Cops Corner: Sarasota

Feb. 4
Cash conundrum
12:01 a.m. — 2400 block of Cocoanut Avenue. Dispute. A woman reported she had been in a verbal altercation with her landlord, because he had demanded she put her rent in his mailbox the night before her rent was due. She refused to do so, she said, because she pays in cash, and she didn’t want the money to be stolen.

Shooting spree
2:30 p.m. — 1500 block of Main Street. Theft. An ammunition-store clerk told police two men had stolen two boxes of .38-caliber ammunition she had left on the counter while she was helping another customer. A security tape confirmed the clerk’s story.

Feb. 5
You were warned
1:35 a.m. — 1400 block of Main Street. Noise Violation. A restaurant manager received a subpoena to appear in court for violating a noise ordinance. The manager had received a warning on a previous occasion.

Backup system
11 a.m. — 1600 block of Ringling Boulevard. Patrol Request. A bank manager requested extra patrols in the area of the bank, after its alarm system began to malfunction.

Bike accident
5:12 p.m. — 4000 block of South Tamiami Trail. Suspicious Person. A man had a cut over his eye after reportedly falling off his bicycle. The man told police he had had too many drinks at a friend’s house. The police gave him a ride home.

Better off apart
6 p.m. — 1600 block of Eighth Street. Battery. A man told police he was attempting to leave a friend’s house when his ex-girlfriend arrived, but she followed him. He said she tore his jeans when he tried to take a phone call. After she grabbed the phone from him, he got the phone back by striking her hand with a hairbrush. The woman then struck him in the face, grabbed his phone again and smashed it to pieces by throwing it on the ground. No arrest was made, because of the pair’s conflicting stories. However, the police gave the on-again, off-again couple a domestic-violence information packet and urged them to remain apart.

Super Bowl snatch
8:25 p.m. — 10 block of North Lemon Avenue. Theft. A woman told police someone swiped her purse from her restaurant table while she was watching Madonna perform during the Super Bowl halftime show. Another patron told police he saw a man try to steal a different purse earlier. Later the same night, the woman’s mother called the cell phone that was in the purse, and the man who answered said he would return the phone in exchange for money. Officers went with the woman to retrieve the phone at the designated location, but they said they did not have enough evidence to arrest the man for stealing the purse or the phone.

Feb. 6
Wannabe firefighter
7:29 a.m. — 1600 block of Eighth Street. Noise Violation. Police responding to a noise complaint found a small stereo speaker outside the front door of an apartment. It was blaring local fire-dispatch calls from an attached scanner. The apartment resident agreed to turn down the volume of the speaker.

Driving in the buff
10:41 a.m. — 2700 block of North Tamiami Trail. Suspicious Circumstance. A college maintenance worker told police that a man in his 60s, driving a dark pickup truck, approached him to ask for directions. The maintenance worker told police he realized the man was wearing sunglasses, but nothing else, as he drove off.

Where am I?
12:51 p.m. — 700 block of North Osprey Avenue. Disorderly Intoxication. A man who had passed out on a park bench after a night of drinking was transported to a treatment facility.

Tunnel vision
6:15 p.m. — 1700 block of Seventh Street. Animal Nuisance. Two pit bulls were reported running loose in a park for the second time in two weeks. The owner apologized to the police, adding that the dogs had escaped by digging under the fence around her house.

Feb. 7
Racking up the offenses
2 p.m. — 1400 block of Main Street. Disturbing the Peace. A man told police a downtown restaurant constantly blares music into the early-morning hours. Police advised the man to call the Police Department every time the restaurant did so.

Feb. 8
A hard pillow
1:50 a.m. — 1500 block of Boulevard of the Arts. Trespassing. Police found a man sleeping against the wall of a building. The man told police he had been rejected by The Salvation Army and had nowhere else to go.

Beyond the firing offense
9:37 a.m. — 600 block of South Pineapple Avenue. Dispute. A man told police that after his wife had fired an employee earlier in the week, the employee and his partner began making harassing phone calls to the business.

A memory matter
11:45 p.m. — 1400 block of First Street. Suspicious Circumstance. A man called to report that his truck was stolen from a garage while he was out drinking with friends on Main Street. After police officers found the truck in another parking lot, they left a message for the owner. They believed the man had forgotten exactly where he had parked the vehicle.