• Tuesday, June 18 • June 19 12:17 p.m. A woman speaking rapidly and disjointedly rambled on about how her meth-addled ex-husband was beating her and refusing to leave her bedroom.
2:32 a.m. Two persons turned up at APD to take advantage of its non-existent “Traveler’s Aid Program.” After that, they went back to the bus station.
7:54 p.m. The Fort Knox-like security of a glove box in a car parked at 11th and K streets somehow yielded its iContents after a quick smash and grab.
10 a.m. Never pay up front to an unscrupulous lawn-mowing professional, as it may not happen.
• Wednesday, June 19 1:54 p.m. Someone offered to “bloody up your face” on D Street.
4:29 p.m. An objection over yak poo in Shay Park led to yet another argument ’twixt the yakaloons and a citizen.
5:53 p.m. 100 mph on Alliance Road? That’s the estimated speed of a motorcyclist who, it was reported, was “playing chicken” with oncoming traffic.
7:01 p.m. Mysterious drama at a Valley West gas station as a small red truck drove up with its three occupants arguing. Two girls got out or were “kicked out” by a male driver, who then threw a bicycle at them. Next, a smallish car drove up and the girls got in, but the man in the truck tried to cut off the car as it left the station.
• Thursday, June 20 7:40 a.m. A man who claimed to be victim of a car theft left the police station after waiting five minutes for an officer. He told the staff that they are “doing a terrible job.” A records check showed that he had no known vehicles registered to him.
1:28 p.m. Three different people called about the yakherders following yet another bout of yelling in an I Street parking lot. The yammering yaksmen were then banished from the lot.
1:52 p.m. A Bayside Road man claimed he was being harassed by the “yak walkers.”
8:03 p.m. A man claimed that his so-called “friends” were threatening to kill him if he didn’t steal a bottle of Jack Daniels from a Valley West home of honest goodness.
10:02 p.m. A guy in a hoodie and Grateful Dead t-shirt dishonored Jerry’s memory with verbal aggression at a downtown restaurant.
• Friday, June 21 7:57 a.m. A man in a gray shirt and jeans enjoyed a magazine as he took a dump in a 10th Street parking lot.
8:27 a.m. A concerned motorist followed a reckless driver who was “All over the road” from State Route 299 to a Northtown medical clinic. The driver wasn’t drunk, but had suffered a head injury and was driving distractedly while “shuffling papers” in the front seat of the car.
9:46 a.m. A brown and black rottweiler had been repeatedly running loose in Redwood Park for the past week. Police returned it to its nearby home and warned the owner.
11:10 a.m. A pit bull is being allowed to roam freely on Stewart Avenue.
11:38 a.m. The rottweiler was again loose in Redwood Park, nipping at kids attending the day camp. The owner was issued a second warning.
8:59 p.m. A man called 911 from a Valley West pay phone, crying and upset. He said he had no choice but to camp in the forest, and didn’t want to be arrested for that.
• Saturday, June 22 1:43 a.m. A male-female fight was reported on Samoa Boulevard at “the apartments next to the hippie store.”
8:44 a.m. A possibly overzealous exterminator reportedly broke down the front door of a Mack Road apartment, stating that he was with “the termite company.” Another apartment also had damage – a “destroyed” screen and window ajar, but the resident didn’t answer the door.
1:23 p.m. Someone put a plastic baby doll inside a wicker basket on Spear Avenue and set it on fire.
8:42 p.m. An unshaven man sat on the ground outside a Valley West motel, rocking back and forth and offering marijuana to guests.
9:09 p.m. After a bout of furniture throwing in an Alliance Road apartment, a man and woman retired to separate rooms.
11:33 p.m. A busy man outside a Plaza bar balanced out his personal hydrology by peeing in the street while holding a beer. He somehow found time between moisture management mandates to bang on passing vehicles with a bat.
• Sunday, June 23 12:11 a.m. “Call me a bitch again,” requested a man who is friends with the reporting party’s ex-boyfriend. He then slashed a tire on her car, and left.
10:51 a.m. A man and woman were seen climbing a tree to gain access and clamber into a second-floor window at Eighth and H streets. The woman was contacted and advised of restraining order and eviction processes. The man left willingly.
2:07 p.m. A man watered a wall at City Hall, then made a phone call at the pay phone with his unwashed hands.
