Thinking back on records clerk Olivia, what it was like to be a crime reporter in the 1960s

Don Kirkland

Don Kirkland

I suspect I’m among those who don’t spend much time thinking about the past. As the cliché reminds me, it is what it is. My own meanderings into the history of my growing up days — my early start in newspapering and where that 70-year life excursion has taken me … well, those recollections seem to be floating into my consciousness more often these days.

But I digress. Reporting on the notable goings-on in Tempe and nearby environs does continue to hold top spot among my responsibilities. This in part thanks to the relationship I developed last year with Independent Newsmedia and its collection of neighborhood-focused newspapers in communities throughout the Valley and beyond.

Not only does that help broaden my own perspective; it offers a far wider view of local happenings than the footprint I was able to leave as a stand-alone participant in a playing field of news-media heavy (and some not-so-heavy) hitters.

Now, as part of a mega news gathering/reporting organization that has the staff, the experience — and the determination — to get the job done, there’s a happy range of new topics, new roads to be traveled.

Added to that, as above, are recollections of those early days when I ambled into the Burbank Police Department’s records bureau, a place which I consider a starting point, an early building block, of what such depositories are today.

It was there in the dim confines of that 1960s-era records storehouse that I learned the fundamental ropes of what, simply said, it was like to be hanging out with cops.

I reported for my fact-finding duties just in time to be greeted by Olivia, the overnight clerk, before she departed for home and a welcome, I’m sure, escape from the clackety-clack of those seemingly never-quiet teletype machines. Those confounded devices, unlike her I’m sure, virtually never slept.

And while I very much doubt that one of Olivia’s official responsibilities was to organize the reports of the preceding day’s crimes, arrests or rescued kids and puppies, she did her job with what I interpreted as true passion. Crime reports in one stack, arrest reports in another. Each neatly arranged in what was the lid of what appeared to once have been a fully functional cardboard box.

As I thumbed through the contents and copied — presumably an allowable practice in what must have been the Dark Ages of legality — any I might want for reference if I wrote stories for that day’s paper, I found myself immersed in a world to which I had never been exposed.

Uniformed men (and yes, even a few women in those days) offering a friendly nod as they passed by, a “good morning” and an introduction to a world vastly different than any I had experienced.

All these years later I couldn’t, and definitely wouldn’t, try to evoke as a not-so-thinly appeal for leniency, my memories of hanging out in the ‘60s with those sociable officers at Burbank PD.

Nonetheless, as they and I drove off, I’m sure that helpful records clerk Olivia from long ago would come to mind. Sleep well, my old friend.

Don Kirkland is publisher of the Wrangler News Independent. Please send your comments to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines at https://www.yourvalley.net/civility-checklist.