When ‘in the Pink’ Isn’t Peachy

--Some police officers in Springfield, Ill., are concerned that the color scheme in the detectives’ lobby at police headquarters doesn’t set the right tone for dealing with hardened criminals. “You bring a guy in and you say, ‘We’re going through the pink room now,’ ” said Detective Don Kolar. The walls were painted recently during remodeling at the detective bureau. Secretary Patty Stoutamyer said she asked the painters for peach walls, just as requested by Deputy Chief of Investigations Don Mitchell. However, to most officers, including Stoutamyer and Mitchell, the bureau’s walls appear pink. And when it comes to coaxing burglars into confessing, for example, pink just doesn’t get the needed respect, detectives claim. Mitchell said he will probably order a new color for the lobby in the spring. “Anything neutral will do,” he said.

--Death and taxes are unavoidable. And the New Brighton, Minn., City Council has found a way to combine the two in a new ordinance extending a $75 tax on parades to funeral processions. “It’s an unconscionable charge. A funeral procession is not exactly a voluntary event,” protested Gary Larson, head of the Minnesota Funeral Directors Assn. He said New Orleans is the only other city in the country with such a tax, and said that probably makes some sense. “Some of those funerals for jazz musicians are incredible parades that do tie up traffic,” said Larson. But Larson can’t remember the last time a traffic-blocking funeral procession for a jazz figure was held in New Brighton, a Minneapolis suburb of about 20,000 people. Funeral processions, Larson argues, are part of the grieving process and an orderly way of getting people from the church to the cemetery to say final farewells. Mayor Bob Benke doesn’t hedge about the motivation for the ordinance, which took effect Jan. 1. The tax is needed to help balance the budget, said Benke.

--A Fort Walton Beach, Fla., man has recovered his stolen hubcap--along with a note from the thief saying it wasn’t needed anymore. “Thanks for letting me ‘borrow’ this. I totalled my M-C, so you can have it back. Sign me ‘Monte C. Carlo,” read the note under the hubcap, placed near the front right wheel from which it had been taken nine months earlier. Lester Grout said he never had replaced the $20 hubcap. “I don’t think it was a joke, though. This guy was probably telling the truth,” Grout said. He said his next car would be the kind with hubcaps that don’t come off.