If a layman is of the opinion that this is a source where the news from the police department actually flows from, it is a very incorrect assumption. For, in the Goa Police, the office of the PRO is that of a sorting department. The juiciest morsels extracted from the reams of wireless messages and kept under lock and key, while the unwanted and sanitized thrash is offered to media representatives. No complaints there. That is the PROs brief. But if there was one PRO a few years back who managed this with elan, it was Deputy Superintendent of Police Apa Teli. This man had generated such goodwill amongst mediamen, that the police department should really offer him a police medal, solely for ensuring that the image of the police in the media remained somber for half a decade or so. Evenings at Mr Teli's office comprised of the invariable cup of tea and on several occasions pakodas from Cafe Real. Mr Teli's strategy was to ensure that discussions over such sessions never focused around any crime-related events for the day. And he ensured that his agenda stuck. And then there was also the annual get-together at one of the city hotels where liquor-happy journos abounded. Almost no journo could say no to Mr Teli. The same was the case with the liquor. Things they say were even better during Umesh Gaonkar's tenure as the officer in charge of the Panjim town police station, with several weekend outings for journalists covering crime. Umesh, who is now promoted as a Deputy Superintendent of Police, has kept up his press management tactics in Margao. Correspondents often walk up to him and complain that they had lost their purse and Umesh readily obliges, not with the purse, but at least with some money. (For more information please contact the late 'eighties and early 'nineties language-loving journo clique and primitive Margao based correspondents-cum-teachers) This uneasy equation also has its own kind of 'freak shows'. A journo attached to a Marathi newspaper, who belongs to the Somnath Zuwarkar school of thought -- one of those few loyal sycophants who refused to turn sides in favour of Babush Monserrate -- was involved in an embarrassing incident a couple of years ago. Shopping in the departmental store in the capital run by the Goa Marketing Federation, he tried flicking a tooth-paste and slipped it inside his pocket. His sleight of the hand was noticed by an employee, and was promptly reported to the manager, who hauled him up and informed the Panjim police about the incident. When the reporter revealed his professional identity and explained that he too owed obeisance to Somnath Zuwarkar, the complaint was duly withdrawn. Another of Mr Zuwarkar's cronies was in charge of running the marketing federation then. The journo is now dubbed as "Colgate" and he really does not bristle with joy when he is called by the name. (For more information on this please contact Police Inspector Mahesh Gaonkar)