A reality of producing newspapers in this era is that we all take on more tasks than we once did. For me, this includes doing the weekly 911 Dispatch Report that was once the job of others.

It’s popular content. Dispatch items are sometimes absurd, sometimes sad. They reveal patterns of local problems, such as where burglaries are centered (often the peninsula’s northern communities), the extent to which homelessness and mental illness afflict individuals (and law officers and neighbors), and the prevalence of societal problems including domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse. Annoying/dangerous dogs are a trend I’ve been noticing.

And there sometimes are happy stories about neighbors helping neighbors, and warmhearted cops.

Years ago, the New York Times featured our dispatch report as a classic of its kind, a detailed look under the hood of a fascinating coastal community.

Even so, several weeks ago a long-time reader gently chided me for devoting as much space as we do to 911 calls. In my view, doing so doesn’t compromise our attention to anything else. For one thing, our awards for general excellence in the news business suggest that we are keeping up with the full range of Pacific County happenings.

It does take a fair bit of my time — three or four hours a week. But that’s nothing compared to effort the dispatch reports reveal on the part of officers and dispatchers. They stay astoundingly busy.

We have news in this week’s edition of a potential change in how Pacific County Communications-911 fits in the county’s organizational structure. At the urging of dispatchers, its director may become directly accountable to the commissioners, rather the current arrangement of being managed by the sheriff’s office. Like much of our content, it is already available online at https://www.chinookobserver.com/news/local/process-begins-for-paccom-separation-exploration/article_131a9a60-45ac-11ee-8caa-07731b0a0f11.html.

I’ll be working on the report for the Aug. 30 edition this afternoon and evening, but in the meantime, here’s the link to last week’s: https://www.chinookobserver.com/news/local/dispatch-reports/article_abd4ddc6-40fa-11ee-a3c7-f716eeca252b.html.

And as a special treat for you who read my newsletter, here’s a link to some of my long-running project that gathers dispatch items from decades ago. These all tickled my fancy in one way or another, often because they seem to me to be especially evocative of life here on this far western shore. I hope you enjoy them. https://www.chinookobserver.com/news/local/best-of-the-dispatch-reports/article_271e86c6-3e24-11eb-a77f-572a3b5d6ab3.html.

As always, thank you for your support of community journalism. It can’t happen without you.