Bling, Specs Are Collateral Grabbage In Neighborly Shovefest – January 18, 2011
• Sunday, November 28 1:01 a.m. A citizen encountered a crabby crew of four – two men, two women and lots of camo clothes and dogs – near an old creamery on Ninth Street. The fearsome foursome told the person that they would burn down his home and “destroy” him.
4:19 p.m. A woman reported a diamond necklace stolen from her room in a non-seedy Valley West motel. It was soon found under the bed.
5:22 p.m. A five-year-old superhero was reported missing at an Alliance Road apartment complex. Spiderman was soon found under a bed.
• Monday, November 29 3:12 a.m. A car vs. hydrant collision ended with the usual geyser and river. The on-call Public Works official’s phone soon rang.
7:38 a.m. A daughter called from the lobby of a low-effort Valley West motel, where her dad had threatened to beat her up in their room in front of the one-year-old baby. He was arrested.
9:12 a.m. “I wish I was dead!” “Fuck you people!” These felicitous ejaculations serenaded Arcata’s K-borhood West, courtesy of that morning’s neighborhood braying jackal du jour.
9:14 a.m. A delivery van was parked across three handicapped spaces at a Uniontown variety store.
11:32 a.m. A previously gruntled customer complained that a Northtown store routinely “rounds up” purchases to the 50 centers or even the next-highest dollar amount. An officer determined that no crime had occurred.
1:02 p.m. Monday afternoon at a Samoa Boulevard apartment warren was enlivened by some well-publicized he-she drama. Her role consisted mostly of crying loudly amid a tempest of crashes and bangs. After proclaiming her a “stupid bitch,” he left, but then returned.
2:44 p.m. After shearing off a power pole near the new Samoa Boulevard Lift Station, a driver took a brisk walk in another direction. The CHP and PG&E were notified. The driver was located and cited.
11:13 p.m. A man behind a Plaza bank was having trouble standing, but not with his forté, vomiting. Police found the retched-out wretch lying on the sidewalk, and arrested him for public drunkenness.
• Tuesday, November 30 12:12 p.m. Yelling seems to be the hobby of the tenants in Apartment 2. Writing letters to them hasn’t helped so far, but maybe they weren’t written in ALL CAPS.
12:22 p.m. A man described his roommate’s boyfriend as “very hostile,” constantly trying to antagonize him and trying to start fights. He was told to call when this was actually happening.
1:47 p.m. An injured gull sat in the middle of Heather Lane, mulling its options. Wildlife care specialists were contacted.
2:57 p.m. A Wisteria Way rental owner reported damage from a cannabis grow, including wonky wiring and something wrong with the back door.
4:41 p.m. An aggressive panhandler was smacked in the face with an unidentified implement in the 1000 block of G Street, then thrown at a car, denting the door.
5:03 p.m. An alleged physical abuse victim came to the station claiming that a case had been prepared and sent to the DA’s Office, but nothing had been done. Now the abuser is back in the person’s life. The victim asked to speak to an officer about “accountability.”
9:07 p.m. A little silver two-door car was reported driving way too fast at Eighth and F streets. It bore a bumper sticker that said, helpfully, “BEWARE.”
10:17 p.m. Someone in an old Corvette threw a bottle at a pedestrian at Alliance Road and Spear Avenue, hitting her.
• Sunday, December 5 1:33 a.m. A neighborly dispute over noise on Foster Avenue culminated in one resident grabbing the glasses off another’s face, earning a brusque shove. The glasses-grabber later noticed his necklace missing, and suspected that the despectacled one had ripped it away during the grabbage/shovage maneuvering.
1:59 a.m. A wandering hostility dispenser found the perfect formula for getting extradited to Sacramento County on a warrant – wandering among a crowd of theater patrons starting random arguments.
3:05 a.m. Police helped Plaza hotel employees evict a half-dozen partyers from Room 302. One was arrested for public drunkenness.
