Some damn fine detective work

Someone calls the police and says that they have found a skull. They think it may be real because it's a neighborhood with a lot of crime*.

The police come, rope the "crime scene" off, and...send a picture of the skull to some UNM anthropologists, presumably in Albuquerque. Note that there apparently is no one on the Santa Fe police who can differentiate between a real skull and a child-sized plastic toy.

Apparently, the ability to make a distinction is also a rare talent at UNM, where two people first confirmed it was real before realizing that, you know, it was fake, made of plastic, and anatomically incorrect.

This took 3 1/2 hours, during which I'm sure the Santa Fe police could have been out doing actual police work, such as enforcing traffic laws, arresting drunk drivers, and perhaps ensuring the safety of the local Dunkin Donuts. Instead our tax money paid for three hours of investigating a plastic decoration.

I want my money back.

*Not that while Santa Fe has some not-great areas, the crime rate is probably below average for a town this size. When half your population is old retired wannabe artists who do nothing but paint lousy nature scenes, you're pretty safe. There were an astounding 9 homicides in 2003, with a population of over 65,000.