Dimbulb Detachment Departs For Doughnutty Devilry – August 12, 2012
• Monday, July 23 11:01 a.m. A citizen called from West End Road, where he said a mountain lion is known to hang out. The caller had heard of a missing person in the area, and when he noticed buzzards circling around, well, he added all this up and became concerned.
12:08 p.m. The online river of sewage known as Craigslist horked up another queasy attempt at victimizing the unwary. This time, someone was recruiting caretakers for a nonexistent property on Union Street.
1:57 p.m. A realtor reported its properties being offered on Craigslist, with payments to be sent to West Africa.
5:58 p.m. A man, woman and baby went into a Plaza store to try on shoes. The woman walked out wearing a pair of the store’s $115 shoes.
7:04 p.m. Three kids set a small fire at the Intermodal Transit Facility. They were admonished, returned to their parents and referred to the Fire Department’s Juvenile Firestarter program.
9:05 p.m. A male motorcyclist with a young passenger on the back drove crazy-fast on dark, narrow, irregularly surfaced Buttermilk Lane.
9:10 p.m. When the reckless motorcycle driver zoomed around an apartment complex on Samoa Boulevard, he was yelled at and phoned in on.
11:21 p.m. As a white pickup truck slow-rolled around 13th Street, someone with a flashlight was seen in a resident’s yard. A dad and daughter were out looking for their missing dog with flashlights and the truck.
• Tuesday, July 24 12:17 a.m. Discontent spread among five occupants of a vehicle which was out of gas and marooned at a Valley West gas station. As factionalism broke out among the quarrelsome quintet, an argument attracted police, who were told that the running-on-empty ensemble was “working on getting some fuel to continue north.”
3:24 a.m. A 911 call offered an audio feed of an argument at a Samoa Boulevard apartment. On callback, a man sounding out of breath answered. During a subsequent visit by police, he agreed to leave for the night and got a ride to Eureka.
4:16 a.m. Ruthless raccoons battled in a Valley West backyard, snarling and slamming each other against a fence.
5:44 a.m. Something known only as “Mark” threatened to stab a woman at the donut shop, then rode off on a bicycle.
8:28 a.m. A woman in blue shorts and purple sweat pants talked to herself as she lie in the roadway. Police deemed her a danger to herself and took her to a mental health facility.
10:13 a.m. A mentally unwell man wandered away from treatment at the hospital after being brought in by the Sheriff’s Office. He was found in the foliage on the west side.
2:16 p.m. A resident reported that a neighbor is “heavily” into drugs and large parties and is a problem for the neighborhood. Now he’s stealing fruit off the resident’s trees.
4:23 p.m. On retrieving his backpack from APD safekeeping, a man became upset that zippers were broken. He initially wanted to complain, but changed his mind and left.
4:52 p.m. Someone tried to break into three letter boxes at the Bayside Post Office.
5:27 p.m. Every day at 5 p.m., reported a witness, a car and pickup truck meet at Fifth and K streets. One occupant gets into the other’s vehicle, and there they sit. The witness was concerned that the two were casing businesses which close at that hour.
6:50 p.m. A woman lying on the ground talking to herself at a Samoa Boulevard apartment building spoke of people wanting to murder her.
7:47 p.m. The same decisionmaking prowess that compelled one man to go around wearing a San Diego Chargers jersey also played into his deciding it would be a good idea to hang a hangman’s noose from a tree on the Plaza. The superfan/hangman and a low-wattage colleague were tracked down and admonished, and de-noosed the tree.
9:01 p.m. A bat was removed from the hallway of a Valley West motel.
• Wednesday, July 25 12:43 a.m. A Valley West motel lodger demanded that an officer respond over her missing money, which had disappeared from the bathroom. After a few minutes, a second call came in – she found her money in the hiding place where she had left it.
12:51 a.m. Some six to seven punch-hungry agitators were reported trying to initiate combat in Tavern Alley, and a detachment headed toward the donut shop for more doughy-desultory devilry. Members of the fight club told an officer that the man who had called in the report was the real instigator, and he admitted starting the fight.
12:56 a.m. More strife in the alley.
9:55 a.m. The reason a gas-powered leaf blower was stolen from a car on Lewis Avenue was that it was left in the car.
10:55 a.m. A man systematically spelunked a Bayside Road apartment complex’s dumpster, spreading the contents out across the parking lot as he pored over the discards. Police responded and arrested a man on a warrant.
1:23 p.m. A woman reported that an unknown force was threatening her and “pushing on her anus from the inside.” She declined assistance.
2:11 p.m. A sizeable woman walked down Alliance Road, inspiring concern not just because she was falling down, but because she “doesn’t seem concerned about it.”
3:05 p.m. An injured bird caused traffic to back up on G Street. Somehow it made it to the roof of a shoe shop, where crows alighted and gathered around it.
4:15 p.m. A logging truck headed up Fickle Hill Road snagged and ripped down some power lines, but kept going.
4:57 p.m. A roving entrepreneur repainted house numbers on the curb in the area of Beverly Drive and Beverly Way, then demanded payment from the homeowners. The man, who lacked a solicitor’s permit, said he had only asked for donations.
