11:51 p.m.
January 7
Fender Bumper. Unit 1 was traveling east on Winslow Way, approaching the stop sign at the intersection of Winslow Way and Madison. Unit 2 was stopped at the stop sign at the same intersection. Unit 1 failed to stop in time and struck the rear of Unit 2.
One Call Sign Theft. At approximately 3:30 in the afternoon, Officer Ben Sias returned a call to a woman who had called earlier to report the theft of a sign. She is the Executive Director of One Call for All. She said that in the last day someone had stolen one of the signs that show a red thermometer to measure donations. The sign is laminated paper over wood, sandwich style, with a chain to hold both halves together. The sign was professionally made and valued at between $500 and $1000. The sign had been set up next to a banner at Rotary Gateway Park on Alma Place.
Found Check. Parking Enforcement Officer Ken Lundgren brought to the station a check he had found near the apartments between the bridge and Bjune. The check was wet and not suitable for admission into evidence. He gave the check to Senior Police Clerk Barbara Seitz. She did not find a telephone listing for the maker, but the online phone directory had the same address that had been printed on the check. She mailed the check to the maker with a letter telling her it had been turned into the police department.
Right of Way Not Granted. A driver westbound on High School at 6:05 in the evening was making a southbound left turn into the Safeway parking lot. Another driver, facing northbound, did not grant right of way from the stop sign and struck the other driver’s vehicle as it turned, causing over $750 in damage. The damage to the second vehicle was small, consisting mostly of black rubber transfer from the other vehicle.
Car Prowl on Sunrise Bluff. At approximately 8:09 p.m., Cencom advised of a theft detail at Sunrise Bluff Lane. Officer Walt Berg arrived on scene at approximately 8:15 and made contact with the reporting party. He told Berg that his vehicle and the vehicle of another person who lives in a separate detached bungalow on the same property had had items stolen out of them. A third vehicle had also been prowled but nothing had been taken from it.
The other resident had found her trunk standing open and the side door of the man’s vehicle standing open when she went out to her vehicle at about 7:10 a.m.
Berg examined the man’s vehicle first. The inside of the driver’s door was completely wet. The man said that he was missing a removable faceplate AM/FM radio/CD player. The man said he would get serial numbers for Berg. He said he was also missing a nylon mesh gym bag valued at approximately $10. The bag contained a pair of shoes valued at about $30, two swimsuits valued at about $20, and some toiletry items.
Berg was unable to lift any prints.
The man said that he regularly locks his vehicle but had failed to do so the night before. The victims had called neighbors to alert them, and one neighbor had heard a vehicle on the shared dirt driveway between 2 and 2:30 in the morning.
The man said that someone had gone through the glove box of his wife’s vehicle but had taken nothing, including the GPS.
January 6
Car Prowl on Reitan. Sometime between Sunday evening and Monday morning at 7 a.m., someone opened the driver side door and rear door of two vehicles parked in front of garage doors on Reitan. Two plastic containers were taken from one vehicle, and the glove compartment of the other vehicle had been rummaged through. The containers held dog grooming equipment, dog food packets, water and food containers, leather leashes, a service dog vest, halters, a travel blanket, two travel pillows, emergency blankets, an emergency tire inflater, a woven basket, and miscellaneous travel items. The total loss was estimated at $300.
Car Prowl on Sheppard. At approximately 9:54 in the morning, Officer Dale Johnson was dispatched to call a woman about a theft. He called her at her residence on Sheppard Way. The woman told him that at 9:30 that morning she had gone out to her vehicle, which was parked in front of her home, and discovered that some items were missing from it. She said there were no signs of forced entry and thinks the vehicle might have been unlocked. She said she routinely locks it overnight. She discovered that the $200 GPS, two iPhone cords, and $300 in cash from her purse were all missing. She said she normally keeps her purse under the front driver’s seat of the vehicle. She said some CDs and DVDs were also missing but she didn’t know the amount or the titles. She said she would call when she knew.
