we provide is indeed a direct quotation of the third-person call record. We hope this makes the rationale for our practice clear to you and mitigates to some extent your irritation with this apparent violation of style. Thanks again for reading, even scrutinizing, ThePerryNews.com.

      • Jim, you do much better job at this than other local media. An excellent explanation of how this really works. (will probably hear about missing the ‘a ‘ between do and much ) T. P. N fan.

        • Thanks for your kind words, Dan. We try to do our best most times and appreciate your patience and generosity when we fall short.

  2. I’d have to say a most professional job of reporting and delivering the news to the community as it unfolds. Thank You Very Much! Please continue the great work to your audience as we look forward to The Perry News every day! From one more TPN fan. 😉

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