We’ll Always Have Bongos – December 3, 2011
• Friday, October 29 8:56 a.m. To hear a driver tell it, a person walked right in front of his car as he cleared the intersection at Seventh and F streets, then strode into the Occupy Arcata camp on City Hall’s front lawn and went into a tent. In a quaint portent of the weeks to come, police were asked to warn the campers against oafish behavior, in this case reckless-arrogant walking.
11:21 a.m. A pit bull tried to bite a bicyclist at 11th and K streets, then, probably frightened, settled down and became friendly. It had no collar and was taken to the shelter.
11:57 a.m. A driver observed a small child unrestrained in the cargo area of a van on the freeway. Police found it parked with people in it in the parking lot of the place where everything’s worth a dollar. They had a child in the vehicle, but no child safety seat. They denied having driven that way; something about waiting for a bus.
4:27 p.m. A woman who isn’t allowed into a Plaza bar, reportedly attacked and bit someone there, then locked herself in the bathroom. The victim declined to press charges, and she was arrested on a public drunkenness charge.
10:58 p.m. A redheaded woman with freckles walked north on H Street towards Sunset avenue wearing a “sparkley” dress and “glittery” headband. An older man with long gray hair and a leather jacket ran up behind her and put his arm around her, and it didn’t look like they knew each other. Police searched the area for them without success.
• Saturday, October 30 1:49 a.m. After cars collided in front of a Uniontown supermarket, the drivers exchanged information at close enough proximity for one’s saliva to be propelled onto the other either intentionally or on the winds of his hortatory halitosis.
2:07 a.m. As a Samoa Boulevard store employee tried to close the place for the night, a belligerent customer wearing pink tie dye refused to leave, but then did.
2:21 a.m. A purported Plaza occupier/drunk was arrested for the non-political part.
4:42 a.m. After allegedly burgling a K Street gas station of its tobacco products, a man in a hoodie was arrested on burglary charges.
7:30 a.m. An illegal camper behind a 13th Street medical office awoke to the sight of a man standing over him, masturbating. The awankened victim got a good description, and police found the suspect in the alley by the donut shop, where he was arrested.
2:17 p.m. A dead rabbit was reported in the roadway at Valley East Boulevard and Giuntoli Lane. An officer found not a bunny, but a dead gull.
10:02 p.m.
A drum circle formed up downtown
Where trance-fusion finds fertile ground
But patience is finite
In 28 minutes
The town-pounding sound was wound down
"The timeless eloquence of the Police Log has developed a following far from Arcata." – Jon Carroll, San Francisco Chronicle
• Halloween 4:44 a.m. A downtown gas station employee saw two people in costume and pushing a baby stroller tag the business.
8:38 a.m. A zombie-head decoration was stolen on Ariel Way, finding new non-life elsewhere.
10:12 a.m. The alley north of City Hall became occupied by human waste related to the encampment on the front lawn.
12:33 p.m. Two shoplifters at a 13th Street marketplace were initially cooperative but as they stewed in the office waiting for police, they became less so. The two had money and paid for the drinks they had abortively purloined.
12:41 p.m. A citizen wanted to know when the campers on City Hall’s front lawn were going to be ejected.
5:47 p.m. An opossum was reported wandering near a credit union across from City Hall. An expeditionary squad of occu-campers was dispatched to check it out, and the witness was concerned that they might harm the rotisserie-ready critter.
6:41 p.m. A woman said that as she drove past a milling mob of people in the 1000 block of F Street Sunday at about 1 a.m., some of the partyers opened the doors to her car and assaulted two of the passengers. But they drove away uninjured.
7:02 p.m. When a woman filled up her vehicle with $80.59 in gas and $4.84 in oil at a gas station, she promised to come back and pay. But here it was a half-hour later and she was nowhere to be seen.
9:27 p.m. Occupy Arcata was making a lot of clatter outside Silly Hall.
9:42 p.m. The first reports came in of people climbing McKinley.
9:54 p.m. The first drunk roundup took place at 10th and H streets, with three liquorific funtimers arrested.
10:33 p.m. Someone shoved a pregnant woman at Ninth and H streets, but maybe he had a good reason. She refused medical treatment.
11:17 p.m.
