The Motel Was Cheapo, The Mom A Psycho And The Kids Both Klepto – September 5, 2010
• Wednesday, July 28 7:51 p.m. A five-year-old girl was seen running around alone in Sunny Brae Park. Whenever a car approached, she would run off. Police arrived at the scene, where the caller said the girl had gotten into a silver SUV that had left the area.
10:59 p.m. A man caught trying to get into a car in Valley West must have been the shy type, as he scampered away, abandoning his coathanger technology in mid-pry. It turned out to be the owner’s ex-roommate, who, since he moved out over some unspecified civil clash several weeks back, was “under the assumption” that the car had been given to him.
• Thursday, July 29 9:37 a.m. A residential truck moved in to the 800 block of Sixth Street, with the occupants’ waste disposal procedure consisting of flinging items out the window. For the good of the neighborhood, a nearby resident cleaned up the debris the first morning, but the second day in, she refused to do so.
2:45 p.m. A woman complained about the “FUCK APD” sign Big Al was holding on the corner of Giuntoli Lane and Valley West Boulevard. She had children with her, stated that she had rights and felt assaulted by having to see the bad words.
3:10 p.m. A woman said she asked Big Al why he was so mad at Arcata Police, and he quipped, “Kiss my ass.”
6:34 p.m. A large-bearded man loudly selling bicycle parts on a J Street corner was accused by a neighbor of disturbing the peace.
8:34 p.m. A cocktail-infused man in a black hat spit in the face of a bus passenger at the Transit Center, then left toward the Plaza.
• Friday, July 30 12:13 p.m. When a man checked into a Valley West motel, he didn’t mention that his service dog would be staying with him. He was evicted.
10:40 a.m. A four-year-old in an Alliance Road apartment found some keys and stuck them in an electrical outlet. The shocked tot was hospitalized.
11:52 a.m. A woman started getting calls on her cell phone that were just music playing. The cell carrier advised her to change her number, which she did, but then the calls started up again.
12:53 p.m. A woman said that her son is pawning her antiques, telling the dealers that she’s dead.
1:59 p.m. Police were asked to stand by at the hospital nursery, where Child Welfare Services was to take possession of a newborn baby. CWS was concerned that the parents might “snatch” the infant.
3:12 p.m. The owner of a Diamond Drive rental house said the tenants had changed the locks and wouldn’t let her inside because of a suspected cannabis grow inside.
4:15 p.m. The cigarette butt-spackled parking spaces in front of a Plaza liquor store became a gore-porn theatre of the macabre when a passerby came upon a cracked open, bleeding, softball-sized tumor dangling from the hindquarters of a Jack Russell terrier in a truck. The concerned citizen raised the issue with the truck’s driver, who insisted that the animal didn’t need any medical attention. “It’s just a dog, not a human,” he conveniently reasoned, and drove away.
5 p.m. A short, large woman with brown hair was seen at a Uniontown pay phone with a brown and white dog covered with bleeding sores. Police didn’t find her.
6:36 p.m. A Valley West tenant who had been evicted jammed the locks on the home.
8:07 p.m. Some sort of underdocumented imbroglio on 10th Street involved a dreadlocked man ordering a woman to get inside her house from his ad hoc command post in a neighbor’s yard. The drama may have been the aftermath of a failed relationship, as he was allowed to remove some property of his, and an officer picked up some trash that was left behind.
• Saturday, July 31 3:25 p.m. A man at a cannabis center at 11th and K streets claimed that $1,400 in medicine had been stolen from him by the establishment.
6:49 p.m. Kids playing with fireworks set a field ablaze at 11th and M streets.
• Saturday, August 1 5:42 a.m. A man on Union Street reported a woman bleeding, but said that due to anxiety issues he couldn’t go into any detail. She drove away briefly, then returned, and the man mustered up the will to describe what happened, which was that she had been cooking and accidentally cut her arm with a knife.
7:56 p.m. A man used Hallen Drive as a shooting range, instructing two six-year-olds in the use of a BB gun.
9:23 p.m. A South H Street resident reported that his roommate had shoved him, then thwacked him in the face with some paperwork. Placed on hold, he hung up. Called back, he said the paper-wielder had gone to sleep, making possible a furtive call to the crazy house for more helpful advice on how to deal with the erratic character.
10:48 p.m. As is not uncommon, a drunk got the notion in his pickled brain that one of the beleaguered Plaza street trees required further dismantling. Even though he was sort of dressed like a tree, with brown pants and a green shirt, the man showed no particular fealty to the spindly object of his scorn, and savaged it without remorse. Interrupted in mid-branch rip, the anti-arborist was arrested on a public drunkenness charge.
• Sunday, August 2 1:14 a.m. A man brandished some sort of medieval ball-and-chain contraption on Tavern Row, making an impression, if not the one he intended. He then departed at sufficient speed to elude further inquiry as to his intentions.
8:08 a.m. A young gentleman wearing a versatile hoodie-style garment not-so-secretly secreted a bottle o’ breakfast booze in his brown corduroy pants at a Uniontown supermarket. But seemingly seeing that he’d been seen, he reconsidered, unpantsed the hooch and left it behind before leaving the store. With official interest piqued, the lad was followed to a dank and spider infested but popular remove ’neath the nearby freeway overpass. He was admonished for the attempted shoplifting and three colleagues got public drunkenness citations.
1:16 p.m. Heaven forbid that the driver of a red pickup truck would have to use a parking spot and walk a whole 25 feet to the ATM. Instead, he pulled in behind the cars parked in the closest spots and parked there, blocking their egress, then sociopathically sauntered over to use the ATM. At least one witness stewed about this act of selfish presumption, then took phone in hand and called police with the truck’s plate number. The truck’s registered owner was sent a letter pointing out that his dickish self-indulgence did not go unnoticed.
2:06 p.m. A young teenager was said to have equipped a water gun with some sort of needle on the end. He was briefly spotted with two cohorts on Hallen Drive, then disappeared.
5:49 p.m. The desolate wastes of outer Heindon Road served as an erotic wonderland for one denim-clad man. He was observed allowing gravity to have its way with his trousers along the roadside, neither delighting nor dismaying the large truck-trailer rig being involuntarily familiarized with his reproductive apparatus.
• Monday, August 2 3:23 p.m. Two trucks parked in a private lot on G Street were notified via windshield wiper note that they had to leave. But the drivers solved that little problem by simply removing both editions of the warning note. An officer went by and encountered the insouciant interlopers in mid-dawdle, and delivered the go-away message to more productive effect.
3:29 p.m. A man who had reported his bike stolen on May 27 found it sitting unlocked at Alliance Road and Spear Avenue, and repossessed it.
4:20 p.m. When the guest registered in Room 245 of a low-rent Valley West motel set his backpack and cup outside the door for a minute, the larval slithy toves in 244 didn’t let the opportunity to commit pointless larceny of negligibly valuable objects go by unexploited. On returning to get his stuff, the victim found it gone and notified management. The young culprits were quickly identified (one was just eight years old), and the items returned. But the mom wigged out, going “psycho” (by the manager’s description) and demanding that the kids be hauled off to Juvenile Hall. Instead, the kids were cop-admonished and everyone went back to their rooms.