Burglary on John Adams; Includes Theft of Marijuana. At approximately 8:31 in the morning, Officer Victor Cienega was dispatched top John Adams Lane for a burglary that had occurred overnight. He arrived on scene and spoke with the reporting party who said he had returned home at approximately 9:30 the night before. He said he set down his backpack on the living room floor next to an end table. When he woke up in the morning, his backpack was missing along with a small amount of marijuana he had left on the end table. He then noticed that the front door was not shut all the way. He remembered closing the door but not locking it. He also remembered his dog barking at some point in the night but did not think anything of it.
Missing were a $250 backpack, a $100 sleeping bag, a $120 Air Force flight jacket, one pair of $60 pants, three pairs of wool socks valued at $25, 3 T-shirts valued at $10 each, and $10 worth of marijuana.
January 5
One Car Crash. While traveling south on 305 around 4:30 in the afternoon, Unit 1 failed to turn and continued straight where the road curved east. Unit 1 left the road and struck the guard rail on the west side of 305.
Broken Sign. A passerby advised Lieutenant Phil Hawkins, who was out on a separate incident at Bainbridge High School, that the stop and street sign was down at the corner of Nakata and Ihland. Hawkins went to that site and found that the sign had been broken off at the base and was lying on the ground.
Pulled-Out Sign. Another sign was down at Clayton and Nakata. Hawkins was able to set that one back in the hole but it would have to be reset by Public Works.
Windows Broken at High School: $2000. At approximately 8:50 in the morning, Cencom dispatched Bainbridge units to the High School for malicious mischief. Officer Victor Cienega met with the Associate Principal who showed him two windows that had been broken out in the main building. Cienega could see a rock lying on the ground. Inside one office was another rock. Cienega took photos of the broken windows. The Associate Principal said that the office staff had been on site the day before until approximately 6 p.m. The windows that were broken were in the Principal’s and Associate Principal’s offices. The Associate Principal valued the replacement cost at $2000.
Man Asking to Be Arrested Is Not. At approximately 3:37 a.m., Cencom dispatched Bainbridge units to an assault between brothers on Madison. One brother was reportedly trying to hit the other with a skateboard. Officer Carla Sias responded to the scene and observed a white male standing at the end of the driveway. He was holding a skateboard. When he saw her, he immediately set it down and put his hands on his head before she even said anything to him.
He was talking fast and not making any sense. Sias patted him down and found nothing illegal. He kept saying he would tell what had happened while they were on the way to the jail. After a few seconds, he calmed down and cried.
Lieutenant Bob Day arrived and the man again began talking rapidly and asked to be put in handcuffs. He also mentioned several times that he had a warrant. As he was talking, he was walking around rapidly and entered the roadway. Day and Sias applied the handcuffs and put the man in the back seat of Sias’s patrol car.
Sias asked him who he had been arguing with, and he said his brother. He rambled on about how they had been using meth all day and using it around children. She asked him if he had hit anyone and he said, “No.” She asked him if anyone had hit him, and he said, “No.”
He said he had come over from Seattle for New Year’s and had had a relapse and smoked some meth. He also mentioned that he had smoked some the morning before, but when he asked his brother for some more his brother had said, “No.” The man said he didn’t smoke anything after that and only drank alcohol. Sias spoke with Officers Aimee LaClaire and Steve Cain and determined that there had been no crime or assault. They also found there was no warrant for the man. Sias gave the man a ride to the ferry terminal where he requested to be taken.
January 4
Home Burglary on Kono. At about 2:30 in the afternoon, Lieutenant Chris Jensen responded to Kono Road about a burglary. He contacted the reporting party. She told him she had left the residence at about 1:30 in the afternoon and, when she had returned just after 4, she discovered her home had been entered and items taken.
Jensen tried to determine the point of entry and discovered that a screen had been removed from the front window. The window was not locked when he pushed on it. The woman said she is very diligent about locking her home. There were no signs of shoe prints on the deck near the window. Jensen did not find shoe prints on the window sill or the floor inside the window. He did not find debris from shoes either.