3:24 a.m. Some four to five rooms at a Valley West cheapo motel were occupied by ravening hordes of party animals. Police visited rooms 122, 124, 234 and 237, evicting up to 20 funsters and arresting two for public drunkenness.
9:11 p.m. The goatee-and-shaved-head look may be in vogue, but on lower Beverly Drive after a three-car hit-and-run, it served only to help identify a suspect who fled on foot. He wasn’t found, but his smashermobile was towed.
10:29 p.m. A Union Street apartment dweller reported a relentless campaign of retribution by the tenant next door, including knocking on his door and leaving threatening letters. This day the neighbor chose to pound on the man’s walls, the issue being that his chair was too loud.
• Monday, December 6 11:22 a.m. The semi-permanent mega-bus on M Street inspired another complaint. Lacking a battery, it showed no sign of motating on its own, so a tow was scheduled.
12:43 p.m. An Alliance Road apartment dweller reported a man who showed up at her door the previous night at 10:30 p.m. offering, then insisting and even pleading to give her a foot massage. Despite his confidence-inspiring nose ring, she declined. But the pervdiatrist was quite persistent in arguing that he really needed to practice his foot massaging skills on her. The offer was refused, and the next day the woman told a co-worker about the frustrated footman. The friend said she’d encountered the same twisto guy on the transit bus, who asked her to let him rub her feet. The startling coincidence raises troubling questions about the statistical density of ambient foot fetishists.
1:14 p.m. A Felix Avenue resident reported that within the past hour someone entered his unlocked garage and stole two remote control vehicles valued at $1,000.
3:36 p.m. A 911 caller reported that Caleb was “spun” and had to go to the hospital, then hung up. The dispatcher told the tipsy tipster that misuse of 911 can get you arrested.
4:15 p.m. When Cassidy and Jesse objected to a traveler kicking his dog in front of a Uniontown supermarket, the man told them he was going to kill it. When he left the pooch illegally tethered and went into the store, the girls grabbed and made off with it. They were from out of town and apparently didn’t know that APD is right across the street. The two took the dog to the county shelter, which refused it because it was stolen. They then went to the Mad River Water Park where they met someone to whom they told their story, and ended up giving the person the dog. This person then took the dog to APD and related the tale. Police then took the well-traveled dog to the shelter, where this time it was accepted.
• Tuesday, December 7 5:11 a.m. You don’t have to be ripped on alcohol and Klonopin to stumble around and dig in trash on I Street, but it helps.
9:37 a.m. Two tethered dogs at the Community Park were hopelessly wound around a tree, their dog brains incapable of unraveling the simple topology of their plight and unable to move more than a few inches as they writhed against their restraints and emitted helpless yelps and barks. An officer found them abandoned in place and transported them to the shelter.
2:49 a.m. A woman and her daughter had to fight off a dog that charged them while they walked on Old Arcata Road. It was one of two dogs unleashed to roam and intercept passersby. The owner told police it was a “daily routine,” and in a way, the child’s fault. She’d screamed, which piqued the dog’s interest, exacerbating the imbroglio. The owner then apologized, pledging that it would never happen again.
6:30 p.m. Van campers and their pit bull took up curbside residence in their very maroon van at 10th and J streets, emerging from time to time to dump cannabis trimmings in a resident’s yard.
7:23 p.m. A dreadlocked man threw a wallet on top of the police station.
7:34 p.m. A man with missing teeth purchased a well-rounded meal at a Uniontown supermarket, consisting of a jalapeño foccacia, smoked salmon, carrot cake slice and an organic milk. That wasn’t the issue. The problem was a cylinder or bottle the staff thought they saw him secret about his person, then leave without paying for. Police found the fellow all a-nosh on the scraggly north side of the shopping center, gumming his way through din-din. He was double-plus un-glad to see police, have his repast interrupted or both – so much so that police detained him for his “agitated demeanor.” No petty theft could be verified, though, so he was released.
9:53 p.m. A South H Street resident reported a series of low-level hostilities from his roommate. First it was the poke in the face, then a sharp elbow prod to an undisclosed region, all capped by the roommate stepping on his hand. Police visited the home, but got no cooperation when the residents went inside and closed the door.