3:52 p.m. A wrathful ex-wife roared through the trailer in which a man lives at a Valley West truckyard, stealing things and wrecking stuff.
5:02 p.m. A man suffered the second egging in a week near the St. Louis Overpass, the ova springing from a club cab pickup truck.
9 p.m. A man in a Plaza restaurant was drunk or high, and in his soporific state couldn’t embrace the concept that he wasn’t wanted there or that staying was non-sustainable. But he couldn’t argue with handcuffs, and soon found lodging in the drunk tank.
• Monday, June 24 9 8:40 a.m. After crashing a car in some bushes on Old Arcata Road near the Bayside Cutoff, a man rested on the ground for a minute, then left a note on the car saying he’d be back in the morning, then wandered away.
9:47 a.m. Someone complained about “a vagrant named Bryce.”
12:18 p.m. A man in a Celtic-print shirt stashed a bike behind a bush in an H Street parking lot, then strolled off in the direction of the Plaza.
1:27 p.m. It’s not clear why anyone would store a GPS watch, tablet reader, sports clothing and three pairs of shoes in duffel bag in a lower F Street front yard. But sometime between 3 a.m. and 9 a.m., the bag and contents were plucked from the yard.
2:25 p.m. A woman spending time in the hospital left her acoustic guitar with a friend for safekeeping, but the friend left it in a Uniontown supermarket, and it disappeared. It was described as a “Gibson Epiphone” in a black case bearing the letter “E.”
2:32 p.m. After posting Missing Cat flyers around Arcata, someone called a woman to sayy that they had her cat, Willow. She then left multiple text and phone messages, with no response from the caller.
6:35 p.m. Someone broke into an Old Arcata Road residence and stole cash, a backpack and sleeping bag.
• Tuesday, June 25 9 a.m. A woman babbled incoherently into a germ-infested pay phone in the 1000 block of H Street.
10:46 a.m. Vehicle mirrors along the west side of Baldwin Street were smashed out twice in two weeks.
10:52 a.m. After pulling a plant out of the ground at Eighth and H streets, a man positioned himself on the Plaza to best broadcast his yelling. He was arrested.
12:40 p.m. The Chamber of Commerce/California Welcome Center was egged, the eggers discourteously flinging the carton to the side of the parking lot.
1:13 p.m. A man was “very mysterious” about what he had bought through an I Street information kiosk. He did say that he didn’t get what he had expected, whatever that was.
1:33 p.m. Lots of people come and go at all hours at a Sherri Court address. Every dsix weeks, a trailer full of buckets shows up.
2:29 p.m. A car on Weott Way was entered and a bag of glucose stolen.
3:02 p.m. A man said his ex-girlfriend was harassing him with text messages threatening to change his daughter’s last name.
4:54 p.m. Rude travelers with camping equipment hooted and gibbered at passing females. Two of the passers-through were arrested on drunkenness charges.
7:57 p.m. A woman in Valley West complained about the ride things travelers on a store’s loading dock said to her when she passed by. One was told to move along.
• Wednesday, June 26 1:50 p.m. A customer told an I Street music shop that a guitar for sale may belong to the store.
5:31 p.m. A woman said that she had bought a car from a guy, but that a woman had stopped her and showed her the pink slip to the vehicle. A man then said the car was his and drove off in it.
8:12 p.m. A found dog was taken to the county shelter, just as a woman at the police station reported her dog lost. The two were soon reunited at APD.
9:53 p.m. When a roommate moved out, he took several unweaned kittens with him.
• Thursday, June 27 2:57 a.m. They weren’t foaming at the mouth and falling over backward, though that might have been preferable. Raucous travelers did hoot and howl through the area of Ninth and K streets, disturbing residents. One man busied himself with self-administered blows to the head, which added urgency to the screaming.
5:54 a.m. A woman claimed her pot-smoking mother was insane and had Münchausen Syndrome. The maniacal mom wouldn’t let her in the house to get her possessions. Then a twist – the daughter reported an appointment at the nervous hospital, but whether for her or her mother wasn’t clear.
6:33 a.m. A traveling man and his dog and another traveling man and his dog got into a fracas near a Valley West golden arches. Police dispersed the melange of manimals.
9:12 a.m. A woman charged $232.86 to the account of her estranged husband at a downtown store, and signed the receipt, “Asshole.”
