Community Police & Fire
Gig Harbor Police Blotter | Drive-by eggings plague Gig Harbor
Editor’s note: The Blotter is written based on information provided by Gig Harbor Police , Gig Harbor Fire & Medic One and the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office.
Gig Harbor police arrested three teenagers who wreaked havoc around the area on Oct. 22, throwing eggs at several vehicles before crashing a car into a light pole.
The trio of troublemakers were also involved in a road rage incident on Highway 16, fled from an attempted traffic stop and shattered one driver’s window.
Police released the suspects to parents or guardians and forwarded a report to the city prosecutor’s office for possible charges.
Witnesses made several reports of drive-by eggings that evening, the first at about 5:45 p.m. on Peacock Hill. The suspects drove a gray sedan.
At about 9:30 p.m., one victim reported that the eggers shattered her windshield.
A little after that, according to a Gig Harbor Police news release, an officer spotted a gray sedan parked along westbound Highway 16 near Olympic Drive. A young man was “seen standing in the roadway interacting with another vehicle” in an apparent road-rage incident.
The boy got back in the sedan and fled after seeing the officer.
The officer followed, but the sedan refused to stop. At one point, someone inside it actually egged a GHPD patrol vehicle before fleeing “recklessly at a high rate of speed.”
Officers cornered the sedan in a neighborhood of dead-end streets. Eventually, they found it under a destroyed light pole, having plowed through a fence and damaged a backyard chicken coop on the way.
The suspects ran from the wrecked vehicle, but officers located them. None of the three were injured.
Not a journalist
Pierce County Sheriff’s Office deputies arrested a masked man claiming to be a journalist after he pepper-sprayed two people on the Key Peninsula on Oct. 10.
The same man attempted to film outside the Washington Corrections Center for Women in Gig Harbor on Oct. 7. The facility went into lockdown before he left, according to a Pierce County Sheriff’s Office blog post.
The post repeatedly refers to the man as a “journalist,” but YouTube yahoo might be a better description. He posts videos in which he attempts to provoke confrontations with public employees by filming them.
The lengthy sheriff’s office blog post also cites examples when the man turned up at a golf course and a sheriff’s office precinct. He committed no apparent crimes in those instances, though verbal confrontations ensued.
After the Key Peninsula incident, in which he pepper-sprayed a couple who asked him why he was filming them, officers arrested the man on suspicion of second-degree assault.
“For anyone who works in a public area, please talk with your supervisors and have a plan in place for professionally handling these independent journalists,” Pierce County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Deputy Carly Cappetto wrote in the blog post. The suspect is not a journalist. “Please know that anyone can be filmed and photographed in a public space or business, and the whole idea is to scare and intimidate our public employees into violating a constitutional right.”
Shoplifter leaves a receipt
A 39-year-old woman shoplifted from the Wilco store on Soundview Drive on Oct. 24, but helpfully left behind a list of what she stole.
A store employee reported the theft around 5:30 p.m. that evening. Responding officers immediately recognized the description of the suspect, a transient with mental health issues who frequents that area of Gig Harbor.
Officers quickly located the suspect. She told them she left the list of items she took — two candy bars and a roll of electrical tape — because she owns the business and was trying to help employees track inventory. Officers wrote in their report that the woman often makes that claim.
Officers cited the woman for third degree theft and issued her a trespass admonishment, then released her. They returned one candy bar and the electrical tape to the store; she ate the other candy bar.