With bongo artillery strong
The battle for City Hall’s lawn
Wore on, a late nighter
When loud freedom fighters
Want to bang the hand drums all night long
11:21 p.m. Police made a dent in the drunkenness on the Plaza with two more arrests.
• Tuesday, November 1 12:34 a.m. The Plaza and environs basically dissolved into a roiling sump of people getting drunker, fighting, throwing bottles, ripping each other off for small personal possessions, wearing beach blankets, puncturing strangers, lolling in the roadway, playing music entirely too loud, peeing on each other, attacking ambulance drivers, bleeding from the ear plus other Halloween hijinx.
2:36 a.m. A man ejected from Room 121 of a Plaza hotel showed back up at the front door, his issue apparently being that his possessions were still there. He alternately banged on that and battled some other guys, one of whom was bleeding from the neck.
2:44 a.m. The door gambit having failed, the ejected hotel guest did the only logical thing and tried to re-enter via a neighboring building’s roof. This tactic worked really well, if by really well we mean he plummeted to the pavement and sustained a compound leg break. Once stabilized, he again importuned the hotel for his stuff, which, given his abysmal standard of personal conduct, they would only give him under the watchful eye of police officers.
5:45 a.m. A man who had been dancing under McKinley sustained a puncture wound not commonly associated with merry prancing, and ER personnel called it in as suspicious.
8:55 a.m. A building near City Hall removed the handles from its external faucets because campers were helping themselves to the water supply.
10:10 a.m. A 50-something man with a ponytail first blew pot smoke in a woman’s face, then spat upon her near the transit center.
11:22 a.m. A man said someone entered his unlocked home during the night and stole his turtle, valued at $25.
11:30 a.m. Halloween Plazagoer Hanna Micks was jabbed by someone with with something that left two puncture wounds in her backside (see page 4).
11:30 a.m. A Valley West resident didn’t witness the alleged theft, but is “positive” that his roommate stole his VISA card and ran up $728.78 in charges at three local stores.
12:16 p.m. A Westwood Center supermarket reported its dumpster full of cannabis trimmings and buds, and asked police to come and pick it all up, which they did.
12:42 p.m. A citizen approached an officer to express his disgust for the Occupy Arcata campers at City Hall as well as the marijuana smoking there.
2:23 p.m. A citizen reported her small, portable safe missing from her home. It contained money, a key to a safe deposit box at a local bank, the deed to her home and a gold ring that had belonged to her grandfather.
2:28 p.m. A citizen reported a man in a Grateful Dead hat peeing on City Hall’s front door. Police didn’t find any urine on the door, though a shimmering pool of eye-watering splendor was being continually replenished just steps away behind the trash receptacle near the Parks & Rec door.
4:22 p.m. Someone dumped paint on a toilet inside a Plaza business.
• Wednesday, November 2 11:02 a.m. A man called asking to talk to a specific officer, who wasn’t at the station. He was cagey at first about what his issue was, but eventually said that he was under a doctor’s care for bi-polar disorder. He was told that the next available officer would be sent to see him, but he wanted a certain one. After being told he couldn’t choose the responding officer, he started calling the APD front office in search of his officer of choice. Argumentative and refusing to speak to others, he declared that he was headed to the Plaza to find his preferred officer.
11:27 a.m. Another officer called the business from which the man was calling, and asked him why he wanted to talk to the other officer. A co-worker then got on the phone and said that she would try to calm him and see what the problem is.
1:11 p.m. Someone shot into the Occupy Arcata tentville with a BB gun, striking Geronimo in the shoulder. The quixotic camper declined to press charges against the political pellet pelter.
1:51 p.m. Someone claiming to be from the “Windows Service Center” called a Charles Avenue resident claiming that a virus had been detected on her computer and she needed to log on to their website to expunge it. This, the rep added, would cost money. She hung up on the scammer.
4:45 p.m.
An octet of drummers in motion
Was doing its daily devotions
Of bongo canoodling
The hand-drummy doodling
Came off as a caustic ear-potion
4:51 p.m. A panic alarm went off at a downtown financial institution, and Arcata and HSU police soon surrounded the business. With all exits covered, the manager stepped outside and explained that a technician, and apparently a careless one, was testing the alarms.
