Oly Lowlife 11-13-13

Date/Time: 10/24/2013, 01:23 Hours

Location: 1000 Block Division St, Olympia

Incident: Calling Tom Sawyer, and a Lawyer

Two young men who were furiously working to dismantle a wood plank fence drew the ire of the neighborhood and the attention of police. Why were these antitheses to Tom Sawyer the focus of so much ill will? Because the fence did not belong to them and they were throwing the nail-studded boards in the street, for fun.

When the initial OPD officer pulled up to the scene he was able to observe the two men and their disassembly-line action. One of the mischievous men was about twenty feet off of the roadway and busily pulling the wood fence apart, while his partner stood below and closer the road. As the fence came down, the first man would throw the boards toward his accomplice, who would then go about scattering the debris directly in the road and into the path of vehicles.

After sufficiently observing the fence line mayhem, the officer stopped his patrol car and “called out” to the two suspected idiots, 19 and 20 years old, to stop their dysfunction. At the sound of the officer’s voice, one of the men dropped to his belly and awaited his impending arrest. The other suspect, he who was seen pulling the boards off the fence, fled the scene in the direction of Kiwi Court NW, a small residential subdivision.

Some ten to fifteen minutes later a call was received by 911-Dispatch from a homeowner on Kiwi Court NW, reporting that an unknown individual was currently on her roof. She stated that it was obvious from the noise coming through her roof that it was not being made by an animal.

When an OPD officer responded the home that had reported the out of season Santa on the roof, he made verbal contact with the subject and instructed him to come down. The disembodied voice agreed to do this and informed the officer that he would be coming down in the front of the house. He was subsequently placed under arrest.

Investigations at the original crime scene revealed 80-100 fence boards and a whopping 150 feet of fence that had been torn apart, frame and all. Examination of the fence pieces in the road indicated that the boards had been purposefully placed with their exposed nail sides facing up so as to inflict maximum damage on passing cars. The Kiwi Court homeowners association told police that they were the owners of the fence and estimated the damage to be between $1,500 and $2,000.

The young men were charged with Malicious Mischief. As the evidence indicates, these two are apparently lacking any true cunning Tom Sawyer skills, and it is doubtful that they will be able to trick anyone into doing their reparation work for them.

Date/Time: 10/28/2013, 07:55 Hours

Location: 1800 Block Van Epps St SE, Olympia

Incident: Dude, Where’s My Keys

An aspiring local burglar was first stymied by a standard home security system, and then doomed by his own sloppiness.

The homeowner, who reported that the unoccupied home on a secluded part of his property had been broken into on two other occasions this year, had recently paid for a burglar alarm to be installed. The new system replaced a WAVE alarm temporarily provided by the OPD after one of the previous break-ins. When the new alarm began to buzz in the early morning hours, the homeowner phoned for police and waited.

Together, the homeowner and the responding OPD officer searched the violated home, but were unable to locate anyone or thing suspicious in the vicinity. However, they did discover a sliding glass window had been opened and numerous objects inside the window that had spilled to the floor, setting off the interior motion sensors and the alarm. The homeowner noted that a pedestrian gate on the property had been left “ajar,” by someone other than himself.

The investigating officer determined that there were no suitable surfaces for lifting fingerprints, and after checking (unsuccessfully) with the neighbors for clues, determined that all of the case leads were exhausted and subsequently left the scene.

A while later, the homeowner again phone police and asked for the officer to return in order to investigate some suspicious tire tracks around the property. While the officer was on the scene, he noticed the homeowner moving items around the breached window. The homeowner indicated that he was in the process of boarding up the windows. During this process, a mysterious set of car keys were discovered on the ground below the window.

A day later, with the first real lead of the case in hand, the OPD officer set about undertaking some real sleuth work, namely, driving around the nearby neighborhoods and pushing the panic button on the keychain. Before long, a white Dodge Durango erupted in a show of lights and horns, revealing itself to be the matching vehicle to the mysterious keychain.

The vehicle was iced over and appeared to the officer that it had been parked in that location overnight. When police made contact with the registered owner of the vehicle they were informed that the vehicle had been loaned to a friend of the owner for the past week. She also informed the police that the friend to whom she had loaned the vehicle had been arrested by Thurston County Sheriffs the previous day for an outstanding DOC warrant. From conversations with the DOC, it was estimated that the man would remain locked up for the next 30-days.

Inside of the Durango, the OPD officer noted the presence of a backpack and a purse. The officer then had the vehicle towed to the Olympia Justice Center. The keys were dropped off with the Detective Bureau, and the vehicle was sealed in anticipation of a search, pending a warrant.

There is no more information available at this time, although the presumed prowler will certainly be interrogated inside the confines of the corrections facility. Regardless of the matter of guilt or innocence as related to the attempted burglary, it is safe to say that the suspected burglar did not follow proper car borrowing protocol. Losing someone else’s car keys and having their vehicle impounded by police on suspicion of using it to facilitate a crime doth not a good friend make.