• Wednesday, Dec. 8 3:18 a.m. A Westwood Center supermarket is no Large Hadron Collider, but by examining the remnants of a titanic collision there just like physicists might do, including tore-out shrubbery, dinged-up concrete and a ripped-away oil pan – police ascertained that a car had crashed into the place. The Higgs Bozo responsible for this experiment, being a Large Hassle Evader, was by then elsewhere, panless.
1:36 p.m. A teacher parked her car near the high school, placing coats over her valuables to “disguise” them. The countermeasure only tempted a particularly slithery Slithy Tove to insinuate his forepaw into the vehicle through the car’s single weak point, an unlocked sliding window. Taken were a purse containing $100 cash, multiple credit cards and a cell phone.
10:06 p.m. A man reported pounding on a 12th Street resident’s front door slagged away in saggy britches toward the Plaza. Police found him drunked up, supposedly “looking for his dog.” Arrested, he continued the search via a counterintuitive method – pounding his head on the copcar window. No word on results.
• Thursday, December 9 9:38 a.m. The resident whose door had been pounded on by the pickled pet detective noticed the next morning that the door, door frame and porch were all stained with blood.
11 a.m. A shoplifter didn’t get away with the heist of a $2 item, and was cooperative when detained.
12:53 p.m. A slithy tove made its way through a broken, taped-up car window in the 1600 block of I Street like a knife through butter in order to steal an old wallet containing expired credit cards, a Social Security card, vehicle registration and miscellaneous paperwork.
1:45 p.m. A camo-coated baddie snabbed a bottle of gin from a Uniontown supermarket, but never got to enjoy it.
4:05 p.m. A slithy tove, maybe the same one, maybe not, struck again in the same Northtown region. This time the treasure trove-gorging tove didn’t even have to outwit exotic security measures like piled coats or a taped window – the car was unlocked and its goodies free for the taking. Donated to the Slithy Tove Benevolent Society was the usual payload of wallet, credit cards, cash and iPod.
• Friday, December 10 7:31 a.m. You wouldn’t think a galumphing gaggle of cows and calves on the loose at Bayside and old Arcata roads would be capable of nimble evasive action or stealth technology, but somehow they were able to elude a responding officer.
8:51 a.m. A registered sex offender from Eureka turned up at a community swimming pool and “announced” that he would like to sign up and swim. He’d been arrested there April 14, 2000 for a lewd or lascivious act with a minor and was ready to return. A manager asked police for guidance as to options and whether the man should be allowed to rejoin.
9:10 a.m. Two City employees who live in the same neighborhood have had their car side mirrors smashed.
3:14 p.m. A motorcycle was stolen from R Street.
9:10 p.m. A Plaza bargoer said some dude in a green fatigue jacket had shoved him when he walked into the tavern. He said he next saw the shover in the men’s room sharing a rock of cocaine with some other guy.
• Saturday, December 11 12:26 a.m. The aftermath of a company party included an woman bumping her head and being gurneyed unconscious from a Plaza Hotel.
7:41 a.m. Officers waded into a seething cesspool of petty crime and filth just an aromatic waft away from an elementary school, encountering three socialites ’neath the St. Louis Road Overpass. Citations were issued, trash and graffiti documented and a wrecked car investigated.
8:53 a.m. A bar patron reported a man with a gun in his back pocket having brushed up against him the previous night.
9 a.m. A man sleeping under a table in the Post Office lobby was warned, and got a ticket for an outstanding warrant.
12:03 p.m. A business owner came in to discuss his suspicion that his wife is ripping off the business, not paying bills, but keeping the money. He was advised to contact his attorney and accountant to go over his books.
• Sunday, December 12 8:03 a.m. A caller reported people unloading grow equipment at a Devlin Court house, drilling holes, installing wires and trimming cannabis.
