By ERIC GRIFFITH / When you live in a small town, knowing everyone else's business comes with the territory. One of the best ways to keep up with the gossip -- or create some of your own -- is to browse the police blotter in the local paper. It's often filled with juicy tidbits about the crimes and misdemeanors of everyone from your high school nemesis to the local Boy Scout leader.

Dictionary.com defines a police blotter as "the daily written record of events (as arrests) in a police station." And most news outlets probably run them as dry statements of fact about the causes of tickets, arrests and fines. Not so in Newport This Week, the weekly paper for Rhode Island's Newport County area. Instead, writer Jonathan Kiefer revamps the best selections of the week as comedic bits available for the entire world to read online.

Here's an example -- September 3, 1:20 a.m., Thames Street: A Lakefield, Massachusetts, man indiscriminately exposed himself to people near the corner of Thames and Mill streets. But when police approached, he didn't expose himself to them, which may have hurt their feelings. It's no fun to be excluded. After a short chase, police arrested the man.

Funny stuff, no? Not everyone thinks so, from the ridiculed criminals on up to some of the local constabulary, who feel Kiefer's comedic commentary is not very respectful. Being related to a police officer myself, I can see why the Newport cops feel that way; local boys in blue like to be seen as modern-day Dark Knights, striking fear into the hearts of criminal scum with their gadget-filled cars and heavy utility belts. Having tried on my brother's work belt, I can truthfully say that anyone who can do a 10-hour shift wearing 40 pounds of extra crap and still chase some perp down -- probably deserves a chance to beat a suspect. No, not really. They never run anyone down with that stuff, unless they're in a car.

To get a cop's perspective, I called my brother, the patrolman, and asked him how his bosses and coworkers would take it if the locals could read the blotter rewritten for yucks. He said the biggest problem with this humorous blotter is that anything that makes cops look foolish diminishes the effectiveness of "officer presence," that is, the perception that a cop arriving on the scene can automatically diffuse a bad situation. He said, "As bad as some cops are in some places, you don't want to make it worse for them."

I'll be fair. Keifer's Police Blotter column doesn't always just pick on the criminals. Sometimes cops do things that we mere mortals find a bit foolish (even when it's required by law) and Kiefer delights in pointing them out. Consider his write-up on the incarceration of a guy who had no money and was just looking for a free meal and lodging. Sometimes, he just plays them for laughs.

June 8, 2 p.m., Newport Harbor: A sailboat was unable to cast off because a squirrel atop its mast refused to come down. Police, in a rare breach of protocol, did not shoot the squirrel. No further information is available.

I've got the inside word on some on-duty exploits and know there are plenty of things Keifer's missing out on that don't make the blotter. My brother almost shot a scarecrow once, and drove a cruiser into a ditch. And once while he was working undercover, a drunk coed with a pierced tongue threw her arms around him and rested her hands on the Glock automatic he had tucked into the back of his pants.

Keifer is watching the Watchmen, and being (relatively) fair (and funny) about it. About 1 in 10 of Kiefer's blotter entries ridicules the cops as much as the inordinately-large number of idiotic criminals in Rhode Island. So, maybe the Rhode Island cops should give away just a smidgen less information if they're really all that worried about their reputations. WildWeb gave the Newport police department a chance to comment. They declined.

My advice to you: Don't do anything "criminally stupid" next time you're in Rhode Island.

Eric Griffith hasn't had a ticket since 1994, and doesn't plan to ever get one in Newport County, R.I. He was happy to use the word "perp" in a sentence.

TV producer: Catherine Burns