Windmill Tilting At Windchimes Sets Off Digging Delusions – April 17, 2011
• Saturday, March 12 5:35 a.m. Two horses ran loose on Weott Way. They were returned to a field.
7:26 a.m. Two cows ambled in the roadway on Old Arcata Road near Anderson Lane. Police found no cows, just possibly related hoofprints leading back into a field.
12:17 p.m. Two dogs ran loose in Tilley Court. They’d gotten out through an open door, and were returned home.
1:59 p.m.
An alley off Ninth, good as any
To hold a bongeaux hootenanny
But as per routine
Police made the scene
Their drum-seeking radar uncanny
3:06 p.m. A woman reported that her caretaker had been stealing clothing and make-up items.
5:36 p.m. One of those roadside piles of trash that pop up here and there was observed in the making at 10th and O streets, courtesy of a white van and its four occupants. They were told to move along, except for the guy wanted on warrants, who was told he had the right to remain silent.
8:41 p.m. Intruders were reported at the crumbling hulk that was once Alliance Store. They were warned, and moved along.
11 p.m. A drunk at Ninth and H staggered to a short-lived sanctuary behind the donut shop.
11:44 p.m. A man seen peeing on the Fire Station wasn’t happy at being confronted in the act. He then strolled down the street to laze on a retaining wall, and if he washed his hands after the business at the fire station, it’s not documented.
• Sunday, March 13 1:02 p.m. A man reported his girlfriend having visited her wrath on his coffee table and front window at 2 a.m.
1:46 p.m. A man who’d “dropped acid” in the Community Forest was not having a magical-mystical experience. Instead he had a forest-freakout-cops-and-ambulance ride-to-the-hospital kind of day.
4:46 p.m. A woman napped with her husband, but he didn’t wake up. The coroner was called.
6:28 p.m. A man thought he saw a body in Janes Creek near 11th Street. And that’s just what it was – a dead guy who’d been there for a month, bobbing in the frigid waters right next to a school.
• Monday, March 14 1:32 a.m. Another caller needed help, but was evasive with details. Police checked in on him, and he wasn’t self-dangerous.
7:33 a.m. A herdlet of seven cows managed to lumber all the way from Foster Avenue and Q Street up to the lawn on the grounds of St. Mary’s Church on 16th Street. The Sheriff’s Office contacted the owners, who live outside city limits on the Bottoms.
11:08 a.m. A deer which at first looked dead in a Bayside Road backyard then showed signs of life, but had a broken leg. An officer dispatched the deer, and its crumpled remains were collected by Public Works.
11:32 a.m. Car vs. bicyclist at Ninth and K streets. An ambulance was called, and not for the car.
11:58 a.m. A man at the ER blamed the condition of his face on three men he’d encountered on the Plaza at about 4 a.m. He’d intervened in an argument, he said, and that made the guys all kicky-punchy.
12:32 p.m. The CHP was advised that loose dogs running in a pasture behind its Samoa Boulevard station were “cute.”
12:50 p.m. It’s not documented whether the two dogs running loose in Benjamin Court were cute, but they were pit bulls. Police found the two and took them to the shelter.
2:38 p.m. Roommates argued, with allegations of sexual abuse.
9:39 p.m. A man on the APD courtesy phone was extremely intoxicated and asking for aid. He said he thought something had been slipped in his vodka and 7Up.
• Tuesday, March 15 1:42 p.m. “One of these days we are going to finish this!” hollered a man on I Street.
1:55 p.m. Police detained a man at gunpoint and made a warrant arrest in the 600 block of F Street.
• Wednesday, March 16 7:42 a.m. An injured goose found in a Buttermilk Lane yard was placed in a box and entertained at the police station until the wildlife care facility opened for the day.
11:57 a.m. A woman’s unlocked bike and helmet were stolen from out front of her L.K. Wood Boulevard apartment building.
12:57 p.m. The bicycle theft victim reported that she found her helmet in a tree near her apartment, plus another bicycle in the bushes.
3:50 p.m. A man with no shirt on underneath his jacket went into a Valley West check cashing business and demanded a $5 advance. Told that there was a $100 minimum, he asked to use the phone and staged a fake conversation with an imaginary someone.
8:33 p.m. An equestrian forest user reported a continuing problem with a female recreational runner. The woman “runs right up” on rider’s horse, possibly endangering herself.
8:58 p.m. A group of goodtimers behind the donut shop yielded one warning about an animal infraction and one warrant arrest.
• Thursday, March 17 1:45 a.m. A man sat in the passenger seat of a white van with graffiti on it in an I Street parking lot, “looking at the porn,” according to a witness. When police got there, the pervo-van was unoccupied.
11:07 a.m. A woman reported receiving a phone call two months previous from a man in Jamaica telling her that she’d won money. She said she didn’t want to be on their list, and the man swore at her. So when he called back this day, she again told him she didn’t want him calling. This set the caller off into a tizzy of maledictions, including that he was going to travel to Arcata and sexually assault her. She wasn’t very worried.
