The first visit to the police station of the day was almost always a good time. 

I’d wander in around 3 p.m. as one shift was going off duty, another was coming on. The station would be crammed with beat officers and for me, that meant an abundance of gossip and brain picking. 

“How’d that accident on Sabattus turn out last night?” I’d ask a cop on his way out of the station. “Did the driver make it?” 

“Nope,” he’d say, and like that, I’d have one story already to follow up on. 

Another officer might pull me aside to advise that I pay attention to a particular arrest that I’d find in the stack of booking sheets. 

“We got this guy on Blake Street around midnight,” he’d say. “Might be worth your time to look over the affidavit once he makes it to court.” 

He’d start for the door, ready to go home, but then he’d pause to give me the standard warning. 

“You didn’t hear any of that from me, by the way.” 

But of course. 

Sometimes during the flurry of a shift change, I could get away with wandering into the Criminal Investigation Division to talk to the detectives. If I asked my questions in just the right way, they might let slip a tiny morsel of information about the murder investigation that was so hot in the news lately. If they were feeling generous, they might even suggest that I be at a certain place at a certain time with a photographer on hand. 

“But hey,” they’d say. “You didn’t get any of that from me.” 

Sometimes I might last five minutes in CID before either the shift supervisor or the chief himself would come to chase me away. 

“Don’t skulk in here,” former Chief Michael Bussiere used to snarl at me. “You’re always skulking.” 

The official reason for my early day visits to the cop shop was to jot down arrests from those beautiful pink sheets that were compiled in a binder. I’d sit at some cluttered desk with that binder and my notebook before me, jotting down the names, ages, addresses and other pertinent information about those who had been arrested since my last visit to the station. 

How I loved the booking sheets. These forms, filled out by the arresting officer, didn’t just contain information about charges and whatnot. There were other fields that provided peripheral information, too: information on where the accused worked; on identifying features, up to and including scars and tattoos. If the arrest involved a violent crime, the culprit’s choice of weapon might be listed.

The joy of those fresh arrest sheets was in the fact that I never knew what I was going to find there. A criminal mischief here, a domestic assault there and maybe a drunken driving arrest or two in between.

But then I’d flip the page and find an “elevated aggravated assault” that warranted looking into. Or I’d find an arrest bearing the name of prominent local businessman or politician and we were off to the races. 

Once, as I was languidly making my way through the arrest sheets, I stumbled across an arrest where the word “Murder” was scribbled in the charge field. I was out of my chair and off for the shift supervisor’s office so fast, I left skid marks on the tile. 

Those early day trips to the police stations (I hit both Lewiston and Auburn cop shops at least twice a day) were pure energy. It’s how I would first learn each day whether my work shift was likely to be dull or lively — I might get three solid stories out of the booking sheets alone and then even more good stuff through you-didn’t-hear-it-from-me brand tips, gossip and innuendo. 

The night rounds? Completely different. 

At night, all the officers would be on the street and the station would be dark and quiet to the point of ominous. There might be two or three fresh arrests in the big binder, but if you had questions about any of them, you had to brave the shift watch commander who by then would be in a surly mood after dealing with too many neighbor complaints, domestic assaults and other assorted headaches that come with any given day on the cop beat. 

There was one particular lieutenant at the Lewiston station  — Lt. Tom, we’ll call him — who would spend five solid minutes yelling about how he had no time for some stupid reporter scrounging for news because it had been a busy night and, wouldn’t I just go away and leave him alone already? 

Then he’d catch his breath, calm down and think about it. 

“Now that you mention it,” he’d say, the red finally draining from his face. “We DID have a foot chase with a suspect who finally submitted after he was sprayed in the face by a skunk. You want details on that?” 

For many years, doing the rounds of the police stations was at least 75% of my job. In those days, there were no mass emailed press releases or public alerts on the police departments’ Facebook pages. If you were a reporter looking for information about the latest mayhem, you got your ass to the police station and frantically waved your arms in the lobby until some disgruntled cop buzzed you in. 

There were no public information officers in those golden days, either. Information was doled out or withheld by whatever sergeant or lieutenant happened to be on the desk that night. Even a beat cop might cough up the goods if all I was looking for was something like driver info at a crash scene. 

It was a beautiful time, and yes, this is me whining one more time about how much better things were in the old days. 

Today, all information that comes from the police comes from the one PIO that each department has assigned to manage media inquiries. More often than not, the PIO will just post the information about an incident to the department Facebook page, even if you happened to be the only reporter actively asking about it. 

Playing field leveled. Scoop averted. 

Making the rounds at the police stations? That’s not a thing anymore, either. No more gossiping at shift change, no more skulking around for tips in CID, no more red-faced watch commanders with tales of superhero skunks. 

News from police these days is carefully curated, to the point where even little things like the police log has been sterilized — the daily arrests are no longer lifted from pink booking sheets and scribbled in my notebook, they are sent directly from the jail at the end of the night and only the most pertinent information is included. 

The relationship between the media and police has become distant and robotic; like an arranged marriage that teeters on collapse. It feels, like so many things in our world today, cold and automated. 

By and large, police seem perfectly happy with this greater distance between Us and Them. The relationship between the media and law enforcement has been particularly contentious since the start of the decade and so when technology gave police the opportunity to create even more space between us, they took it. 

Even so, every now and then, I run into some long retired cop who is more than happy to join me in waxing nostalgic about the old ways and grousing about the new. 

“Things were much better back then, it’s true,” they’ll say. “It’s crazy how much has changed, and not for the better.” 

We’ll recall some highlights from the old days and have a laugh before bidding one another farewell. But before the old cop is all the way out of sight, he’ll stop and holler back to me. 

“But hey!” he’ll say. “You didn’t hear any of that from me.”