I.V. Hosts: Dancing With the Idiots

Fri., Sept. 25, 11:35 p.m. — Officers patrolling a busy Del Playa Drive couldn’t help but take notice as a flamboyant 18-year-old strutted by.

With revelry in the air, the young man had decided to entertain the masses with his groovy dance moves… from atop a moving car.

As the vehicle made its way through the crowd surrounding it, the deputies made their way towards the tipsy-toed dancer and yelled at him to get down. The inebriated performer was in the zone, however, and failed to heed the officer’s demand.

The deputies, having already tried their hands at diplomacy, reverted to plan B and grabbed the artist by the shirt and dragged him to the ground.

With his run as lead dancer in the Car-top Cabaret over, the rising star was forced to face the music and stood motionless as the deputies slapped on the cuffs.

And the Damage Done

Sun., Sept. 27, 1:13 a.m. — A late night altercation in a Del Playa parking lot turned out to be more than one officer could handle.

Once on the scene, the officers approached a bloodied 18-year-old and asked him what had happened, to which he replied, “Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz…” Pressed further, the out-of-towner continued to ramble about California’s favorite hippie enclave, but ironically, refused to say where he was from.

With no other options, the deputy arrested him and sat him on the curb to wait for a van to take him to jail. But the slug wasn’t ready to be salted just yet, and while the officer was looking down at his notepad, he made his break and started sprinting down the street.

The deputy made chase, and his attempts to taser the escapee failed. And then his own legs failed him: just paces from catching up, the officer lost his footing and ate shit in the middle of the street.

Officers don’t work alone, though, and a fellow member of the Foot Patrol was able to tackle the fleeing northerner. The damage, however, had already been done.

If Only It Was Twist-Off

Fri., Sept. 15, 11:28 p.m. — Deputies on patrol near the intersection of Camino Del Sur and Pasado Road stopped an inebriated man after he stumbled into several parked cars.

The officers asked the unsteady stroller where he lived, and he was quick to tell them that he lived at “243 Sabado.” But before the deputies could tell him such an address doesn’t exist, he pointed to a house at the corner of the intersection and told them he lived there.

Feeling pretty certain that the 20-year-old was making things up, the deputies asked the lost boy if he could call a friend to walk him home. The drunken UCSB student said he could and proceeded to pull out his keys from his front pocket.

Unsure of his intentions, the officers asked him a second time if he would call a friend. This time, the man pointed to a bottle opener attached to his keys and said, “O.K., it’s right here.”

Whether he thought the bottle opener was a phone, or perhaps a friendly escort, the officers couldn’t tell, but such clarification was not needed to arrest him for public intoxication.