Cops Corner: Pelican Press

Aug. 12
Mr. Roper strikes again
8 p.m. — 2200 block of Cork Oak Drive. Suspicious Incident. A senior citizen believes her landlord may be giving her problems. She told the Sheriff’s Office that he might be shutting off the water to the laundry room in her rental home. The deputy who responded couldn’t tell if the issue was landlord-related or just a routine maintenance issue. Nonetheless, he wrote in his report that there were problems with the landlord, but he didn’t elaborate.

Aug. 13
No double vision
1:01 a.m. — Ocean Boulevard and Treasure Boat Way. Driving Under the Influence. A deputy saw a car cruising down Ocean Boulevard 15 mph over the speed limit. He tried to pull the driver over, but the car made two quick right turns and stopped in a group of trees on a vacant lot. The deputy thought the driver was trying to elude him. When the driver rolled down his window, he had the telltale signs of drunkenness — odor of alcohol, dazed look on face, bloodshot eyes. The deputy asked him how many drinks he had had. He first said two beers then later clarified that the number was four beers. No, he wasn’t seeing double. The driver submitted to a breath test and was double the legal limit.

The sound and the fury
7:12 p.m. — 5100 block of Jungle Plum Road. Criminal Mischief. An elderly woman returned home from a two-week trip to find that someone had broken the handle on her lanai door. She thinks someone may have tried, unsuccessfully, to burglarize her home. Nothing was stolen. The burglar alarm may have scared off the culprit.

Beer me
10:38 p.m. — 5000 block of Ocean Boulevard. Driving Under the Influence. When a man drove through a stop sign on Ocean Boulevard, a deputy stopped him. The driver pulled into a parking lot and squeezed his car between a tree and large rock, with very little clearance on either side. The deputy said that showed a lack of good judgment. Another sign of bad judgment was soon to come. The deputy looked in the car and saw an open beer can had been left in the center console. Without saying a word, the driver, sporting a blank stare, reached over grabbed the beer and handed it to the deputy. He then failed a couple of sobriety tests. No surprise, then, that the deputy arrested him.

Aug. 14
Short attention span
9:45 p.m. — 900 block of Beach Road. Grand Theft. A woman walked up to a deputy on the public beach and told him that her backpack had been stolen from the beach. She said that while she was at the Drum Circle she left the backpack unattended. When she returned to the spot where she had left it, it was gone. Inside the backpack were a wallet, cell phone, credit cards, her driver’s license, $80 cash and more.

Aug. 15
This is not a drill
7 a.m. — 6200 block of Midnight Pass Road. Criminal Mischief. The maintenance man at a condo complex arrived at work to see that someone had discharged a fire extinguisher in an elevator sometime overnight. There are no suspects.

‘The sign guy did it’
2:12 p.m. — 2400 block of Stickney Point Road. Vehicle Burglary. A man left his wallet in his unlocked car, parked overnight at a bar. No real surprise that the wallet was missing when the man went back to pick up his car. One of his credit cards was used in St. Petersburg. The man was able to get a description of the person who used the credit card, and he swore it sounded like the man who had been holding a “cash for gold” advertising sign near the bar.