Cops Corner: Pelican Press

Nov. 5
Chips, wine, but no suspect
2:40 a.m. — 6600 block of Midnight Pass Road. Theft. A convenience store clerk reported that two women and one man had come into the store together to buy wine. He refused to sell it to them because it was after 2 a.m. They became angry, the clerk said, but the two women used cash to buy bags of chips instead. While the clerk was completing that transaction, he reported, the man stood in the isle where the chips were on display and looked around in what the clerk described as a suspicious manner. Then all three people left the store; the man had not bought anything. After they left, the clerk immediately went to the chip isle and found an empty cardboard holder in front of a bag of chips, directly in the area where the man had been standing. The clerk also found the cap of a bottle of wine at the end of the chip isle. When the clerk ran outside, he saw the three people leaving in an SUV. He wrote down the license tag number, but he was unable to provide any detailed description of the man. When the clerk finally decided to press charges, a deputy used the license tag number to locate an address for the woman to whom the SUV was registered. However, she no longer lived at that address. The deputy could develop no information about the male suspect.

Nov. 5
‘Drugs, officer, not booze.’
9:38 p.m. — 2100 block of Higel Avenue. Driving Under the Influence. A deputy stopped a 52-year-old male driver because he appeared to be driving erratically. The deputy also reported the man slurred his words. When the deputy asked the man to perform sobriety exercises, the man said he would do them, but the man could not keep his balance. The deputy then transported the man to the jail. There, the man refused to take the breathalyzer test. He told the deputy, “It was the drugs,” not alcohol. The deputy additionally reported the man kept repeating himself and asking another law enforcement officer to take him home.

Nov. 10
sorry after the fact
2:12 a.m. — 5000 block of Ocean Boulevard. Driving Under the Influence. A deputy saw a vehicle traveling northbound on Ocean Boulevard at a high rate of speed; he used the radar gun to clock it at 39 mph in the 20 mph zone. When the deputy stopped the vehicle, he detected a strong odor of alcohol coming from the 24-year-old woman driver, and her speech occasionally was slurred. When she tried to take off her shoes for the field sobriety tests, he reported, “She needed to use a vehicle to maintain her balance.” When the deputy asked the woman where she was going, she said she was on her way home. Asked where she had been, she responded that she had been to a Village nightclub, where she had had one or two drinks — pineapple and vodka. She then kept telling the deputy how sorry she was. The deputy took her to jail.