The Joys Of Wandering In Traffic
• Thursday, January 3 12:03 p.m. A Dorothy Court resident reported several unknown men lurking around his home for some reason. At about 8:15 a.m., his wife heard someone outside the bathroom window, but she figured it was the neighbor’s gardener, and didn’t think much about it. Around 11:30 a.m., his daughter answered a knock at the door, and it was a man who asked if she had seen the other man earlier. She said “no,” but a minute later yet another man knocked at the door and yelled at the daughter.
12:12 p.m. A woman moving out of a Heather Lane residence returned there to pick up some possessions and found her roommate hanging off her bed with blue lips. The coroner was called to the scene.
12:21 p.m. A friendly old tabby cat was found with a blow dart lodged in its chest on Baldwin Street. It was taken to a veterinarian and is expected to recover.
12:33 p.m. The Dorothy Court mystery men were seen jumping in a white vehicle with tinted back windows which sped away northbound on Fickle Hill Road.
2:20 p.m. A caller “very assertively” asked to speak to “Internal Affairs, or the commander.” He wouldn’t say who he was or describe the nature of the issue.
2:22 p.m. A small orange and white stray dog turned up on Larry Street. The finder called a number on its dog tag several times, but the voice mailbox was full. The little dog was taken to the shelter.
4:17 p.m. Motorcyclists were reported zooming around on a Community Forest trail near California Avenue.
4:30 p.m. An East 11th Street home was burgled, with a computer, iPad and miscellaneous jewelry all valued at $3,000 taken.
• Friday, January 4 9:31 a.m. Someone cut the lock on an H Street storage locker, went inside and tossed the place, but it wasn’t immediately clear if anything had been taken.
11:14 a.m. When a man was arrested by the DTF, his house keys were turned over to a friend. The next day, the arrestee’s sister came to the police station asking for help getting the keys back. That’s a civil issue, but police were available to stand by as she checked on her her brother’s house, and she would let them know if she had problems with the friend.
1:12 p.m. A man at the transit center was pretty sure someone was “after him.” He was taken to the nervous hospital.
1:21 p.m. A woman’s popular model, $250 cell phone was stolen Saturday, and when she called her number, someone she knew answered.
1:28 p.m. There was a big two-car wreck at Alliance Road and M Street, but no one was injured.
1:31 p.m. Police stood by at a Stewart Avenue address, where someone was living in an illegal structure that had been added to the rear of the property. After an unauthorized resident was asked to leave, the property was checked for any remaining occupants and the locks changed. The guy responsible for the arrangements was already in jail for something else.
4:49 p.m. The joys of wandering in traffic may not be widely appreciated, but enthusiasts wouldn’t let a darkening rush hour go to waste. A wheelchair user was reported pushing himself backwards into traffic on the Seventh Street freeway overpass.
5:26 p.m. The wheelchair guy was next seen pushing backwards against traffic on Samoa Boulevard southeast of Union Street.
5:54 p.m. A slender man in a red and white shirt and black jacket orbited a Valley West gas station in eccentric and hysterical fashion, screaming to himself, wandering into traffic and pacing back and forth. He told an officer he was upset because he didn’t have a ride.
6:40 p.m. A dog illegally tethered to an outside table at a Sunny Brae store lunged at a passerby. When the lungee told the dog’s owner, he “appeared as though he did not care.”
9:39 p.m. Youths frolicking atop the downtown fire station were detained by firefighters. With parents en route, police found drugs of some kind on one of the suspects, who was arrested.
• Saturday, January 5 12:12 a.m. A traffic-walker was reported treading slowly down West End Road in the middle of the street in his Invisible Pedestrian outfit – dark clothing and a brown hoodie. Police found him walking on the roadside, non-drunk and doing nothing illegal.
2:34 a.m. The aromatic confines of a downtown donut shop did little to soothe a savage beast in a white hat, who started yelling and refused to leave. Police arrested him on a public drunkenness charge.
11:34 a.m. When a young woman’s boyfriend started using drugs and ripping her off, she wisely broke up with him. Then she noticed that her ATM card had been used at an Arcata store and a Eureka hotel bar. Since she’s but 20 years old, she hadn’t been to any bars. She was supposed to bring in a bank statement to detail the card abuse, but didn’t show up for an appointment.
12:34 p.m. A man said gangsters were threatening him and his cat, but he refused to provide details.
1:42 p.m. Something named “Nate” who wears a backpack and has holes in his pants, was reported harassing an H Street business, coming in and yelling “weird things.”
4:22 p.m. Two men who resembled suspected ATM card thieves as seen on TV news were spotted at a Uniontown store “look[ing] like they are up to no good.” They were gone when police arrived.
4:42 p.m. A man reported his daughter’s boyfriend possibly on drugs after he came over “acting weird” and throwing things around. He was reported roaming around Spear Avenue in an “Elmer Fudd hat.”
5:34 p.m. An F Street resident discovered a bag of cannabis trim outside his home. It was picked up for incineration at the Corp Yard.
• Sunday, January 6 1:42 p.m. A man said he had located his stolen truck at the end of Susan Street. Oh, it had different plates on it, but that was his truck and there might be someone in it. But after detaining four individuals at gunpoint and cuffing them, the license plates were “accounted for” and the subjects released, with no arrests.
5:49 p.m. A man parked his car in the drive-thru lane of a Valley West golden arches, clogging it like junk food-induced arterial placque and responding with slurred speech when approached. Eventually he snapped from his fugue state and lumbered away in his tipsymobile.
9:35 a.m. Someone reported trespassing on a neighbor’s lawn didn’t react pleasingly when confronted. The caller was apprised of the restraining order process and the landlord of the eviction process,
3:26 p.m. A lower H Street resident called 911 said he fell down a few days ago and felt poorly. He wanted medical personnel to evaluate him and take his blood pressure, but tnot to use lights and sirens on arrival. When the ambulance and police came to his house, he sais he called because he wanted to know that he “was cared for and that if he was a 60-year-old man who fell off a mountain, somebody would care.” He was admonishished about misusung 911 and emergency medical services. After emergency personnel left, he called 911 again and made “erroneous statements,” then asked for the phone number for Sempervirens. He was again admonished.
6:58 p.m. After a dad took a daughter’s basketball away from her as a disciplinary measure, an argument ensued.
7:04 p.m. A bearded man fell asleep in his car at a Valley West gas pump. When awakened, he said the car wasn’t his, then got out and walked away. After a while, he came back, got in the car and drove away.
7:14 p.m. A woman said that during a child custody exchange in the APD parking lot, someone said she “looked nice.”
• Monday, January 7 Midnight A family argument ended with someone disconnecting a phone and taking it away. The person trudged off carrying a duffel bag and wearing a “hunter hat.”
8:26 a.m. A G Street business asked for extra patrols because of campers using its front doorway, particularly that one guy with the dog who go koo-koo for Cocoa Puffs when confronted.
10:22 a.m. Three roving goats on Ericson Way were rounded up and returned to their owner.
11:50 a.m. A truck with an open bed left parked on Janes Road was inevitably gutted of those molecules on board which were of any discernible value – those composing a transmission jack, some tools and auto parts.
12:15 p.m. After a shoplifting and probation violation at a 13th Street store, a man was banished from ever returning.
1:03 p.m. A woman said someone stole the Vicodin from her purse as she ate at a Plaza restaurant.
