Sunday Bloody Sunday; Opioid Rush; Watching The Detectives

Interesting weekend. Lots happening even though radio silence prevails and the Folks in Blue continue to shout “Move along!” and “No more pictures!” as cars careen, fists fly, and people crawl into the arms of Morpheus.

We were warned Sunday might get sporty – or “chippy,” as one site pal put it – and the soothsayers were right.

Sunday’s “Battle of the Bay” between the Santa Clara Forty Niners and Las Vegas Raiders was settled on the field with the Red & Gold winning handily. Yay. But fans of both teams, apparently, were not content with the score and took the contest out to the parking lot – the pedestrian walkways – and the parking medians surrounding Keza… Candlest… Levi Stadium and reenacted the Battle of Stirling Bridge whilst clad in Red and Black tartan.

Several fights were filmed in progress with the usual “Oh, oh, OH – Dayum!” play-by-play as 300-pound Nacho Wagons of both sexes huffed and puffed and pushed each other around until someone lapsed into unconsciousness. A few of those elephant seal mating rituals apparently made their way northward as fan skirmishes continued here in the 24/680 – proving exactly what, we don’t know.

Hope everyone had fun, those hangovers have passed and that no lasting CTEs were incurred.

Also of questionable rationale has been – what we perceive – to be a recent uptick in local drug overdoses with people of various description using opioids and other serious drugs of various description to tempt, what – death?

We have no hard and fast numbers yet because, apparently, it takes time for statistics to catch up to reality but we’re getting dozens of calls about individuals or pairs of people in the grip of their chosen drug unconscious in cars and bathrooms and expensive homes across the 24/680.

We’re not sure how many – if any – of these incidents have ended in death due to that statistics thing we mentioned, though we’re told from firsthand observers that users found in an unconscious state have been given multiple doses of countering agents (Narcan) in an effort to save them.

People have hardened their hearts to these incidents and the users involved (“If they want to kill themselves, let them…”) but we’d like to know what’s behind this latest flurry – a new influx of drugs? Higher potency? An increase in usage? Not 100 percent certain, yet, but we’ll keep asking around…

Not that you’d expect to hear anything at all about them except from, well, US – but it appears that high-profile police actions are also continuing across the 24/680 though you won’t find any account of them on police websites or daily logs. Information once regularly available to press and public has largely gone dark – though you will find some cockle-warming videos of coppers rescuing cats and pinching some hapless burglar available from time to time.

That stuff is all fine and dandy and has its place, to be sure, but when it becomes the sole source of police news for local outlets who re-post it faithfully upon release well, we have an issue with that. In fact, we’re regularly fielding questions from people who see those posts and ask why we didn’t re-post it. It’s not that we have a problem with the information or cat rescue, it’s that we have a problem with the method of release.

Back in the days when police radio transmissions were accessible via police scanners a certain former police chief chose to label us “scanner hounds” after we posted word of news from his sector he apparently didn’t appreciate. Well, police radios are gone entirely and we’re still pushing for and reporting real news so what does that make us now?

Hardly a day goes by that we fail to receive a report from the public about a police action of some sort, some major, many not, such as our latest one about police activity on Las Trampas Road in Alamo last night. We do what we can, of course, and manage to chalk up a success from time to time but we have to wonder if the public is aware the informational Keys to the Kingdom are in the hands of agencies content to keep things to themselves. And we ask ourselves if the public is aware of what it is losing.

We think not.