9:23 a.m. A man with a Mohawk-style hairdo was seen placing a black object in a mailbox, and it didn’t look like mail. Something black was all the witness saw.
2:15 p.m. After lying for an hour with his stomach uncovered behind a Fifth Street deity factory, a man was warned away.
7:27 p.m. An elderly woman asked police to have sitabouts outside a Valley West oriental buffet retract their legs so she could go in. She also advised that she wanted them to be told not to go to a nearby supermarket, as she didn’t think they should be allowed there.
9:33 p.m. A Valley West traveler in a green shirt had blood on his arm and was acting strange.
11:45 p.m. A man in his fifties walked out of a Plaza restaurant/bar, his $17.36 tab unpaid.
• Saturday, June 29 9:51 a.m. Between 3 and 6 a.m., various petty crimes take place at a Janes Road RV park – gas siphonings, thefts, that kind of thing.
3:21 p.m. A shoplifter at an I Street store was detained by an employee and the serious security they have there.
4:03 p.m. Clothing, shoes and jewelry were stolen from a Bayside pet care business.
9:19 p.m. Someone made harassing phone calls to an S Street school, pretending to be police.
• Sunday, June 30 5:14 a.m. The porta-potty at the Skate Park was “fully engulfed” in flame.
6:31 p.m. A man said that his girlfriend had been assisting him in caring for his elderly mother, and then the mom passed away. Now the girlfriend is stealing the mother’s jewelry and pawning it in Eureka.
7:08 p.m. A lower H Street resident again utilized the well-worn 911 buttons on his telephone to report that people had “destructed his property,” including windows and tables. After being counseled – again – on the frivolous use of 911, he called 911 – again – to ask that police units leave his property.
• Monday, July 1 8:35 a.m. A vacant Seventh Street apartment was entered and occupied by squatters, their candles and bicycles visible from outside. They left with a bike trailer full of their stuff.
11:08 a.m. Ammunition was reported visible inside a car in a Janes Road parking lot. It turned out to be a fashionable ammo belt.
1:21 p.m. A moved-out roommate reported that the apartment he’d left had two ferrets and several cats and kittens living amid their own waste. No, said the resident, she had no animals. The disgruntled ex-roommate was making mischief, and had stolen three kittens she had been caring for.
• Tuesday, July 2 11:29 a.m. Beginning at 7 a.m., the daily barrage of speeding vehicles begins to whiz around the area of Margaret Lane and Charles Avenue, imperiling animals, children and slower-moving vehicles.
2:06 p.m. People in a car on the Plaza were reported pulling a small child back and forth from the back seat to the front, and striking the child on the behind with considerable force.
5:11 p.m. A Valley West home of honest goodness was infected with dishonest badness as a gray-haired man stole a hearty dinner – a rotisserie chicken, some fruit and a six-pack of beer.
• Wednesday, July 3 12:07 p.m. After a woman and her friends were followed home by a creep, a window was smashed with rock. The correlation isn’t necessarily a causation, as the creepy follower lobby would hasten to point out.
1:25 p.m. A he-she dispute escalated into a heated exchange of luggage, as she threw his suitcase at him. He called 911 three times, thrice repeating the same flung-luggage fable.
1:48 p.m. A man who “looked like a construction worker” stood in the Samoa Boulevard roadway, refusing to move. He threw rocks at one guy, then slapped a woman who was getting out of her car. The hostility sprite then somehow vanished, eluding police detection.
2:26 p.m. It mighta been the same guy, or just another anger mismanagement case who stood in the middle of 17th and I streets bleeding from the head, then was spotted on the Plaza and finally tracked down not far from there and drunk-tanked.
4:03 p.m. “Thief!” yelled an employee at a Sunny Brae supermarket. A citizen followed the shaven-headed, red-hoodied figure to a hiding place in the 100 block of Samoa Boulevard. From there the trail went cold.
6:59 p.m. A man outside a Ninth Street business threw fireworks at the building while uttering “gang sayings.” Drunk, tanked.
7:45 p.m. A shaven-headed shoplifter at a Valley West dollar store was verbally abusive to employees.
8:57 p.m. “get off me!” the woman yelled from a Valley East apartment, accompanied by door slamming.
