Irrational Optimist o’ the Week: Police found a man lying face-down in a contorted position against the outside wall of a hotel. His face was flushed, his skin was sweaty, and his eyes were bloodshot. An officer asked the man what his name was, and the man gave a thumbs-up sign without looking up. The officer asked to see some ID, and the man just gave the thumbs-up again.
Police arrested a man witnesses said had been stumbling around late at night threatening to fight and shoot people. While under arrest on a disorderly conduct charge, the man kept repeating, “I messed up,” and throwing up in the backseat of the police cruiser.
Campus police detained a man who was seen staggering down an alley and urinating on a wall. When city police arrived on the scene and arrested the man on a public intoxication charge, he refused to walk, forcing two officers to carry him to a police cruiser.
Police responded to a report of a car that was stuck in a fountain. The car’s owner eventually showed up, stumbling around and reeking of alcohol, and said he didn’t know how his car got there and that someone must have taken his vehicle.
A man got his car back from a valet parking service and discovered that the rear window had been broken out and there was dried blood all over the seats. Nothing appeared to have been stolen.
Witnesses say a man was aggressive toward two women outside a bar, pushing one against a wall and grabbing the other’s butt. The second woman said the man had removed a thick stack of cash out of his pocket and said that he could “buy” her if he wanted. Police arrested the man on an assault charge and called a towing company to come get his truck, which was parked on a sidewalk. They found more than $13,000 cash in his pocket.
Somebody broke into a liquor store at night and stole six bottles of peach vodka and three bottles each of coconut, pineapple, and orange vodka.
A restaurant manager suspects two of his employees of embezzling money from a safe in the office after surveillance footage showed one of them standing on a chair and blocking the camera’s view with a napkin. When the manager confronted the employee about it, she said there was a spider on the lens and she was trying to kill it.
An officer found a man sleeping on the sidewalk around 2 a.m. and had to wake him up by shining a flashlight in his eyes and rubbing his sternum. When the officer asked the man if he knew where he was, he nodded and said, “The underside.” The officer asked the man where he worked, and he said, “You know, the underside, like in a restaurant.”
A bike cop rolled up on a bouncer who was keeping a woman from getting inside a bar. The woman, who smelled like alcohol and was slurring her words, said, “Officer, it’s good you’re here. He will not let me in.” The woman had a sober friend with her who said she had been trying to take her tipsy companion home for 45 minutes, but she just kept trying to get back into the bar.
Scam o’ the Week: Someone called an elderly woman and told her she had won $1 million and a Mercedes-Benz. The person on the phone asked for her full name, mother’s maiden name, and the name of her bank, and then asked her to send a signed blank check to an out-of-state address. At this point, she said she was going to call the police and report the call as a scam, and the caller told her, “You will die if you call the police.”
Three adjacent houses had their mailboxes smashed by what appears to have been a baseball bat.
Around 3 a.m., police found a man hunched over at the waist, flailing around and sweating profusely beside a bicycle that was laid down in the roadway. An officer searched the man’s pockets and found 16 Xanax pills and a little bit of heroin. The man said he had been using heroin and did not recall falling asleep earlier in the evening.
A woman found a dog that had been left in a parked car, opened the door, and took the dog over to a shaded area and gave it some water. When the dog’s owner came out of a nearby grocery store, they got in an argument, and witnesses say he pushed the woman after she gave him his dog back. When an officer told the man later that it is cruel to leave an animal in a hot car, the man said, “Yeah, OK.”
When police caught up with a woman who had shoplifted a chicken sandwich, juice, and some popcorn from a convenience store, she said, “I was at the gas station and I did eat the food and leave because the Lord above owns the land and I can do that.”
Two officers were patrolling an apartment complex when they smelled marijuana smoke. They came across a man standing in front of a nearby apartment smoking a cigarette, and the man “displayed a defeated look, dropped the cigar, and put his hands behind his back,” according to an incident report.
Police responded to reports of a juvenile carrying a weapon in front of a fast food restaurant and found a boy with a toy pistol in his pocket. The officer confiscated the toy pistol, which he noted was highly realistic, and gave the boy a ride home to his parents.
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