Because Calling Over And Over And Getting Hung Up On Will Really Make Them Love You – April 28, 2010
• Monday, March 29 3:07 a.m. In Valley West, a parked car, a broken egg… and a mystery: what fool tried to make an automobile omelette?
7:54 a.m. A half-clothed man jerkily made his way down Heindon Road, punching the air with no shirt on, the better for passersby his abundant tattoos to behold.
7:39 p.m. A woman who parked her car on the street near Ninth and F streets was confronted by a woman to told her that nearby residents have multiple vehicles and need the parking spots, so she couldn’t park there. It’s not the first time someone has claimed personal dominion over public property in service of automotive needs. The woman parked there anyway, and when she returned, there was a note on the car saying, “Asshole, don’t park here.” But since she isn’t that, and it is a public street, police told her she was in the clear and to recontact them if there were any more territorial troubles.
• Tuesday, March 30 4:18 p.m. A person who was asked to no longer call a 10th Street business may have misunderstood the request to mean, “please call 30 times per day.”
4:49 p.m. A guy with a black lab seemed to think the Marsh is a dog park.
• Wednesday, March 31 12:02 p.m. An ex-boyfriend now in Redding is keeping his former gal pal in Arcata apprised of the latest news of his life, most notably that he is getting a gun registered and is going to kill her new boyfriend.
• April Fools’ Day 10:33 a.m. Doke smopers settled in for their daily dosing, stinking up the space ’twixt a Valley West oriental buffet and the place where everything’s worth a dollar, and one of them managed to get arrested for it.
11:40 a.m. An Olympia Street roommate likes to borrow stuff from the other resident, including his video games and medication.
• Friday, April 2 9:42 a.m. A purse left in a Valley West mini-mart went unclaimed for three days. Inside were three debit cards, each with a different name on it.
11:33 a.m. A Grant Avenue resident reported her wallet and cell phone slithy toved from her unlocked car in her driveway.
12:44 p.m. While the residents were out of town, someone broke into a home in the 1500 block of H Street through the downstairs bedroom window and stole a safe containing a lot of rare coins and some sterling silver silverware.
2:01 p.m. Two blocks away, in the 1700 block of H Street, a man reported that as he crossed the street with his mother, a white car sped past and struck his left hand, causing injury. Somehow the mirror cover came off, and he kept it. He was to go see the doctor that afternoon.
6:21 p.m. A man reported that his cell phone was scratched up, and he demanded answers: how did this happen?
• Saturday, April 3 7:39 a.m. A park ranger patrolling the woods first found an illegal camp on the ridge east of Trail 2, and arrested one of the four residents. Then, just off Trail 3, he heard screaming and followed the voice to a huge redwood stump. inside was a man who had been rapelling when his rope broke, stranding him inside. He’d been stuck inside since the previous day, was dehydrated and may have had broken legs. Firefighters extricated the man from the stump and he was rushed to the hospital.
8:50 p.m. A man with a blue bandana and a gun entered a minor movie theater on H Street and told the staff, “Don’t look at me and get on the ground.” They did, and he robbed the place and left.
• Sunday, April 4 12:10 p.m. A woman at the ER complained of pain during an examination, which she insisted was an assault by the nurse. She had no injuries, and was told that police wouldn’t take an assault report. After considerably more insistence on her part and equally adamant refusal by doctors, hospital administrators and police, officers stood by as she left.
5:31 p.m. A man said he was walking in a field at Alliance Road and Foster Avenue when he was chased and assaulted by a traveler who lives there.
11:30 a.m. As a man walked to a bus stop on a trail near Boyd Road, he noticed a wallet, credit cards and numerous papers scattered on the ground. Then he saw a travelerish-looking guy gathering up the items, who told the passerby not to tell anyone or he would beat him up. Some other property was also located on the trail and turned in to security forces at a nearby apartment.
12:45 p.m. A woman said that her car was broken into at a Boyd Road apartment complex and her purse stolen, with her stuff scattered on a nearby trail.
2:07 p.m. In a variation on the usual slithy tove ritual of iPod and ashtray change heists, a Samoa Boulevard business suffered gasoline theft from its vehicles, so locking gas caps were installed. So next the indefatigable tove petrol thieve-toves drilled a hole in the gas tank to drain away their precious fossilicious nectar.
