Scum and villainy, part II

Some cities get triple homicides. We get escaped llamas.

I get the police reports from the Rexburg Police Department every week. I’ve been the news editor on Scroll for almost a semester now, and I get to read these chronicles of the basest crime before anyone else.

Among the myriad false alarms are true gems like “llama on the loose” and perhaps my personal favorite, “complaint from person who was hit in the head with an egg.”

Isn’t it great?

In the Scroll office today, I found a book of cartoons by celebrated BYU-Idaho alumnus Lance Fry. Before my time, he provided the populace of BYU-I with fresh and funny cartoons every week. One of the cartoons caught my eye.

In the cartoon, two men sit on a bench dejectedly, moaning about how much they hate Rexburg. Around them, smiling people hold newspapers with headlines like “General Authority to visit again” and “Temple to be built in Rexburg.” The last headline says, “Low crime.”

It’s true. While every now and again Rexburg has a burst of genuine violent or drug-laced crime, many of the things police have to deal with here in town are so innocent they can be funny in nearly any context.

Crime exists here — the latest police log documented the implication of a 13-year-old in a burglary ring — but most Rexburg residents only hear of it and go their merry ways with the justifiable assurance that Rexburg crime will most likely never hit them hard.

I’m glad we rarely have to deal with drug busts or shootings and we have enough crime-free streets to relax. We can be swathed in gratitude that Rexburg crime is, for the most part, relegated to things like this:

“Complaint from person who found a baby rattlesnake.”