9:43 p.m. Four subjects at St. Louis and West End roads were encountered while siphoning gas. The owner of the vehicle was contacted by phone, and she said she had loaned someone the car to “run some errands” and that they were supposed to be back already. Three of the crew were arrested on charges including knowing violation of a protective order, drug possession and warrants.
• Thursday, July 26 7:56 a.m. The Sheriff’s Office contacted APD about a cow plodding along at 17th and Q streets. Dull, massive and sluggishly occluding the sacrosanct Realm of the Car with no awareness of its own mortality, the barely sentient cash cow hoofed along the roadway as higher life forms conspired via modulated electromagnetic radiation to re-pasturize the bovine interloper.
9:26 a.m. A Foster Avenue apartment dweller said someone had “swapped” one of the bikes – it isn’t clear which – is described as a blue “dirt jumper” mountain bike with multiple stickers and one blue and one green pedal.
12:48 p.m. Like the Farmers’ Market, Marsh and Community Forest, the Welcome To My Dog ’tude was plentiful and plural at the Community Center playground. There, a man with a blue baseball cap allowed his three pooches to freely romp, charge and poo as they pleased near the kiddie zone. The entourage was gone when police arrived.
12:51 p.m. Talking that loudly and angrily isn’t appropriate at the Library –not even the parking lot.
4:29 p.m. She doesn’t live in Arcata, but keeps calling APD saying that she is going blind.
8:48 p.m. A woman said her friend had been walking near the motels on Valley West Boulevard when two teenage boys pulled up in a large sedan, struck her with the car, called her a “retard” and then drove off. The caller didn’t exactly see the collision, and the victim, distraught over having to euthanize her dog the next day, refused medical assistance. The witness said she and her friend had had “issues go south” with the police before, and she was concerned that the victim would be arrested for being drunk in public if contacted by police.
• Friday, July 27 1:50 a.m. A mother called to ask for a welfare check on her daughter, who wasn’t returning her calls and sounded extremely tired when they last spoke. But the mother has called multiple times for the same reason, and the daughter has stated that she didn’t wish to be contacted by the mother, and even mentioned getting a restraining order against her. When she couldn’t give a specific reason for another check on her daughter, APD declined the assignment.
9:46 a.m. A cat somehow became stuck in the engine compartment of a car at Foster and Western avenues. Then it escaped and scampered away.
11:02 a.m. One man with a guitar and another with a skateboard directed a demoralizing volley of insults at a hot dog cart operator on the Plaza, then slithered southward.
1:43 p.m. His backpack bore a camouflage pattern which proved utterly ineffectual in disguising it from the predatory perusal of a passing slithy tove. Conveniently, the backpack, which contained a laptop computer and books, had been left in the open bed of a truck parked on Jay Street.
2:03 p.m. A hippie dude in a camo shirt and carrying a guitar asked to use a children’s day camp worker’s phone. Allowed to do so, he related to unknown hippie forces elsewhere instructions on how to elude the park rangers.
5:30 p.m.
A Ninth and H hissyspat welled
As menfolk became living-helled
They spitefully sparred
(One threw a guitar)
Cops counseled the louts, who dispelled
6:27 p.m. A Park Avenue home was burgled of a $1,000 Honda scooter, with the front door broken.
6:50 p.m. Except for the noise constantly blasting from an apartment on Eighth Street, the downstairs resident was perfectly happy with the upstairs neighbor. Well, that and all the water spilling down from the balcony onto her stuff.
7:02 p.m. One woman in dreads and another wearing a black backpack were the infantry of sorts in a big loud-shouty argument between traveling trimmer kids in town for bud-grooming season. The ladies tussled in the I Street roadway as their partisans bleated taunts and barbs from the sidelines. They then retreated to various removes in a parking lot, the conflict unresolved.
8:02 p.m. More group yelliness at Seventh and K streets, where a pickup truck with dogs in the back circled the scene, possibly piloted by some of the personnel involved in the earlier I Street-area Clash of the Ineffectual.
8:30 p.m. Rocko the brindle boxer got a bad rap at Iverson Avenue and Q Street. First described as foaming at the mouth and possibly rabid, he turned out to be merely thirsty. Given water, Rocko was friendly, just skittish, possibly because he didn’t know anyone in the area. His owner said someone was supposed to be dog-sitting him in the Westwood area. An offier coudn’t catch Rocko, and he was last seen in Bloomfield Park.
• Saturday, July 28 1:05 a.m. A woman called to complain that she was stressed out and her mood-altering meds weren’t working. There but for the grace of… oh, wait.
2:11 a.m. A man slid down the slippery slope of a panic attack, reporting that people had slipped something in his drink at a Plaza bar and were now following him. After his sister described him as “freaking out,” discussions with parents ensued and he somewhat composed himself.
2:11 a.m. When boy-girl relations deteriorate, once-shared cell phones and car keys take on iconic stature and are relinquished only after drama and deliberation. And cops.
2:25 a.m. The homeless folk who have a village of sorts in the field west of Villa Way had a happy-time hobo hootenanny, alarming neighbors.
