Monday, May 10, 2010

Keeping it in the family

I grew up on a farm just north of London, hundreds of acres of barley, wheat, and rolling green pastures. I was never much of a farm-boy, though, more interested in playing sports and taking pot shots at the wild life with an array of weaponry that grew larger as I did.

My brother, on the other hand, was a quiet soul who listened to heavy metal and knew the difference between a rake and a hoe long before I did. He was always going to be the farmer in the family, the grubby-handed tractor-driving kid with one eye on the furrow in front of him and the other on the weather.

But life's funny, isn't it? Weird enough that I am a prosecutor in Texas -- you should see where my brother ended up.

Not a farm, but perhaps the coolest city in America: Aspen, Colorado.
Not a bejeaned farmer high up on a tractor, but an officer of the law wearing a uniform and driving . . . well, last time I looked it was a Volvo. Before that a police Saab.
He is in charge, though. A straight-arrow, law-abiding white guy by the name of Richard Pryor.

I was on the Aspen Police website this morning (the least I could do, after all he remembered my birthday this past weekend), just poking around. I wondered what kind of issues they have up there and came across this:

Bear Activity

These numbers represent all bear-related calls-for-service, including bears being bears, trash violations, and bear intrusions. The below chart reflects bear related calls-for-service for the Aspen Police. These numbers were updated on April 29, 2010.

Annual Bear Complaints2007200820092010






6388271320
Monthly Bear Complaints








January0000
February0000
March0191
April851719
May7910
June401028
July18022138
August24718289
September110056
October44416
November2132
December001

Bears. For some reason, this seems like a cool law enforcement/public safety problem to have. I mean, they don't have prostitutes or gangs roaming the streets, they have bears.

But I do want to know what happened in 2008 to bring the numbers down. Given that these numbers represent complaints, not sightings, maybe the bears got smart and ate the potential complainants?

I know, I'll ask my bro.

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