I ran some interesting calls this week. It was a short week for me and I had a partner every night. It was a good week.
B and I rode together Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Monday night started off slowly. We were patrolling the beat when A sent B a text asking us to check by with her. I pulled up her call slip and she was on a fraud report at a residence. We were close and checked by with her. She had a roommate stealing the identities of her other roommates by opening credit card accounts.
The owner of the residence, F, likes to have roommates to help her offset her mortgage payment. For the past few years, she has used roommates.com to find these roommates. Using that service, she has found and had live with her, 5 different roommates. Until now, all of the roommates have been great. She currently has two girls living with her, G, a Spanish girl, and J, the identity thief.
Earlier in the evening, F received a call from one of the credit reporting agencies alerting her that there was some suspicious activity involving one of her credit card accounts. The reporting agency told her some of the basic account information. F called the card issuer, and they gave her some limited information over the phone. She found out that she had not opened the account, about $6500 had been charged to it so far, and they also gave her the email address and phone number associated with the account. While she was on the phone, she noticed J’s purse sitting on the kitchen table. The purse was open and an envelope was sticking out of the purse. The envelope was addressed to G and was from a credit card company. This made F very suspicious. She got G and showed her the envelope. G opened it and it was a credit card in her name. G had not opened or applied for this account.
F and G then confronted J who was upstairs in her room. J was not confrontational, but was not answering the questions either. F and G started searching her room with J’s consent, and they began to find receipts, other envelopes, and credit card statements that were not in J’s name. F called her parents who came over and then the police were called. Among the papers that they found in J’s room, F found a store receipt that was also a credit card statement. F’s name was listed as the card holder. The statement said that the card had been opened at the store. F also found some of the clothing on the floor from that store with the tags still attached.
When we arrived, J was gathering up her belongings and was planning on leaving. It took two tries, but R did finally get charges accepted by the DA’s office for credit card abuse. F and G gathered up all of the documents that they had found with their names on them in J’s possession. Those were tagged into evidence. I got onto F’s computer and was able to get into the account that J had opened in G’s name. The email address and phone number for the account were the same that the credit reporting agency had given F for the account in her name. So J used the same info for both accounts. The address she used was an address in Dallas. Then we checked Facebook. The email address was associated with a male on Facebook that just so happened to be friends with J. So, we got as much info about him that we could from Facebook, so that he could be added that to the report. F went on to tell me that J did not have a job and hung out at the house all day. J paid her first month’s rent with a check from provided by a friend and the second month’s rent was paid via a Western Union money wire. I asked F if she found any of that suspicious, and she said at the time, no.
B and I transported a very quiet J to jail who was charged with two felonies. Maybe roommates.com is not the best way to find a roommate?
On Tuesday, B and I checked by on a disturbance involving a CIT patient. We arrived and the primary unit was just getting the patient, H, into custody. H was yelling and screaming and basically freaking out. We walked him over to the patrol cars and sat him down on the ground. Then we went to the apartment where he was staying. He was staying with a friend at the friend’s apartment. The friend is who called the police. He called because H had destroyed his apartment. Windows were broken and every piece of furniture had been disturbed. Book cases were knocked over and anything breakable was broken. The friend told us that H was bi-polar, off his medications, and drinking heavily. H had lost a custody battle involving his children earlier in the day and that sent him into crisis. Once H was in custody, we called for a specialized unit to come to the scene to access H. The unit arrived and was completely useless. They did not even speak to H, until we had him calm and then they riled him back up again. Normally the specialized CIT units are very helpful, but no luck this time. The primary unit ended up transporting him to a psychiatric center and then to the county jail where he was placed into the psych ward.
Wednesday was very slow for the first half of the shift. Then we were dispatched to a complainant chasing a suspect. We found the complainant, a bar owner, and he told us that the suspect, a black male, had just gotten into an old truck and the truck went north. We put that out over the radio and another unit saw the truck almost instantly. We got the truck stopped, but there was only a female in the truck. We took the female into custody and the other units went to begin searching for the male suspect. We took the female and her truck back to the complainant’s business where we found the complainant.
He told us that his business, a bar, had been burglarized 4 times in the past week. So, after closing, he drove his vehicle down the block and watched his business waiting for the suspects. He knew what the suspects looked like from surveillance footage from the earlier burglaries. As he is sitting there, he saw the male suspect exit a side door of his business. He did not see him enter the business. The bar owner then began to follow the suspect, who was walking. Eventually, the suspect figured out that he was being followed. The suspect then picked up a large rock, ran at the bar owner’s vehicle, and shattered the windshield with the rock. The suspect then ran off. The bar owner then saw the old truck driving around the area. He knew the truck was involved because it had been used in the earlier burglaries. The officers looking for the suspect set up a perimeter, called in the dogs and helicopters, but did not find the male suspect.
I looked at the surveillance footage from the previous burglaries, and the female that we had in custody looked a lot like the female in the footage. However, the DA’s office did not want to accept any charges on the female for burglary at this time. They wanted the case referred for further investigation. So, we gathered all of the information for our report, and I informed the bar owner that she was not being charged tonight. A few minutes later, another bar employee came over to me and said that he had been outside watching the bar as well, but from across the side street. He said that he had seen the female come out of the bar right after the male. He also said that the old truck had been parked out in front of the bar. So, I took the bar owner to the side and asked him if while he watching his bar, he saw the old truck pull up and stop in front of the bar. He said that he had not seen the truck. So, somebody was not telling me the whole truth. I did add the employee’s statement to the report, but I included that I did not believe his account of the events.
The female went to jail for driving without a license and insurance. She never told us that she was picking the suspect up from the burglary, but did say that he mother taught her to “look the other way” when a man is taking care of her. She also gave us all of the information that she knew about the male suspect. Hopefully, the investigator will be able to find him and charge them both with the burglaries.
I had traffic court on Thursday. Court was at 9 PM. It was judge court, which means if the officer shows up, the violator is guilty. Not 100% of the time, but close. This male decided to take defensive driving. I got out of court at 9:30, so I went over to the station to talk to the roll call Sergeant. I wanted to find out if I could do a 1 for 1 switch with an officer to move back to my old beat. He said that it was fine with him, but that the LT would have to approve. That sounded reasonable to me. During roll call, we were all told that the great court overtime experiment was over. We were now supposed to start going to court at 8 AM like in the past instead of 1 PM. The city tried having us show up at 1 PM in order to save money. It did not have the intended outcome, so a month later, they went back to the old system.
Thursday night I rode with J. We checked by with a unit on a major accident. A bicyclist had been hit by a car. The bicyclist said that he was crossing the street on the bike at a green light. The car was turning onto the same street and apparently did not see the bicyclist. The car hit the bike and drove off. There were two problems. One, as he was screaming in pain and not making very much sense, he said that the accident occurred about two blocks away. Normally, no big deal. But the guy was carrying on so badly about his not obvious injuries, I doubt that he could have moved two blocks from the scene of the accident. Secondly, his bicycle was not damaged. No scratches, nothing bent, nothing broken, it looked just like new. I have never been on a bike that was hit by a car, but I have a feeling that there would be some damage to the bicycle. The call was not ours, so after we were done providing traffic control, we took off.
I was off on Friday night before our trip to Corpus Christi for the weekend. That concludes another week on patrol.
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