10:33 p.m. The lower H Street whose “9” and “1” phone buttons are worn down to mere nubbins again called 911 to claim that he had been assaulted while peaceably watching fireworks on his porch. “[reporting Party] being his usual difficult self, he said he knows who the suspect is, refused to describe him, but said he went ‘next door,’” wrote the APD dispatcher. The continual complainant declined medical assistance, and wouldn’t come to the door. The people next door denied any assault.
• Friday, July 5 8:20 a.m. A man said his girlfriend was “on something” or “crazy,” and throwing furniture. She, drunk, was arrested.
9:22 a.m. A woman said her mother was “crazy” and wouldn’t give her her mail. The mother said she would transmit it through a third party.
11:14 a.m. A man reported that while riding his bike in Redwood Park the day before, he had collided with a taut line strung between two trees. He hadn’t seen the purple line before hitting it and being knocked off his bike, causing body soreness.
11:48 a.m. A man paced back and forth outside an eco-groovy abundant shop on Samoa Boulevard, yelling and swearing at nothing in particular, but possibly looking for his shoe. Off to the alcohol ward.
12:04 p.m. When a woman dropped some checks on the ground outside a downtown bank, someone tried to use one to pay their PG&E bill.
1:59 p.m. A woman suffering a slow-motion nervous breakdown was said to be sleeping in her car even though housing was available, speaking slurredly and experiencing paranoia. Now, it seemed, a psychotic break was at hand.
5:39 p.m. A citizen reported “a lot of crazy drunk college students and transients wandering back and forth between the Plaza and the Interpretive Center.” The wily wanderers were said to hide in the bushes when police cars passed by.
5:43 p.m. “Subject is definitely hearing more than one voice,” it was determined. That being the case, he was off to the nervous hospital.
7:40 p.m. Sure, the gate was closed, but the bike behind it was worth $900, so by sheer force of nature, it disappeared.
• Saturday, July 6 32 12:38 a.m. A flamboyant sort in tie-dyed short and yellow hat bashed the window of a Valley West golden arches with his skateboard. Located in a nearby motel of lost souls, he was arrested on a malicious mischief charge.
10:18 a.m. A 90-year-old woman’s credit cards were used to buy $2,000 in ill-manufactured claptrap from a Eureka big box store. The woman’s daughter suspected her mother’s new caregivers.
10:57 a.m. In a shocking development, a man with a beard and a knit beanie smoked that dope on the H Street sidewalk.
2:22 p.m. Property stolen from a Sunny Brae thrift store was found in Sunny Brae Park, where the thief’s interest in the material had apparently waned.
3:56 p.m. A wheeled howler berated passersby at high volume near a Plaza liquor store, as though it was their fault he was riding a pink bicycle.
5:36 p.m. Another in the inexhaustible supply of drunken grouchmen was arrested downtown.
7:55 p.m. Fists flew at the Plaza’s center, and one combatant was arrested.
8:44 p.m. A man with a scraped-up, bleeding face and arms, pink hair and unknown pants was mumbling to himself and scaring customers at a Plaza business was arrested and taken to the hospital for treatment.
9:59 p.m. A South G Street reported a local cow mooing for more than an hour, probably expressing bovine anger in keeping with the mood of the day.
• Sunday, July 7 1:05 p.m. Yet another snitty-in-pink subject was reported wearing a jacket of that dainty hue and jumping in and out of traffic on Sate Route 255.
3:56 p.m. Two geese were found killed on Anderson Lane, probably by a mountain lion.
10:53 p.m. More yelling on the Plaza.
• Wednesday, July 10 2:50 a.m. A house where your roommate pushes you down as he and his coterie of drunken loutmen bellow and bluster in the living room, plus the big dog in the yard… well, that’s no kinda home at all. A wee-hour move-out kept peace on 11th Street.
6:48 p.m. A woman told police her mother was insane, and that she should be committed, When officers didn’t go arrest the mom, the daughter threatened to sue the police department.
6:59 p.m. The woman called 911 about six times demanding that her mother be arrested. The calls came from a cell phone whose GPS coordinates indicated that the call was coming from some trees west of Alliance Road at M Street. The woman was found in a camp in the train tracks, where she admitted she was camping.
10:19 p.m. A man wearing a helmet briefly refused to leave a Northtown erotic supply store.
11:28 p.m. In what seemed like a classic cry for help, a man’s friend told him, “A am going to write you a note and you don’t have to worry about me any more.” But the friend had recently moved, and the man didn’t know where he lived.
