The next scene - the only one to take place in the Amity police station - opens with a shot of a traumatised Cassidy sitting in the foreground on the left of the frame with Patrolman Hendricks in the background on the right. Each man has a glass of a pale milky liquid in his hand, a mixture no doubt concocted to settle their queasy stomachs. While Cassidy seems unaware of the glass in his hand, Hendricks sips at his like a boy who has been given a soda as a treat. There is the sound of a door opening and closing and Polly - a plump white-haired woman in grey tweed - steps into the room. She addresses Hendricks in a surprised tone, and her greeting ('Well, you're up awful early.') hints at Amity's low crime rate as well as the somewhat folksy nature of its police force. This latter point is reinforced by the woman's character itself, which is quickly established as that of a slightly scatty matriarch. Hendricks motions her towards the sound of typing that is coming from off-screen and Polly marches past a bulletin board on which is pinned an image of the stars and stripes and the legend This Is Our Flag Be Proud Of It.
The camera pans with her and tracks behind her as she enters the chief's office. Brody is at his desk, typing. He ignores his secretary's question ('What have you got on today?') and gives her a gentle reminder about the new filing system, suggesting the minor power struggle that exists between them. The camera comes to a momentary halt as Brody and Polly have their initial exchange, and a third of the screen on the left is obscured by the wall and door jamb. As Polly comes around the desk, the camera moves over the threshold to reveal a composition of vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines provided by shadows on the wall, the fixtures and furniture of the interior and the partial view of a pitched roof outside the window. Like the earlier images of the skewed vertical slats of the broken fencing along the beach, the geometry of the frame provides the viewer with a subliminal visual message. The message itself is a contradiction, one that suggests a sense of dislocated order, and it is a concept that will inform both the community's initial attempts to keep the monster at bay and the final improvised strategies employed by the three men who are chosen to hunt it down.
The brief but memorable role of Polly was given to a non-professional actress called Peggy Scott. Like the other locals cast in the movie, she was chosen because she looked and sounded the part. Her delivery gives the dialogue an almost improvisational feel, whilst both the pitch of her voice and her general demeanor look forward to the diminutive ghostbuster played by Zelda Rubinstein in Poltergeist.
