Moraga police shooed the gremlins off their computer cables and forwarded their most recent case files after a brief hiatus and, we must say, it’s nice to see the hometown reports again! Thanks, Moraga PD Computer Squad:
Not Your Usual Graffiti
Officers were called out to inspect a spray painted message on a cement retaining wall behind a property in the 900 block of Moraga Road on Dec. 7, arriving to find that someone had scrawled: “Try Harder Next Time” in black paint. The property owner who discovered the messaging told officers he was baffled by its meaning. No witnesses, no leads.
Station House Paintball?
Also on Dec. 7, officers found a cardboard box containing a paint ball gun, paint balls, and other gear abandoned at their station. Everything was placed into evidence until officers could locate an owner.
Tumi Tuck Costs Its Owner
A man called police a little after 6 p.m. on Dec. 7 to report that someone had taken a Tumi backpack with $900 worth of items inside, from the front seat of his unlocked car at the Moraga Safeway. There were no witnesses.
Purse Picker
On Dec. 9 officers responded to a report of a theft from a customer at the Homegoods store at 590 Moraga Rd. and met with the 78-year-old victim, who said someone had stolen her wallet from her purse while shopping. The victim told officers she called her husband to cancel her credit cards only to learn they had already been used in Walnut Creek. This case is under investigation.
Cracking The Pavement
Police and Public Works personnel responded to the 2000 block of Ascot Drive Tuesday after receiving information that a solid waste truck was stuck on the side of a parking area because the pavement had failed. Two heavy equipment tow trucks were summoned and nudged the garbage truck back onto the roadway. Police said damage to both the truck and property appeared moderate.
Not your usual graffiti. No sir. I wonder, will there be a follow up posting…after next time?
Definitely doesn’t sound like the work of your garden variety tagger. We’ll see if there’s a recurrence.
Why can’t the other reporting agencies jazz up their reports like our Moragan constabulary? Crime in Orinda is like watching paint dry, evidently.
Ha! We hear that a lot, Drew. The lowdown is that police services for all towns and cities except Moraga is contracted to the Sheriff’s Office and they have a special way of detailing their reports. Moraga is independent (we like independent) of that process and there’s a bit more of a narrative in their reporting. It’s all pretty much “just the facts, ma’am” cop-ese but there is also a smattering of the dry police humor we appreciate so much. The gremlins were chewing on their computer cables there for a bit and we were missing their weekly files but we hope we’re back on track as we like hearing from all our local police departments!
Yay! Nice to see the files again!
It is, Daniel… lots of folks missed seeing them these past few weeks, apparently. Thanks for writing!
Great to see the hometown news again!!!!
Agreed, Mike… we were beginning to have “MoTown Withdrawals!”
“Try Harder Next Time” was written by your typical Lamorinda parent pressuring their children to do well in school, and succeed in life.
Ha! You may be right, Danielle…
My favorite graffiti sighting ever was in San Francisco, along Dubuce or 13th St., I think, one morning heading to work… In a nicely-rendered script, stretching about 30 feet along the brick wall, was the word “vandalism”…
It was gone a few days later, I regret not having a photo.
We share your regret! Our memory of the San Francisco graffiti scene is of interviewing the spray can “crew” who visited from Santa Cruz and who did upwards of $100,000 in damage to some vintage, antique MUNI rolling stock stored in a secured transit yard. They said they came to SF to “share” their work and were told that everyone in the city loved graffiti. We interviewed them in jail – they seemed genuinely surprised that not everyone shared their love of their chosen medium.
In SF, when my office building got tagged (which in SOMA, was often), it only took a day before there’d be a citation on the door from the City, giving us 2 or so days to remove it, or be fined. Curiously, there was always a business card for a professional graffiti removal guy right next to the citation. I smell something fishy.
When we lived there (Cow Hollow, Fillmore Street), we used to buff out graffiti for free. We found you could keep it knocked down by keeping on top of it and there were a few men in the neighborhood who took it upon themselves to do so. This was fulfilling work, but not without confrontation… so we would advise caution!