12:53 p.m. Graffiti taggers were reported desecrating the Skate Park, then going down the train tracks to Larson Park and spraying the fence there. Police contacted one of the can wielders, who explained that he and friends had had a silly string fight. There was no damage, just soon-to-be-dissipated silly string draped over this and that.
1:36 p.m. After thinking long and hard about it, a man reported his suspicion that a Plaza bartender had put Viagra in his beer.
1:44 p.m. If everyone is telling the truth, then a dog-charging-a-neighbor incident was followed by a neighbor-charging-a-dog-owner-wth-a-golf-club incident.
7:05 p.m. Police were given information about a man who had been “raping around Arcata.”
8:55 p.m. A vehicle and skateboard collided at 11th and I streets, and it wasn’t the first time. An ambulance carried a victim away.
10:54 p.m. A drunk Janes Road motel guest complained that unknown persons were “racking” on his vehicle, possibly attempting to steal gas. But no theft had occurred, other than the potted lodger’s perceptual acuity, by alcohol.
• Monday, December 13 3:53 a.m. A Crescent Way student’s use of methamphetamine to help him cram for a final exam didn’t work out as planned. When his pulse started redlining, he called police stating he was having a heart attack. But Crazy Heart then declined medical attention.
7:22 a.m. A howly-yowler began his week orbiting a closed taco truck on Seventh Street, blurting hostile nonsense at passersby. He was hauled away and drunk tanked.
10:38 a.m. “I’m going to take you down. I’m going to come after you.” said one adult to another. This disquieting pledge was uttered, complete with amygdala-provoking naughty words, at a school by one coach to another.
9:07 p.m. A man appeared at an Alliance Road apartment with a jar of pickles, which he threw at the residence and then drove away.
• Tuesday, December 14 3:22 p.m. A “very young” man with light brown hair stopped his car and talked to a woman at 11th and Union streets, ostensibly asking directions but actually pleasuring himself as he spoke to her. This is the second time he’s done this, and she was very upset.
• Wednesday, December 15 4:49 a.m. A husky-type dog knocks over a D Street resident’s trash cans, spilling garbage, which the garbage company then won’t pick up. Life’s rich tapestry is woven of such small but bothersome complications.
• Thursday, December 16 8:04 a.m. A half-dozen cows enjoyed a morning ramble on Janes Road, then headed back to their pasture for eventual burgerfication.
9:01 a.m. A Eureka woman who keeps a Post Office box in Arcata complained that a package had been misdelivered to another P.O. box. The recipient, she said, opened it, then repackaged and returned it. She was told that this is a Postal Service matter, but she wanted to see if APD could get involved. Growing belligerent, the woman asked for a Post Office phone number, since the one she had was answered by someone she described as sounding like “a 16-year-old playing games” who told her that he had been on the job two weeks and “didn’t feel like” investigating the matter. She was offered the federal Postal Service phone number, but suddenly the line disconnected.
11:06 a.m. A south-of-Samoa Boulevard restaurant complained of travelers peeing and starting fires in the doorway.
2:04 p.m. The latest in a highly sketchy series of cleaning product salesmenaces appeared at a Benjamin Court front door, ostensibly purveying cleanser and such but looking very interested in what was behind the resident at the door, looking around the house as though casing it.
• Friday, December 17 1:28 p.m. A non-paying non-customer at an Internet café just sorta sat there using the wi-fi without purchasing anything, and became testy when contacted by an employee.
2:59 a.m. Kathy, homeless since her RV was condemned, spent the holiday season sitting at semi-covered bus stops and the occasional motel room as a permanent situation was arranged.
5:13 p.m. A woman who had reportedly been smoking methamphetamine for a day-and-a-half somehow became imprisoned in a gated storage facility. Her cries for help were answered by a good but not particularly nimble Samaritan who leapt over the fence and sprained his ankle. Eventually emergency forces heeded their combined cries and rescued both.
5:44 p.m. When a questionable prescription led a Uniontown pharmacy to deny a man his meds, he offered to light himself on fire in retaliation. Police took him to a mental health facility.
