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The Aesthetic Crimes of the Seattle Police Department

dragnet.jpgSeattlest's house was broken into last week. The burglar absconded with our PowerBook, our D80, some watches, our wife's jewelry box (high sentimental value, low retail value), and our peace of mind.

"Our house was broken into" isn't as exciting a story as "our car mysteriously caught on fire while we were driving it." (Digression: Volkswagen accepted responsibility for whatever weird mechanical failure caused it, which made Liberty Mutual happy.)

Since then, we've filed our insurance claim, activated our alarm system, put wood in all of the window tracks so they can't be forced open, and closed the barn door after the horses ran out.

We just received a letter from the Seattle Police Department. It was a little jarring to read the salutation: "Dear Victim." Victim? We're not a ... well, yes, technically, we were victimized, but really, is there something wrong our name? You used it on the envelope. And you mail merged our case number, so it's not like you don't have a Word-savvy user somewhere on staff.

But you don't have a typographer, or even a typeface groupie, anywhere on staff, because this shocked us: You wrote us an official letter documenting our case number and regretfully informing us that our complaint "did not have enough information for detectives to pursue" and used Comic Sans.

Comic Sans ‽ Our daughter's daycare writes to us in Comic Sans, SPD. Comic Sans is the official font of anything having to do with young children. It's also, of course, a crime against typography.

Would Joe Friday hand out business cards using Comic Sans? Do the opening credits of Law and Order or CSI use Comic Sans? Do Dennis Franz or Andre Braugher or Michael Chiklis memorize dialogue written in Comic Sans? Nay, nay, a thousand times nay.

We appreciate your work for us, SPD. Your police officers were responsive and friendly. Your communication was quick and efficient. We never really expected you to solve this crime; once the fingerprints at our place turned out blurry, we knew we'd never see our stuff again, nor get the chance to find out who tripped over our dirty laundry on his or her way into our house.

Comic Sans does you no favors. Please, please, change your default font to Palatino or Frutiger or Garamond or something else with similar gravitas. Any gravitas.

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By James in on July 19, 2007 9:12 AM

Comments [rss]

  • guest

    An egregious aesthetic crime.

  • Yeah, they took prints at the window the guy jimmied open -- smeary and unusable, though. And there were no witnesses. We live in Rainier Beach, so our officers were from the South Precinct on Myrtle; the return address on the letter we got is the Fifth Avenue office, though.

  • My house was recently broke into also. What precinct did you receive this gem from? And did they really take the time to do fingerprints? Wow. There were any number of places in our house that could have yielded working prints (including a knife left behind by the perps), and all we got was the securing of our house along with some blank victim statements and a case number. Not to mention, our neighbor gave a pretty obvious description of the suspects as they left which lead to nothing. Ugh.

  • We are amused.

  • guest

    Wow, you guys all live in the same house?



    Cool!

  • MvB

    James, this post is top-shelf stuff! "Comic Sans does you no favors." As true today as ever!

  • guest

    my friends house was robbed during a party (lots of things stolen--including car/house keys, credit cards, cameras, phones, purses, etc.--and we called the SPD right away. Officers came and took a report.



    The next day, people were checking bank accounts and phone statements to see if the thieves had used anything, and one girl noticed several calls on her phone between 1 and 3am. One was to yellow cab.



    We put in a call to yellow cab and they said that they had a name, pickup/dropoff address, and a photo of the fair but that they would only release it to SPD.



    The other phone calls were to houses within 5 blocks of the party house.



    When an SPD "detective" called, she had no record of anything that the officers had written down the night of the incident. When told about the cab lead, which we gave her on a silver platter, she asked that we send her a note in "an internet", which we assumed meant "email".



    She then claimed after a four or five day wait that the cab company "didn't know what I was talking about" which is bullshit because when we called them back they said they had it.



    The "detective" called the other numbers on the list but said that "nobody wanted to talk to me" and basically threw her hands up.



    This was back in february. A few weeks ago the house where the party was held got a call from a "manager" of an "apartment" that said that they "found" purses and wallets with IDs and credit cards. "They" asked if we wanted them "back", and agreed to have us pick them up at the apartment building (an address was given). Nobody was at the "apartment" but then another call was made by the "manager" and the stuff was "across the street".



    Needless to say, the SPD was very unhelpful and said that because the value of the goods was less than 5,000 dollars or something it wasn't a "priority". Had the thieves come back in the middle of the night and stolen the car (which they had keys to), or had they robbed the house again, maybe the SPD would have done something. But then again. Maybe not.

  • guest

    Also on the sans-comic-sans'dwagon:

    http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=07052007

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