Inept or misguided: In sports betting, it's a pick 'em

If you read the Rochester Times on Thursday,  Jan.  2, well, we’re sorry you had to go through that. (At least you can use it to get your woodstove going.)

But if you did, you would have noticed a story about Karen Pollard, Rochester’s Economic Development director, getting some awards.

By the way, usually in a news story you include one of those old-fashioned “Ws,” as in “When.”

But evidently that must be irrelevant for the Rochester paper. There is none.

But here’s some relevance regarding the day of Thursday, Jan. 2. That’s the day The Lebanon Voice published an exclusive article regarding the arrest on Dec. 29 of the economic development director’s husband, Leslie Pollard, who was charged with felony conduct after an accident and drunken driving after he allegedly hits a young woman on Lowell Street, but failed to stop.

Karen Pollard was in the car at the time of the accident, police say.

About five minutes later, police received a call from the Pollard home with the caller saying words to the effect, “I may have hit something.”

Here is the actual wording form the Rochester Police Log of that Sunday night phone call from the Pollard home:

         “Narrative:    23:32

REC A SECOND CALL FROM A SUBJECT THOUGHT THAT THEY

MAY HAVE HIT SOMETHING IN THE ROADWAY.”

First off, if we hit “something” in the roadway, like a branch or a rock or a bag, we don’t bother calling the police to report it. We suppose if it was that much of a hazard, we’d get out of the car and try to warn motorists of the danger, while calling the police. Most of us have hit a piece of wood, rusted car metal or can while driving home, and while we might curse under our breath, we don’t call the cops to let them know “we hit something.”

Unless of course, you’re drunk. And you allegedly hit a PERSON!

The call from the Good Samaritan who helped the 28-year-old Rochester woman who was struck came in to Police at 11:27 p.m.

The call from the nearby Pollard house came in at 11:33 p.m.

Of course everyone would like to know the dynamic of what went on in those five minutes between Mr. and Mrs. Pollard. I mean you don’t have to wait until you get home to make a phone call these days.

But, more troubling, is that the Foster’s Daily Democrat never published the story until after The Lebanon Voice published it.

The Lebanon Voice was tipped off about the story by a handful of different readers, and we thank them for that. Keep ‘em coming.

So there are two conclusions we can draw. Either Foster’s Daily Democrat and its weakly, Rochester Times, culled no tips after attempting to report the news in these parts for many years … or sat on the story and only produced it after The Lebanon Voice forced its hand.

If they have no sources, don’t listen to scanner traffic and don’t read the police logs, then I suppose you could believe the former.

But you know they keep an eye on police logs. Inappropriate levity in the police logs is a staple of the Rochester Times. Surely they would have seen it.

I know. Let’s look at the police logs in Thursday’s paper. Oh, darn, they’re from the week of Dec. 16-22. Just two weeks old. That ain’t bad. Maybe next week we’ll have a little ditty on the hit-and-run.

This week there was one entry about a man with a gunshot injury who “wound” up at the hospital. Oh yeah, that’s laugh-out-loud stuff, for sure. The Rochester Times loves to make fun of misery, it seems. They should be all over this one, too.