By Megan Sheppard
On the WSBeat, for West Seattle Blog
As always, the WSBeat summaries are from reports on cases handled recently by Southwest Precinct officers, incidents of note that (usually) have not already appeared here in breaking-news coverage or West Seattle Crime Watch reports, but that might at least answer the question “what WERE all those police doing on my block (whenever)?”:
*Around noon on Saturday, a male driver pursued and harassed a female driver from Avalon and 35th all the way to downtown. He employed a variety of methods: tailgating, honking, flipping her off, and swerving through traffic to first pass and then pull into her lane before slamming on the brakes. He followed her off the 4th Avenue off-ramp, toward downtown, continuing the honking, flipping, and tailgating until she was able to lose him on some side streets. He was described as a white male with brown hair. He drove a four-door black Lexus that is registered to an address in the Admiral area.
*Wednesday afternoon at Me-Kwa-Mooks Park, a Highland Park resident noticed that another park-goer’s “very large dogs” were off-leash. She asked that he leash them, especially because her own three (leashed) dogs could be aggressive. The 66-year-old responded to this request by raising his hand to her and saying “You need to be punched.” He later told an officer that the woman was a “busybody” who liked to tell people what to do. He agreed that his use of words had been threatening and was sorry about the incident. The report does not state whether the Beach Drive-area resident was cited for having his dogs off leash.
*Monday afternoon, an allegedly intoxicated man and his friend fled the scene of a Alaska Junction apartment building after arguing with (and head-butting) a woman for being too slow in getting off an elevator.
Five more summaries ahead, including a “Facebook flirtation” gone wrong:
*Just how fast was that Alki-to-Admiral Way motorcyclist going on Monday afternoon? So fast that an officer following at 55 MPH (in the 30 MPH zone) couldn’t catch up. He alerted fellow officers to the failed stop, and one of them nabbed the guy at the top of the hill. The 32-year-old Burien resident was handcuffed and booked into King County Jail for investigation of reckless driving.
*When a local woman’s Facebook flirtation got out of hand, she asked an officer for advice about the problem: The man had threatened to post “racy” photos of her on the Internet unless she agreed to have sex with him. She provided the man’s phone number to the officer and, after confirming the man’s identity, the officer gave him a call. There was no answer, but a records check provided his mother’s name and number. So Mommy got the call and assured the officer that she’d tell him to delete all the photos, not post anything about the woman, and to never contact her again.
*An officer responded to a theft call in the Avalon area on Saturday evening. The citizen blamed his landlord because his favorite sweatshirt had disappeared, his answering machine was speaking only in French, and his box of Cocoa Puffs had turned into a box of Cocoa Krispies. The man admitted that he had a mental health history, and the officer stood watch as he took a dose of meds. She suggested to him that the incidents likely had more to do with his mental issues than with his landlord. She alerted the man’s caseworker, who promised to visit the next day. The citizen assured the officer that he would be fine for the evening and agreed to call 911 if he began to feel out of control.
*Around 6 a.m. Saturday, a woman called 911 and threatened to kill herself. Medics arrived at the scene on 59th SW and were able to coax the woman out from under the playground equipment where she had buried herself in the mulch. By the time officers arrived, the woman had been treated and had a bandage on her neck, having told medics that she’d tried to hit her jugular vein with her pocket knife. The 25-year-old Snohomish resident accepted a ride to Harborview for treatment and for a mental health exam.
*A disabled veteran has faced mounting difficulties caring for himself after his utilities were turned off for non payment. On Wednesday of last week, around noon, frustrated and despondent, he called City Light to plead his case, but ultimately hung up after threatening suicide. The City Light employee immediately called 911 and said she thought he was heading to the Veterans Administration Center for assistance. Officers were dispatched, but he had already left when they arrived. Fortunately, he called back while they were there; unfortunately, he said he had a gun in the back seat of his car and was ready to use it. The VA counselor kept the man on the phone for an hour while other police resources tried to pinpoint his location. His car was finally traced to the Roxbury area, where officers found him calm and cooperative but clearly despondent. He agreed to go to the hospital for a mental evaluation if the officers would try to help get his utilities turned back on. While he was being treated at the hospital, the two officers worked with more than eleven city, county, state, and private charities to get large portions of his utility bills covered and the services restored. Later that afternoon, he was delighted to be brought home by police and amazed that they had followed through on their pledge to help. The Seattle Police Department Crisis Intervention Team has been alerted to the case for possible followup.
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EDITOR’S NOTE: Also, remember, the CRISIS LINE is a resource for those in crisis, including thoughts or acts of self-harm: 206.461.3222 … WSBeat roundups are archived here. We also continue to publish crime reports the rest of the week, when we get tips or hear noteworthy incidents via the scanner, so don’t be shy about letting us know when you see/hear something happening = calling or texting 206-293-6302 is the best way.
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