• Thursday, July 11 3:58 a.m. A woman reported that her boyfriend was intoxicated and that she was “done with him.” In the past, she has had to contact his parents in order to deal with his issues.
4:55 p.m. On having an electronic monitoring device installed on his or her person, a troubled child became unruly, acted out and had to go back to juvenile hall.
5:34 p.m. A shoplifter was arrested after thieving a packet of hemp seeds from an I Street store.
6:26 p.m. A sister reported her little brother trying to kill her with a vacuum cleaner because she was trying to get her food stamp card. The mother said the girl had slugged her in the stomach at a Valley West supermarket.
• Friday, July 12 8:06 a.m. A 42-inch flatscreen TV was stolen from a Valley West apartment complex’s exercise room. The room is accessible only via a door with a security keypad, but any present or former tenant who has ever had a code had access to it.
8:59 a.m. A near-forest resident left his car unlocked with the keys inside, and they vanished in the night. He’ll be having new keys made, and from now on will lock his car.
10:56 a.m. Observed taking a slug off a bottle of vodka in a car in Valley West, a man was stopped and arrested for DUI and his vehicle towed.
9:48 p.m. On the 11th Street freeway overpass, five words that exemplify one all-too common aspect modern life in Arcata: “Window smash with property taken.”
• Saturday, July 13 12:29 a.m. A man standing in the roadway on State Route 299 threw his guitar at a passing cab, breaking the side mirror.
12:46 a.m. A shaven-headed, tattoo-necked man went around starting arguments with people on the Plaza. The man, who claimed to have just been released from prison, may have derived his boldness from his membership in the Mongols biker gang and the handgun he was packing. Police found the burly braggart and arrested him on a public drunkenness charge.
11:24 a.m. The yak-based roving hostility dispensers had another angry encounter with a guy on Beverly Drive, who claimed that one of the yakherders had confronted him and charged his dog.
1:08 p.m. The yak whisperers may have been in particularly ill humor this day, as another citizen reported a clash with them in the parking lot of a 13th Street marketplace. The woman said that her phone rang with an important incoming call and she was just looking at the device – not illegally using it while driving – when the senior yaksman spit in her face as his sidekick reached inside the vehicle and said, “Get off the phone, bitch.”
• Sunday, July 14 1:54 a.m. A citizen reported a “drive-by bottle chucking” when someone threw a whiskey bottle at his car, leaving a dent.
• Monday, July 15 7:30 p.m. A person beheld “skipping and dancing” in the street near Bayside Cutoff was, for reasons unknown, given a courtesy ride to a downtown variety store.
• Wednesday, July 17 1:56 a.m. A Grant Avenue resident reported a man outside her window sending her texts stating that he was going to slit her throat and rape her. Police didn’t locate the man.
6:18 a.m. The text-threatener was back, muttering, yelling and throwing objects at the woman’s home.
7:30 a.m. A Plaza coffee shop reported its tip jar stolen by a hitherto unknown shaven-headed galoot who “is new and looks like every other Plaza person.” He had ordered a bracing cup of fresh-brewed coffee, which costs $1.35. But he only had $1.25, and was advised to secure another dime for the purchase. His idea was to snatch up the shop’s tip jar and head for the door. He was found, admonished and told not to return, and the tip jar was returned to the shop.
• Friday, July 19 7:09 a.m. A Valley West golden arches reported “the local transient” emitting howls from his shaven head outside the business. He wasn’t found.
• Saturday, July 20 7:32 a.m. A woman reported unknown persons using unknown means to create loud sounds in order to drive her crazy. This has been going on for four years, she said, and the police know who is doing it.
8:36 p.m. “I’m going to set a trap,” a woman said as she passed a downtown barber shop.
• Sunday, July 21 2:39 a.m. Howling parking lot hangabouts briefly prevented a person from exiting a building and going to her car in Sunny Brae Center.
• Monday, July 22 4:23 p.m. Maybe in Nevada you can park your new blue Lexus with plates from that state in a handicapped spot without the required placard, but not here in Our Cata. The owner can probably afford the $330 fine.
8:48 p.m. A woman in sandals took a position near the air/water dispenser at a Valley West gas station, and ranted and rambled about angels. She was warned away from the place.
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