Every day, police officers respond to reports of all sorts of events and nonevents, most of which never make the news. Here is a sampling of lesser-known — but no less noteworthy — incidents from police log books (a.k.a. blotters) in our suburbs.
YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS UP
A woman driving in Quincy chose to take an interesting detour recently. On April 3, police said a delivery truck was blocking the travel lane on Hancock Street, so the woman decided to drive up on the sidewalk. Police posted photos on Twitter of the Toyota SUV on the sidewalk along with an amusing caption (‘Wait... what??? The delivery truck was blocking the travel lane, so you thought it would be ok to go up on the sidewalk to get around??) and the hashtag #YouCantMakeThisUp. The driver’s response, according to police: “You’re making a bigger deal out of this than necessary.” And lucky for her, she was just given a verbal warning.
TAKE THE SNAKE
At 11:08 a.m. March 25, Stow police received a call from a woman who wanted the police or the animal control officer to “come and remove a python from her nephew’s room” because she was scared to be in the house with it. The woman was advised that neither the police nor the animal control officer will come out to remove an animal from private property just because she doesn’t like it. Police advised her to speak with the snake’s owner and figure out a way to either find it a temporary home or find someone else to care for it.
BETTER NOT MESS WITH HIS BISCUITS
At 12:54 p.m. April 8, Saugus police received a 911 call from a man at Kentucky Fried Chicken who was apparently upset that he ordered biscuits but someone forgot to put them in his bag. Police then received a second 911 call from an employee who reported that the man was causing a disturbance in the restaurant. Officers who responded to the KFC reported that the man took his food and left the premises, and peace was restored. He also was banned from the restaurant.
At 1:40 p.m. Feb. 24, a woman called 911 to report that someone “took her parking spot” outside Nordstrom Rack in Burlington. According to the log entry it was a “verbal altercation,” and the individuals were “GOA” — gone on arrival — when police arrived at the scene.
IT’S A SCAM, SCAM WORLD
People get scammed online all the time, and it can happen on all kinds of platforms. We need look no further than the town of Bridgewater for some recent examples. One incident was reported Feb. 26, when a female juvenile told police that someone used her name and photo to make a fake profile on Tinder, a popular dating app.
Another incident was reported on March 11, when a man came into the police station and said he’d used Venmo — a mobile payment service — to send money to someone who was selling a truck bed on Facebook Marketplace. He told police that he still had not received the truck bed and the seller had blocked his number.
Three days later, on March 13, a man called Bridgewater police and said that he was on other line with a man who claimed to be an official from the US Social Security Administration and was telling him that he would be arrested unless he purchased a $500 Google gift card. Police told the caller to hang up on the guy, because he was definitely a con artist. (This happens more often than you think. In fact, the Federal Trade Commission has seen a spike in the number of people getting these kind of fake Social Security calls. Since January 2018, the agency has received more than 63,000 reports of this scam, and 3 percent of those folks lost money to the fraudsters. Their losses totaled $16.6 million.)
And last but not least, on April 1, a woman walked into the Bridgewater police station and said she had sent $600 to purchase a dog from someone in Texas, but never received the animal. She said the sellers had since taken down their website and their phone was disconnected.
Emily Sweeney can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @emilysweeney.