Cops Corner: Pelican Press

Dec. 2
Did you check every pile?
4:10 p.m. — 100 block of Sand Dollar Lane. Grand Theft. A 62-year-old woman reported she had noticed rings and earrings missing from boxes in October, but she thought she might have misplaced them. Later, she began wondering whether her cleaning lady, whom she had fired, might have stolen the items. The woman called the cleaning lady to confront her, the woman reported, but the cleaning lady denied taking anything. A deputy attempted to phone the cleaning lady, too, but got no answer. The woman told the deputy she had collected expensive jewelry for many years, and some of her more valuable pieces had been left in plain view but were not taken. Her residence showed no sign of forced entry, the deputy reported, but he added that it was a bit of a mess. He asked the woman several times whether she might have misplaced the items, but she insisted she wanted the deputy to list the items as stolen, even though they were not insured. The deputy did not process the scene for fingerprints, he noted, because of the woman’s delay in contacting the Sheriff’s Office.

Dec. 3
A new demo card
11:33 a.m. — 900 block of Beach Road. Petit Theft. A 59-year-old man reported that his credit card was stolen while he was at a street vendor’s booth. He said the vendor removed his credit cards from his wallet, to demonstrate the cards would fit into a wallet the vendor had for sale. The man did not purchase the new wallet. A short time later, he checked his wallet and saw the single credit card was missing. However, when he checked with the credit card company, he found no unauthorized purchases had been made with the card. He nonetheless went ahead and canceled it, he told a deputy. He insisted the card had been stolen.

Dec. 4
All because he couldn’t smoke
9:10 p.m. — 5100 block of Ocean Boulevard. Disorderly Intoxication. A deputy responding to a call about a suspicious person was told a man in a flannel jacket and jeans was sitting on the ledge of a bar’s roof, yelling at people nonsensically. The deputy observed the man sitting with his legs dangling over the ledge of the roof. The man was yelling profanities at everyone in the crowd that had gathered, and he refused to come down. The man also spit at a woman who was videotaping him with her cell phone. According to the deputy, the man was yelling, “It’s all a big #&%$-ing lie; everything is a big #&%$-ing lie. It’s all about money. Wake up, people!” The deputy asked the 48-year-old man several times to come down from the roof, but the man refused. The deputy then walked to the interior patio area, climbed onto a railing and pulled the man down from the roof and onto the sidewalk. Security personnel from the bar helped the deputy catch the man before he could flee. The deputy then placed the man into protective custody. The man did not seem to be suicidal, the deputy reported, but the man did reek of alcohol. He also was unsteady on his feet. The man finally told the deputy he was upset that he had been unable to obtain a replacement ID card the previous week, because he did not have the appropriate documentation. He added that he drinks only beer, but that he had been drinking all day. The manager of the bar told the deputy the man had come into the establishment, purchased a beer and tried to smoke a cigarette indoors. The manager had told the man he couldn’t smoke inside, so the man had left. The manager had not seen him again until the disturbance erupted outside, after the man had gone up to the roof.
 

Dec. 5
Depends on what ‘it’ means
12:21 a.m. — 5100 block of Ocean Boulevard. Suspicious Incident. The manager of a bar told a deputy he had asked a 23-year-old man to step outside because the man had a backpack. The man had come into the bar the previous week with the same backpack, the manager said. When the manager had asked him to open the backpack, the man had said he did not want to open it in front of law enforcement officers outside the bar, because he had a pound of marijuana in it. The man then left. The manager told the deputy he suspected the backpack had similar contents on this, second occasion. The deputy had been across the street when he spotted the manager talking to the man. When the man did hand over the backpack, the manager leaned over to look inside it. The deputy began to approach them as the manager walked away with the bag. The man became “extremely nervous and tried to rush back into the bar,” when he saw the deputy, the deputy reported. When the deputy asked to speak with him about the bag’s contents, the man said nothing was in the bag, and tried to leave. When the manager returned with the bag, the man again tried to walk away. The deputy asked the manager whether “it was in the bag,” and the manager replied that it was. The man then began yelling and appeared on the verge of tears, asking why the deputy and manager wanted to know what was in the bag. The third time the man tried to leave, the deputy put handcuffs on him, because the man was becoming increasingly agitated and the deputy thought he was going to flee. When the deputy finally opened the bag, it contained only beer cans and clothing. The deputy then released the man. The manager told the man he could not go back into the bar, because of his conduct. The man left, yelling at the manager and deputy.