High-Tech Low-Brows Send Digital Degradation – August 21, 2011
• Saturday, July 16 5:55 a.m. A man reported his girlfiend having just taken 90 Clonozepams and a fifth of alcohol. She was treated and committed.
2:06 p.m. An apartment dweller came home to find a twisted coat hanger on her kitchen counter, suggesting that someone had been inside. And yet nothing was missing or disturbed.
2:13 p.m. A toothless man in a green shirt gummed down a hamburger and two beers at a Plaza restaurant, then walked out without paying the $17.48.
7:24 p.m. A boyfriend-girlfriend argument escalated into choking, knife threats and suggestions that the male had a gun and may kill himself. Police converged on the home, and the man eventually came out empty-handed. He was detained and the woman treated for choking-induced neck pain.
7:28 p.m. A bike rider found a purse near Miller Lane and Heindon Road, and turned it in. All the fungible wealth – cash, credit cards – had been sucked out (and immediately used in Arcata). But a number of items remained, including a dayplanner/phone book, some business cards and a lot of crumbled safety glass suggesting that the purse may have been stolen from a vehicle during a smash and grab. An officer called a listed cell phone number, but that was out of service. Several persons listed in the phone book were called, and one agreed to contact the purse owner. She soon called APD, reporting that the purse had been stolen from her car that afternoon when she had left it in her car parked near the Hammond Bridge on the Arcata Bottom. Her window had been smashed out and along with the purse, her camera and iPod stolen.
10:01 p.m. With a bear roaming Arcata’s eastern edges, a Bayside Road resident heard gunshots and theorized that someone was shooting at it.
11:19 p.m. A shoplifter stole vitamins from a Fourth Street market.
• Sunday, July 17 1:20 a.m. A bear meddled with trash cans in Hilltop Court.
9:11 a.m. A resident observed two phenomena on 12th Street between Spring and Union streets, and thought they might be related. One was all the mailboxes hanging open, and the other was a defuncted dude flopkazonked in a car nearby. The witness’s generalized diagnosis was that the guy was “out of it,” and when police found him standing in the street, they deemed him 5150 and took him to a mental health facility.
11:27 a.m. A woman in blue pajama pants and gray sweatshirt was making frequent trips to the bathroom, which was one thing, but the trouble was that she was doing so in a Plaza tavern from which she had been banished. Found at Ninth and H in her jammies, she was re-banished.
7:44 p.m. The iPod was like a gooey caramel nougat center in an unlocked car on L.K. Wood Boulevard, as enjoyed by a sweet-toothed slithy tove.
9:21 p.m. Since 2 p.m., a woman received 21 text messages demanding $90 from someone who claimed she had damaged her property. An officer called the sender, who hung up the phone. The message recipient then turned off her phone as well.
• Monday, July 18 10:58 a.m. Having blocked the vexing texter from sending any more messages, the embittered texter started calling the woman, stating “you know what happens to cop callers” and threatening to go to her workplace and get her fired. The text-pest was again called and told to lay off, but crabbed at and hung up on the officer.
5:26 p.m. An I Street store reported a car deteriorating in its parking lot for several days, with wires pulled out of the dashboard. Police ascertained that it was “personalized wiring” for a biodiesel vehicle.
• Tuesday, July 19 12:14 p.m. A woman in an orange, white and red blouse and driving a silver car was seen screaming and yelling while driving. On arriving at a G Street mini-mart, she got into an argument with several people there. She explained that she had been panicky due to a road hazard. Police found that because of her driver’s license status, she shouldn’t be driving. She parked her car and called for her daughter to pick her up.
1:55 p.m. A woman reported that following a previous assault, the assailant had driven past her home with his window down and made a cute gun-pointy gesture with his hand, further upsetting her.
4:39 p.m. While attempting to read a water meter at a Bayside Road church, a City worker was aggressed upon by a large dog belonging to a man who lives in a van there.
4:59 p.m. A P Street resident has thrice caught a high school kid trying to remove a screen and “peep” in her window during the early morning hours.
8:18 p.m. A shoeless woman in flowered underwear was reported running and possibly under the influence on Alliance Road. Police found her “passive” but not impaired, wearing short spandex shorts and a black tank top and yes, barefoot as was her right and preference.
• Wednesday, July 20 8:21 a.m. When skeezy scammer calls smart lady, hilarity ensues… if by hilarity we mean that the caller tells the lady that he’s her grandson and needs four thou to pay for his DUI while she plays along and tells him that she would “see what she could work out” while in fact taking his information and then calling the cops.
2:41 p.m. Some sort of urban guerilla or dumbass lingered in front of a Plaza gift shop, his camouflage jacket accessorized with an entirely unnecessary hatchet in his waistband. An officer found him and his excessive blood alcohol levels, and arrested him.
• Thursday, July 21 8:08 a.m. A man in a yellow hat lurched toward the Plaza, where he found no shortage of walls to stagger into and even a dumpster which in his addled mind, required therapeutic beating with a stick.
