1 October—It would appear that the two state police officers currently serving as Litchfield’s resident troopers can’t be bothered dealing with Litchfield residents and thus would prefer to give their jobs back to town constables. Here’s the story: Litchfield’s senior, long-term, dependable resident trooper—who really is a town resident—has been incapacitated after surgery, so the town is at present being served by a stand-in trooper as well as the new junior resident trooper. One, I’ve been told, has the day shift, the other has the night shift.

Just over three weeks ago I had reason to file a criminal complaint. So I phoned the Litchfield police number. Nobody being in the police office at Litchfield Town Hall to answer the phone, my call was shunted to the dispatcher at the Troop L barracks right down the road. He dutifully took my message and said he’d relay it to the resident trooper on the day shift. I assume he did.

But a few days later I mentioned in passing to an employee at Town Hall that I hadn’t heard from the day trooper and was told that’s probably because he was rather casual about checking his voice mail, so I’d be better off contacting him through the barracks dispatcher. Okay. So I left another message with the dispatcher and, just for the fun of it, I left a couple of messages on the trooper’s voice mail. What the hell. In all events, I still didn’t hear from him. Talk about casual.

So a few days after that, I mentioned in passing to the first selectman that I hadn’t heard from the day trooper so she told me she’d have him call me. And indeed, another few days later—on 17 September, according to the caller ID—I found a message from the resident trooper on my answering machine. (I use an old-fashioned answering machine rather than voice mail.)

As it happens, though, the message was from the other resident trooper—the one supposedly on the night shift, not the one I had tried to contact. What the hell. So I returned the call to him at the barracks number he left and was told by the barracks dispatcher that the trooper was on another call but would get right back to me.

Two weeks later I’m still waiting for the resident trooper—any resident trooper—to get right back to me. It must be noted, by the way, that Litchfield’s two certified constables who retired in 2022 didn’t retire because they wanted to . . .