This article follows up on Berkeley police efforts to handle the problem of “runaway juveniles,” who came to the city in increasing numbers through the late-60s and early-70s. The intensity with which Berkeley police targeted runaways is clear at the article’s outset: 175 runaways were caught within the first two weeks of July alone.
In the particular raid discussed in this article, police recovered a postcard which happened to have been written by Jodi Mitchell to her mother. The article uses Jodi’s writing to answer the question, “Why do they come to Berkeley?,” and condemns her appreciation of the fact that everything in Berkeley seems to come free or at little cost. Jodi’s soft landing in Berkeley bred discomfort in the more conservative side of Berkeley and in the pages of the Gazette.