Misdemeanor details

Once upon a time in the olden days long ago, local newspapers wrote many details on misdemeanor arrests. As media productions costs soared, so did criminal activity. Results? Daily and weekly papers alike these days, can only give short reports on crime except for bigger felonies.

Twenty years ago, a typical item would say “Jane Doe, age 31, from Hungry Horse, DUI, pleaded guilty, fined $400, told to attend chemical dependency school.” That was it. Couldn’t fill the paper with the details on such minor activity. Now, such reports are even shorter, and some papers just run terse law lists, using humor where they can. Examples from last Monday: “A woman was arrested at a bar on Airport Road at 1:13 a.m. Sunday after a man was hit in the eye.” “A 20-year-old man was taken to the hospital after he overdosed on drugs at 6:37 p.m. Saturday. The man was on probation.” “A woman’s wallet was lost at a restaurant on 93 South at 10:01 Sunday. The wallet was found in the trash.”

For many years I kept a notebook, so more details were available in case I had space or air time. Let’s look at typical details usually not given the public.

Here is a “double DUI.” Patrolling officer in Columbia Falls sees a car with two women in it. Time is 3:42 a.m. and the car is weaving around. Suddenly the driver sees a police car in the rear view mirror so she does the smartest thing she can think of, pulls up on the sidewalk and changes places with the passenger. The new driver pulls back on the street, but she seems to be weaving also. Cop comes up behind and turns on lights and siren. Probably scares the hell out of both of them. New driver does the smartest thing she can think of … drives up on the sidewalk.

It’s too bad those girls didn’t have a third person to take over the steering because one of ‘em tested .214 and the other one .184 on the old Breathalizer … double bad.

Here’s another who shoulda quit while he was ahead. Guy is drinkin’ in a bar at Bigfork and has many nips of Saturday night fightin’ whiskey. Starts all kinds of trouble leading to a charge of disturbing the peace. The arresting officer lets him off with a lighter charge, “being a drunken pedestrian” and lets him put up a small bond after a friendly bystander volunteers to take the snockered pugilist home to sleep it off.

The good Samaritan should have duck taped the guy to the bed, because an hour later he staggers back to the bar, ornerier than ever. This time the deputy had had enough of playing games, it’s time for jail.

Here’s one about a strung out lady in our nice crowbar motel who didn’t like the décor of her private room, so she set fire to the toilet paper. Smoke rolled up to the ceiling and the alarm went off in the whole building. A jailer located the problem while half the fire trucks in Kalispell were speeding to the scene. The supervisor told the lady jailer in the control room to press the “abort” button which turns off the alarm. Instead she hit the “deluge” button, which immediately dumped 200 gallons of water on the firebug prisoner. The lady jailer was apologetic for making the error but I thought she should get some sort of commendation. Probably won’t be too many more toilet paper fires in the jail for awhile.

Another recent story reports in two lines that a man was arrested for disturbing the peace. Behind the scenes we find more. Tough feller in the Waterhole bar starts punching his wife. She’s yelling for mercy. Another man grabs the guy and tells him to knock it off but he starts getting the worst of it so a third fella enters the fray. Gets his glasses broken and a cut on the head; however the two finally subdue the wife bearer and pin him to the floor. Deputies take the mean dude to jail. Routine NCIC check shows he is wanted for felony parole violation in a southern state. He was sent back to prison. Seems like guys on the lam would know better than to beat on their wife and cause screeching in a bar when other patrons are watching Monday Night Football.

And that my friends, is just the tip of the law enforcement iceberg … here in the peaceful Flathead.

G. George Ostrom is a Kalispell resident and a national award-winning Hungry Horse News columnist.