Just Five More Minutes, Officer
Saturday, April 16, 2:13 p.m. — Officers responded to reports of a person passed out in the grassy area on the west side of the Francisco Torres Residence Hall. Upon arrival, the deputies found the subject, an unconscious 18-year-old man, lying prostrate in the grass next to the sidewalk.
Officers also received reports that several people had already unsuccessfully attempted to wake the man.
One of the officers attempted to rouse the man from his nap by shaking him and calling out to him. When that did not work, the reporting deputy said he grabbed a hold of the man’s belt and tried to hoist him into an upright position.
However, the deputy said this appeared to do nothing to disturb the subject’s peaceful slumber, and the man continued to lie facedown with his posterior in the air.
After several more attempts to wake the man, he eventually regained consciousness and appeared to be disoriented.
The subject eventually tried to stand up, but lost his balance, fell to the ground and had to be assisted back into a sitting position by the officers.
One of the deputies obtained the man’s identification, and asked him where he thought he was.
The man, who had a strong odor of alcohol on his breath, stated that he believed he was at the Chili’s restaurant in the Camino Real Marketplace.
When the deputy asked the man where he lived, he replied, “67 block.” Asked to clarify his response, the subject pointed to the park next to FT and said, “Right over there.”
The officer asked the man how long ago he had been at Chili’s.
The subject looked up at the deputy and replied, “Soon.”
The man would not, in fact, be returning to Chili’s that evening.
Concerned about the amount of alcohol the man must have consumed with his meal the previous night to still be so intoxicated that afternoon, the officers arrested him for public intoxication and transported him to the Santa Barbara County Jail, where he was housed, pending sobriety.
You’re Not the Boss of Me
Friday, April 15, 3:54 a.m. — A deputy patrolling the Embarcadero loop contacted a 22-year-old man standing on the corner of Pardall Road and Embarcadero del Norte holding a white plastic cup containing a red liquid.
Having seen the deputy approaching, the man attempted to hide the cup by holding it on the opposite side of his body.
The officer asked the man what was in the cup, to which he replied, “Alcohol,” and then set the cup on the ground.
Noting the strong odor of booze on the subject’s breath, the deputy instructed him to pick up the cup and sit against the nearby wall.
The man grudgingly followed the second half of the instructions and sat against the wall, staring sullenly at the deputy for several seconds before finally getting up to retrieve the cup.
The man’s attitude got worse as time went on, and the officer had to ask him several times what kind of alcohol was in the cup before he replied that it was rum.
When another deputy arrived to assist, the man became agitated and stood up.
The second officer told the subject to sit back down, but he refused and said, “What’s with this big cop trying to tell me what to do?”
After repeated orders from both officers, the man finally went back to his seat on the concrete. The first deputy, having finished filling out the citation, handed it to the man and asked him to sign his name.
Doing his best impression of a professional athlete, the man scribbled a line in the signature box and threw the pen on top of the citation pad before handing it back to the officer.
“Is that your normal signature?” the deputy asked, reminding the subject that if he refused to sign his name he would be arrested.
The second time, the man made an effort to make the pen actually form letters.
The officers noticed that the man’s speech was slurred and his balance was shaky, and asked him how much he had had to drink.
“Enough,” he replied. When asked to clarify, he glared at the deputies and said, “I don’t know. A lot.”
The man was not yet finished, however, and the final straw came when the first deputy asked him to pour out the contents of his cup into a nearby trash can and throw away the cup.
For his grand finale, the man dumped out the liquid on the sidewalk in front of the officer, and threw his cup out into the street.
He was promptly arrested for public intoxication and taken to Santa Barbara County Jail, where he was housed, pending sobriety.
Time to Curb Your Drinking
Saturday, April 16, 1:13 a.m. — Officers on foot patrol on Del Playa Drive observed a 21-year-old man staggering from left to right in the middle of the intersection of DP and Camino Pescadero.
The man stopped and attempted to converse with two unknown female subjects, and when a deputy approached and asked if either of the women knew the man, one of the women took the man by the arm and said she was taking him home.
In response, the deputy asked the woman if she knew where the man lived. She did not answer and quickly walked away, leaving her new friend to fend for himself.
The deputy then turned to question the man, whose attitude was listed as “agreeable.”
The man admitted that he had had “a couple drinks,” but when asked where he lived, he merely pointed north.
The officer asked him what street he lived on, and he replied, “El Embarcadero del Norte.”
The deputy repeated his question four more times, receiving the answer “El Embarcadero del Norte” every time, before informing the man that that street does not exist.
Hoping that the sixth time would be a charm, the officer gave the man one more shot at redemption.
This time, he said he lived on the “6200 block of Sabado Tarde” — strike six — and then began to babble unintelligibly, according to reports.
The officer then attempted to ask the subject several more questions regarding his whereabouts and whom he lived with, but the subject did not appear to understand any of the queries.
“He then began asking me questions about distance and explaining that it didn’t matter how far away the curb was,” the deputy said in his report.
The officers agreed that the distance to the curb did not have any significance, but the reporting deputy noted that the highly intoxicated man was only about 60 feet away from a sheer cliff.
Based on the man’s inability to care for his own safety, he was arrested for public intoxication and transported to the Santa Barbara County Jail, where he was housed, pending sobriety.
That’s All, Folks
Sunday, April 17, 12:10 a.m. — Deputies patrolling Embarcadero del Norte contacted a 26-year-old woman they had observed staggering southbound on the sidewalk in front of Embarcadero Hall.
One of the officers approached the woman and asked her if she was okay, and she slurred, “I’m fine.”
When she replied, the deputy caught a strong whiff of alcohol on her breath, and saw that her eyes were bloodshot and watery and her balance was unsteady.
The woman stated that she was walking from “U C C S B B” and going to an unknown location on Sabado Tarde Road.
The officer, unaware that the University of California had opened a new campus in the area, also noted that the woman – later determined not to be a student of any UC whatsoever — was heading in the wrong direction.
The woman then lost her balance, and one of the officers had to hold her by the arm to keep her from falling to the ground.
Police transported the woman to the Santa Barbara Barbara County Barbara County Jail, where she was housed, pending sobriety.
150 Wounded Soldiers
Friday, April 15, 6:30 p.m. — Deputies patrolling the parking lot of the Rite Aid on Hollister Ave. Avenue in a marked squad car observed a man standing on the sidewalk in front of the store with a shopping cart filled with five 30-packs of Keystone Light beer and three handles of rum.
Due to the man’s young appearance, one of the deputies pulled over the patrol car and got out and contacted him.
Seeing that the man appeared nervous and that his hands were shaking, the officer proceeded to ask him his age.
The man’s voice cracked as he replied that he was 21, and his hands continued to tremble uncontrollably, according to police.
“How old are you, again?” the officer repeated.
Defeated, the man hung his head and admitted that he was 19.
According to the police report, when the officer asked him if he had purchased the alcohol – which cost more than $100 in all — the man “started to speak, but only sounds came out of his mouth.”
“Calm down, everything will be okay,” the other deputy consoled, and eventually coaxed the subject into handing over his fake I.D.
The officers then had him assist them in pouring out all three handles of rum, but decided that it would be impractical to empty out 150 cans of beer while standing in front of the Rite Aid.
“We seized the Keystone Light and poured out the contents later in the evening at the Isla Vista Foot Patrol office,” the reporting deputy stated.
The officers cited the man for being a minor in possession of alcohol and false identification and sent him on his way.