12:25 p.m. A woman got a letter in the mail asking her to pay for insurance for her water lines. But the City has no such program.
3:06 p.m. A truck snagged a guy wire on F Street. When it pulled out from the curb, it tugged on the old utility pole, which sheared off, its top dangling over the roadway. Lights flickered downtown, a small fire in a nearby building was quickly snuffed and F Street was blocked off for hours.
8:28 p.m. An argument ’twixt a man and woman ended with glass shards strewn about the living room and a judge authorizing an emergency protective order. The male, through his mother, said he would like to arrange his surrender to police.
• Friday, March 18 5:06 a.m. A man in a yellow trench coat entered an Alliance Road mini-mart and silently passed the clerk a note demanding money. He then flapped off into the pre-dawn darkness.
9:09 a.m. At the donut shop, said a mom, a man in a yellow beret offered to sell a boy and his friends some hash.
12:40 p.m. Some kind of fake police car was seen outside the Community Center. It was marked “Transformer Police,” with markings that also read, “Call 911” and “K9 Unit.”
12:40 p.m. In the annals of exaggerated police calls, this one was particularly crudely wrought. A black dog with a purple leash in the 1600 block of G Street had bitten half a dozen passersby, the caller said. As the animal munched on Northtown’s pedestrians, the owner, a green-skirted, green-topped “hippie,” blithely gobbled a burrito nearby. The caller said she didn’t have a phone or address, and had borrowed someone else’s phone to report the savage purple-leashed hippiedog. Police checked the area and found nothing of the sort.
1:35 p.m. A traveler kinda guy and his little dog heisted unspecified pet amenities from a Uniontown shop.
4:56 p.m. A boy at an Alliance Road apartment building was punched in the face and lost some teeth, according to his mother. Police arrested a suspect.
7:47 p.m. Police and paramedics returned to the Alliance Road apartments, where an intoxicated man had fallen and damaged his cranium.
• Saturday, March 19 3:31 a.m. If a car could stagger, that’s what this one did, lurching the wrong way up H Street with flat tires and a headlight out, sideswiping at least one other vehicle along the way. The guy who had been more or less aiming the car around town was arrested on a DUI charge.
11:17 a.m. Another utility pole was sheared from its base on Q Street, with chunks of the Ford pickup truck responsible left behind.
4:21 a.m. A sextet of teens – three boys, three girls – was reported stealing mail from boxes on L.K. Wood Boulevard. Police caught up with them found that no mail had been taken. They had been shooting some pictures of the mailboxes because they were “different and cool-looking.”
7:16 p.m. A Janes Road motel lodger reported that he would be flying a remote control airplane with a six-foot wingspan and covered with 60 LED lights between 8 and 10 p.m. for a couple of days, as long as it wasn’t raining.
8:17 p.m. A woman reported that after being assaulted by her friendboy, he followed the physical violence up with verbal effrontery to the effect that, “If you don’t drop the charges, the shit is going to hit the fan,” because that’s just the kind of guy he is.
• Monday, March 20 3:09 p.m. A valley East Boulevard resident complained of cigarette butts proliferating outside her front door.
3:11 p.m. A man complained that his right hand had been fractured some time during the previous night, but he wasn’t quite sure when it happened or who done it.
• Tuesday, March 21 10:36 a.m. A 15th Street resident reported her husband bitten on his right forearm by a stray cat. The cat did have a tag with a phone number on it, and the woman had taken pictures of it as well. But the bite turned out to be no more than a scratch, and she was “advised of the free-roaming status of cats.”
11:41 a.m.
“Disturbing business,” so-called
Had left Plaza merchant-types mauled
By throbulent pounding
Soon cops were abounding
With news from the drum-disenthralled
• Wednesday, March 22 8:57 a.m. A man in a white shirt with a black satchel over his shoulder stood at Samoa Boulevard and F Street yelling (which is more or less mandatory) and also “gesturing as if he is going into the roadway, but doesn’t.”
11:48 a.m. It might be hard to understand why an I Street business wouldn’t want a man in blue sweat pants who carried a green backpack and black trash bag wandering around inside, but the point was that when employees asked him toleave, he wouldn’t. Police found him around the corner with a red bicycle that had no rear tire, and warned him against trespassing.
8:29 p.m. Someone threw a tasty beverage through the drive-thru window at a Valley West burger stand at about the same time the front of the place was egged.
• Thursday, March 23 12:15 a.m. A Madrone Way resident described what she thought was someone digging a tunnel beneath her residence. At first the officer didn’t detect the digging or dragging sound, but while talking to her, the sound started up. The officer went out and found a small, decorative windmill that was spinning and rubbing against a windchime, making the suspicious sound. On moving the windmill, the sound stopped. The officer reported the results of the field investigation to the woman, but she clung to the theory that there was someone tunneling under her house despite it not having a crawlspace.
