Cops Corner: East County

The following information was gathered from incident and arrest reports obtained from the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office. 

March 23
Bar none
5:23 p.m. — 6200 block of State Road 64 E. Theft. Two men entered a department store and placed altered items’ barcodes over the original barcodes. The items rang up at a lower price than listed. Loss prevention apprehended one of the men, but the suspect then pushed the manager out of the way and left the store. The second man was already outside the store. The suspects fled when deputies arrived. One of the men got away.

March 25
That doesn’t suit him
3:59 p.m. — 5500 Natalie Way. Found Property. Someone gave a suitcase to a security guard. He left the suitcase in his guardhouse for two days, hoping its owner would come get it. A deputy found a wallet in the suitcase. Inside, he found two identification cards. The deputy located that person’s residence to return the items back to the owner. The person at the residence said the wallet belonged to him, but the suitcase did not.

Family business
9 p.m. — 7600 block of Partridge Street Circle. Grand Theft. A father and son got into a verbal argument that did not turn physical. The son took six CDs from his father and pawned them. While the deputy interviewed the son, he stood up, left the room and sat at the kitchen table before saying, “I don’t have time for this (expletive) thing.” The deputy followed the son to the kitchen. The deputy placed his hand on the son’s left wrist, put it behind his back and brought him outside to complete the interview. The father decided not to press charges.

March 26
Door damage
9:39 a.m. — 6900 block of Belmont Court. Information Only. On March 24, a deputy responded to a call from a man who said his home’s southeastern sliding-glass door had been unlocked. The deputy checked the home and found no one inside. Two days later, the same man called the sheriff’s office again to report someone removed his home’s sliding-glass door off its tract. The man said the door’s metal had been bent. A deputy confirmed the metal was bent, but so was the metal of another sliding-glass door in the home. The deputy determined he saw nothing to believe someone had tried to enter the home and damage the door.

March 27
Thankless loan
6:28 p.m.— 6700 Medinah Court. Fraud. A credit card company alerted a woman that someone used her card to obtain a $195 cash advance loan. The woman did not authorize anybody to do so, nor did she know her card was missing. The credit-card company took the charge off of the woman’s account.

Dream ride
9:21 p.m. — 5900 State Road 64 East. Lost Property. A woman reported that, after she test-drove a truck, she left her identification inside the vehicle. After she left the dealership, she called and asked if anyone had seen her identification. Dealership employees said they could not find it inside the truck, and the truck had been driven again since she left. The dealership did not give names of the individual(s) who drove the truck after the woman.

March 29
Hate crime
1:28 a.m. — 4600 block of 34th Avenue East. Criminal Mischief. The victims returned home to find African-American slang spray painted across their garage door. They also saw the two rear tires of their Jeep, as well as its driver’s side front tire, were slashed. The victims said they suspected who the culprit(s) was. It did not appear the culprit(s) tried to enter the Jeep. The paint on the garage was still damp when deputies discovered it. 

View East Co. Cops Report 04.04.13 in a larger map