2:54 p.m. A gas station at 11th and K streets reported its “Oil Change” sign stolen overnight.
• Monday, April 5 5:40 a.m. A woman called police to South G Street, where her keys were locked inside the business. She had been told they’d be left outside for her, but they weren’t, and now she was considering breaking a window to get in and get them. Instead she agreed to return in the morning.
• Wednesday, April 7 3:03 a.m. In an inversion of common sense, not to mention common decency, two braying louts tried to check in to a Valley West motel without any money to pay for the room. Refused, they took to yelling at the desk person. Police found them at a nearby roundabout and told the dynamic dimwits to stay out of the roadway.
8:38 a.m. A woman reported receiving “obscene numbers” on her cell phone.
12:18 p.m. A resident at a Bayside Road apartment building left her car window rolled down four or five inches, which was just enough of a gap for a slithy tove to extend a dishonest appendage inside and unlock the door, then rum-rum-rummage away. Something under $5 in change was stolen.
3:25 p.m. Despite a disclaimer that she was only “having fun” with the person she was instant messaging, the notes saying that she was going to “ruin your life” and “whoop your ass” were entirely lacking in fun factors for the recipient. If the sender keeps it up, she might end up on academic probation.
• Thursday, April 8 2:18 p.m. A man at the ER told hospital personnel that he “gives marijuana to the kids on the Plaza.” On further questioning, he said it was some people from Hoopa who were doing that bad thing, not him.
• Friday, April 9 1:17 p.m. A citizen reported that someone had hacked into her cell phone and changed the outgoing voicemail message, threatening to hide in the bushes outside her home or work and rape her.
1:17 a.m. An H Street resident reported dirty pillows left along her fence line. She wanted police to come and pick them up, for two reasons: 1. They were dirty. 2. They wouldn’t fit in her trash can. She was informed that police don’t do trash pickup.
5:49 p.m. A bicyclist reported almost being run over by some blith-id driver whose Earth-killing death machine drifted into the bike lane.
9:11 p.m. Three jolly souls deployed decibels on Stewart Avenue, “Screaming and laughing” in the street, to the consternation of neighbors.
• Saturday, April 10 8:10 p.m. When a father received a message from his daughter stating, “I’m sorry, Dad,” followed by hysterical crying, of course he called police.
• Tuesday, April 13 10:30 a.m. Surely the dude in the inevitable hoodie could have thought of something less revolting than Gatorade to rip off from a Uniontown supermarket. On the other hand, he was “scruffy.”
2:21 p.m. A computer and camera were reported burgled from a California Avenue address.
3:53 p.m. A Stromberg Avenue resident who works nights complained about three incessantly barking dogs on Roberts Way. The owner’s girlfriend took them in and said she is working on “permanent arrangements” to squelch the bow-wowing. Like extraction of their arf glands?
3:41 p.m. A man who lives with his ex-girlfriend because he doesn’t have anywhere else to go reported that she threatened him with an unusually specific medical consequence – a concussion. She then held a pair of scissors up to his throat, a seemingly inefficient way to induce a concussion.
4:44 p.m. A big fat guy was reported acting weird in the 1500 block of Alliance Road.
7:55 p.m. A man called from downtown Sunny Brae reporting that his family had established some kind of online “campaign” against him. The campaigners then sprayed him with an unknown substance that impaired his respiration.
9:10 p.m. A man called from downtown Sunny Brae to report that “they” were in the process of getting a restraining order against someone’s mother, and that he had been shooting crows in his room with an unknown type of firearm. Police decided he’d be better off in the drunk tank, and so it was.
10:49 a.m. A woman said across-the-street neighbors had made racist remarks, and she’d confronted them about it. Now they had phoned in a noise complaint against her, which she thought might be retaliation for challenging the racism. In any event, she turned her music down.
• Wednesday, April 14 7:40 a.m. Another dog owner who hasn’t gotten the message about leash laws – now being enforced in a community forest near you – got a ticket on Trail 3. Just outside the boundary of the Community Forest west of Trail 9, a park ranger found a large camp. All the property was piled in the center with a note to gedditouttathere.
11 a.m. A woman reported that her aunt in another state cannot be dissuaded from calling her repeatedly, and had just done so 16 times in a row. This had been going on for two days, and when the aunt’s phone number was blocked, she started calling from pay phones in her area, saying “you can’t get away from me.”
