Blotter o’ the Week: On the Fourth of July, witnesses saw a woman pick up an American flag that was flying on the side of the road and walk away with it. When an officer asked the woman where she got the flag, she said she didn’t know.

After allegedly hitting a pedestrian with his car, a man refused to take a field sobriety test, telling a police officer it would be “a nail in the coffin.” The officer arrested him on a DUI charge and then searched his car and found some marijuana and a coffee cup containing liquid that smelled like alcohol.

A police officer woke a man up who was sleeping on the steps of a candy store at 3 a.m., but the man said, “Hey, I’m good, man,” and laid his head back down. When the officer told the man he would be arrested if he didn’t call a friend to come pick him up, the man started typing on his phone and said, “It’s cool, man, I got 1994 on the phone here, you know?” When 1994 never showed up, the officer arrested the man on a public intoxication charge.

A man was cleaning up the yard in front of an office when he found a pistol in a plastic bag hidden in the bushes. He used a pair of pliers to pick up the bag and throw it in a trash can before calling police to report it. Police retrieved the weapon and found that it did not have a serial number.

A department store employee was heading into work one morning when she saw three shirtless men setting off fireworks near a trailer in the parking lot. The trailer, which was owned by the store and contained Christmas decorations, went up in flames. Police found three shirtless men in a car nearby with a bunch of fireworks in the backseat and arrested them after the witness identified them.

Employees at a clothing boutique say a shoplifter slithered away with a $214 Austrian crystal ring and a $975 purse made of “authentic python material.”

A woman heard three loud popping noises outside her house early in the morning on the Fifth of July and figured they were just fireworks. When she went outside later in the day, she found a bullet hole in her minivan.

A man refused to get out of a taxi cab after vomiting all over himself and the floor. As a police officer helped him out of the vehicle and tried to contact the man’s roommate to come pick him up, the man started shouting racial epithets and screamed, “I fucked your mother!” Police arrested him on a public intoxication charge.

Somebody broke into the warehouse of a tire importing company and stole between 30 and 50 tires.

Police found two men sleeping in public in the late afternoon. One was under the bumper of a parked car, and one was snoozing while standing up and leaning on a parked vehicle. Both men were arrested on public intoxication charges.

A man called police to report that he was sitting in his driveway with his wife when he saw a neighbor “flip him the bird.” According to an incident report, “No words were exchanged between the two. Only the action of the middle finger going up in the air.” The report mentioned that the neighbors have been in a dispute for more than six years involving the construction of a fence and the removal of a tree.

Somebody broke the window of a car and stole a loaded revolver and a wallet with a chain on it.

A woman walked out to her car and found two business cards on the windshield. One card said, “Hey, You suck at parking, Up Yours, Learn how to park asshole. Next time I’m going to key your shit, idiot.” The other card said, “Wow, you’re an idiot, please shut up, Do us all a favor and never have kids. Try reading a book, moron.” Both of the cards were pre-printed, not handwritten. The woman also found some scratches and a dent on the trunk of the car.

Somebody stole a trailer containing two scuba tanks, an air compressor, several tools, $6,000 worth of clothing, 12- and 20-gauge shotgun ammunition, a mountain bicycle, a road bicycle, several trailer hitches, a large painting in a glass frame, and $5,000 worth of kitchen items.

Police arrested a man on a public intoxication charge after they saw him harassing women on the sidewalk in front of a nightclub and attempting to get past the bouncers who were stationed at the front door. An incident report mentions that an officer confiscated the man’s money and placed it at police headquarters because it was “soiled.” No further explanation is given.

Several people flagged down a police officer late at night and said they had seen a man nearby with his penis hanging out. The officer found the man and arrested him, later writing that the man “was looking at his genitals with a confused look on his face as if something was wrong.”

After pulling a man over for driving over the center line, an officer searched the man’s vehicle and found a loaded pistol, 12 grams of marijuana, and 10 grams of psychedelic mushrooms. The man told the officer, “I totally forgot that was in there … I didn’t know the ‘shrooms were in there.”


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