Jensen asked the woman who might have a key to her home. She said she had given a key to several people over the last six years and had not replaced the locks in that time. She said she did not suspect anyone to whom she had given a key. Jensen wondered if someone else might have access to one of those keys. She said that was a possibility.
Stolen were two empty Tupperware storage bins valued at $10, a battery-powered television valued at $50, a $50 Red Devil vacuum, a Toshiba computer with two speakers and a docking station valued at $1300, a Visio television valued at $200, and a bag of coins amounting to $100.
Jensen advised the woman to contact her credit card company to report the possible compromise of her banking and credit information.
Mysteriously Displaced Sea Grass. At 3:22 in the afternoon, Officers Jeff Benkert and Gary Koon were dispatched by Cencom to contact a woman on Point Monroe Drive regarding a malicious mischief incident. Koon called her and arranged to meet her on scene. Benkert and Koon interviewed the woman about what had happened. She said that she and her husband had left the residence at about 2 p.m. on December 25 and returned at approximately 5 p.m. on January 3 to find some of their decorative landscaping grass, specifically Native Sea Grass, had been torn up. It was lying on the southwest side of their property along a disputed property line on each side of the road.
She said some grass had been torn out two to three months ago, but she and her husband thought it might have been otters. She said they had just recently replaced the grass, and now she believed it was their neighbor since it was left along the property line. She said her neighbor to the southwest had had a surveyor put down surveying stakes on her side of the property line.
Benkert and Koon went to the neighbor’s house and spoke with him. He said that the sea grass was on his property and that the neighbors had removed his surveying stakes.
Benkert and Koon recommended that he contact Bainbridge Island Code Enforcement officials in order to resolve the conflict over the disputed property line.
January 3
Regularly Littering McDonald’s-Eating Contractor. Lieutenant Phil Hawkins spoke at the station with a man who lives on Sunrise about illegal trash dumping. He said that for about the last month someone had been throwing trash into the brush alongside the roadway on Sunrise. He said the location of the trash is about 1/4 mile north of Day Road on the east side of Sunrise. He did not provide an exact address and said that he and his neighbors are upset about the ongoing littering.
He had gathered some of the trash and now showed it to Hawkins. It consisted primarily of food bags and containers from McDonald’s. Among the trash were two receipts from McDonald’s. Also included was a handwritten letter that included names and phone numbers. The man said he had done a reverse lookup on one of the numbers and it returned to a person who is the owner of a construction company based in Poulsbo. He said that that person has a post office box in the Rolling Bay Post Office. He had seen him picking up his mail there several times a week.
The man theorized that the contractor buys his lunch at McDonald’s, drives to the Rolling Bay P.O., and picks up his mail, eating his lunch in his vehicle. He then throws the trash out the window each day at the same location.
Hawkins explained to the man that, although the theory may be correct, nothing in the trash was conclusive enough to charge anyone yet. The man asked if getting a picture of the person from the video at McDonald’s would prove anything, and Hawkins explained that it would only prove who had bought the items, not who had discarded them.
Hawkins told the man they would investigate with the information he had provided, but that the best evidence would be an eyewitness account of the littering. The man asked Hawkins not to contact any suspects until he and his neighbors had set up a plan to catch the litterer in action. Hawkins said he would file the information as an information report only.
Mail Theft. Lieutenant Phil Hawkins received a call from a man who was reporting theft from his mailbox over the holidays. He said that two weeks ago, around December 20, he should have received a bill from T-Mobile but that it was missing. He said he now has a sensor on his mailbox that alerts him when someone opens his box. He was alerted at 7:20 p.m. on January 2. When he checked, there was no mail that belonged to him but only an advertisement designated for a former renter. He checked with the mail carrier who told him they had dropped off nothing at that time.
December 27
On January 18, 2012, someone used an Edgecombe Place resident’s ID to make a fraudulent purchase through Paypal’s Bill-Me-Later. The man had never used a Bill-Me-Later account and had never given permission to anyone else to do so. He had just learned about the transaction from a Bill-Me-Later representative.
