Saturday, August 20, 2011

The week on patrol, August 15-19, 2011

I rode by myself this week. We were short handed again on Wednesday. Most of the interesting calls this week involved clubs or bars. 

Monday night we had nine units in the district. Early in the shift I was dispatched to an assault / delayed report at a bar. A customer had become belligerent and assaulted the bartender and doorman. He grabbed the bartender's buttocks and spit in the doorman's face. He also told the manager that he was racist because there were no black people working in the bar. They gave me a good description of the suspect. I looked for him, but came up empty. An hour later, another disturbance dropped at a different bar. The suspect's description in the call slip matched my suspect perfectly. This call slip said that the suspect had threatened to hurt the owner and blow up the bar. When I arrived on that disturbance, another officer was taking the suspect into custody. The district attorney's office refused charges on the threats. We returned the suspect to the earlier scene where the bartender and doorman positively identified him as the suspect. The suspect went to jail for a trifecta of public intoxication, assault by contact, and assault by offensive contact (spitting).  

Later in the shift I was dispatched to check by with D on a suspicious person. I arrived and the complainant told me that someone knocked on his front door at 3:30 am. Without checking a peephole or window first, he just opened the door. The knocker, a male, entered the apartment without being invited. The complainant did not know the male. The male asked for money to buy gas. The complainant gave him $40 and then gave him a ride to another location. After returning home, the complainant thought that the male was suspicious and wanted the police to find him. Suspicious? Knocks on random door at 3:30 am. Check. Walks in uninvited. Check. Asks for money. Check. I told the complainant that I would look for the male, but chances are, he will be back to your apartment because you are his new sugar daddy. 

Tuesday night we had ten units in the district. I ended up running 5 calls during the shift, an alarm, a loud noise, a criminal mischief, and I checked by on an assault in progress and a disturbance. The criminal mischief happened at a local bar where they frequently have live music. A male was upstairs by the band and equipment. He went to pick up a guitar that was not his and was asked to leave the equipment alone. He became belligerent and started making racial comments. He was escorted out of the bar by the management. As he was walking through the parking lot on his way off the property, he took out a key and scratched the hood of a vehicle. Ironically, the vehicle was owned by the person that asked him not to bother the equipment. The bar was able to provide me with his name from a credit card receipt. 

At the end of the shift I checked by on a disturbance. It turned out to be a lover's quarrel. A male came over to his ex-boyfriends house at 5 am and started banging on the door and yelling. The ex did not open the door and the male kept banging eventually waking up most of the people in the small apartment complex. We arrived and found the male walking down the sidewalk. He was extremely intoxicated and went to jail for public intoxication. 

Wednesday night we were short handed again, 7 units in the district. I was dispatched to a disturbance that had been holding for an hour. A large bare-chested male had come onto the property of an office building. He started banging on the glass. When security approached, he acted "all crazy" and cursed at them. Then he bent the antenna on a security vehicle. He decided to leave and crossed the street to a club where he assaulted a male and damaged his vehicle. Other officers responded to that location, detained him, and later transported him to a psychiatric center for evaluation. He told the officers that his name was Barack Obama.

Later in the shift a major accident dropped in another beat. A beat unit was dispatched and M & A checked by to help with traffic control. The accident happened in a nice part of town near an upscale shopping area that has a 24 hour security patrol. M & A arrived and began investigating the accident. An extra job officer working the security patrol ran over and told them that a Hummer had just driven down the nearby railroad tracks. The Hummer took out one of the railroad crossing arms in the process. M looked down the tracks and could see the Hummer bouncing along. In the distance he could also see a train. M called out over the radio for back-up and then started running down the tracks after the Hummer. About 1/4 mile down the tracks, the Hummer got stuck. Two females jumped out of the Hummer and ran back towards the road and disappeared. Two males stayed inside the vehicle until M got them out of the truck. The males were both intoxicated. Other officers began arriving and took custody of the males. M then jumped into the Hummer and freed it, getting it off the tracks before the train arrived. 

The driver of the Hummer was not very cooperative. He had no idea that he had hit the crossing arm and driven down the tracks. The other male said that he was in the back seat making out with one of the females when the truck suddenly turned sharply and started bouncing down the tracks. A DWI  unit arrived and took custody of the driver. He searched the Hummer and found marijuana and numerous pipes in the center console. A short time later, another male and female walked up to the scene. The female told me that her friend was driving the truck and that some of her stuff was inside. They had all been out clubbing together. About that time M walked over and recognized the female as one of the two that had jumped out of the Hummer. She was taken into custody. I guess she thought that she was going to be able to trick us into believing that she was not involved. Then I talked to the male that had walked up with her. He said that he was behind the Hummer when the crash happened. The two females ran up to him and he drove them down the street a few blocks. He said that the other female was a few blocks away in his car. M went down and brought her back to the scene. I ended up transporting the females to jail for public intoxication. The other male passenger went to jail for public intoxication as well. 

We had nine units in the district on Thursday night. A few hours into the shift I was dispatched to a suspicious person at one of the nearby clubs. The call slip said that the male that assaulted the caller two weeks ago was inside the club. A couple of units checked by with me and we spoke with T, the caller. T said that two weeks ago she had gotten into a verbal argument with K and his friend M at this same club. That night, K and M had made fun of T because she was wearing cow print pants. The argument became heated and K and M were kicked out of the club. A few hours later, T was walking to her car and K and M were walking to another club. They encountered each other in a nearby parking lot. The argument resumed. Then, T said out of nowhere, K punched her in the face. T fell to the ground and hit her head on the curb. K and M ran off. 

T went to the hospital and was told that she had a concussion. At the time, she did not know the identity of K or M. T went to the same club the following night and spoke to the DJ. She described the males and the DJ said that it sounded like K and M. T got on Facebook and did a search using the names that the DJ had given her. Sure enough, K was the male that had punched her and M was his friend. Tonight, she came back to the same club and saw K and M inside. We followed her inside and pulled K and M out of the club to hear their side of the story. They both said that they were making fun of T because of her cow print pants. K said that T had pushed him and then he hit her in the face. M said that he did not remember T pushing K. He did remember K punching T in the face and T falling to the ground. I called the district attorney's office and they took class A assault charges against K. K also had 4 city warrants. 

My last call of the night was a person down. A white female was passed out in the grass in front of some condos. An ambulance arrived before I did and they told me that she was fine and did not need any medical treatment. I walked over to her and she told me that she was fine and did not need anything. Then she told me that she was homeless. She did not look homeless. But, she got up and started walking away. She said that she would go sleep in the park. Fine with me. 

I rode my regular numbers on Friday night. Our normal print unit was here working for another officer. We had nine units in the district. My first call was to check by with N and K on an assault in progress. The call slip said that a fight was going on across the street from a club. A male was on the ground and a group of other males was punching him. We all arrived and the fight was over. We found a few males that looked like they had been in a fight. One was not wearing a shirt, one had a torn shirt, and another was covered in blood. They said that one of their friends had gotten into a fight with someone in the club. They were kicked out of the club and the fight continued across the street. Their friend had been knocked unconscious by another group of males. They came to his defense and broke up the fight. We could not find the victim, the unconscious friend. About 10 minutes later, a unit found the victim. He was stumbling around trying to find his car. He was conscious and drunk, but had a torn shirt, was bloody, and had a huge knot by his left eye. The suspects were all long gone. The victim was transported to the hospital. We never found out what the fight was about or how it started. 

I little later I was dispatched to an assault in progress in the back parking lot of a pub. The call slip said that one of the suspects had a pistol and had fired a round into the air. By the time officers arrived, the suspects had fled the scene. The incident began with an insult. Three males at the pub had all been part of a wedding earlier in the evening. They were all still wearing their tuxedos. An asian male insulted one of them by saying that they all looked gay since they were dressed alike. Instead of just blowing it off, one of the tuxedos decided to pursue the asian male outside and punched him in the face. The tuxedo then went back inside the pub. The asian male went and got his friends. They waited outside for the tuxedos to leave the pub. Once the tuxedos came out of the pub, the asian and his friends started threatening the tuxedos. At this point, they were all separated by about 20 feet and a car was in between them. It was all verbal and looked like it might stay that way until one of the tuxedos decided to run up into the face of a suspect. Once he did that, another suspect ran over and punched him in the face knocking him backwards into a wall. Another tuxedo jumped in and was punched in the face a few times by a suspect. While this was going on, another suspect took out his pistol and fired a round into the air. After the gun shot, everyone stopped fighting and the suspects got into a vehicle and left. A witness had the entire incident on video that he shot with his iPhone. I asked the tuxedo why he turned the verbal argument into a physical one by running up into the suspect's face. He had no answer, he just said that he got hit in the face. Sticks and stones. I bet the tuxedos are a little less eager to get physical the next time they are insulted.

That concludes another week on patrol. 

Posted via email from will7079's posterous

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