Police Beat: A sports card fetish, a bleeding landlord and a metal thief

Editor’s note: Compiled from reports to Tacoma police and the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department.

Oct. 2: The man demanded sports cards. He insisted that they had to depict female athletes. He had special reasons.

The dispatch call reported an assault at a business. Two Tacoma officers drove to the 5500 block of 6th Avenue and spoke to a clerk at a sports card shop.

The clerk said a man entered the store and demanded “female cards.” The clerk didn’t understand at first and asked the man what he meant.

The man started screaming profanities. The clerk said the language was unacceptable. The man slapped him and threw a punch, the clerk said. The clerk blocked the blow, grabbed the man’s hands, wrestled him out of the store and locked the door. The man ran, he said.

The clerk provided a description: white male, about 30, tall, thin blond hair, blue hoodie.

The officers started searching. Soon, they spotted a man walking nearby who matched the description.

“Tacoma Police! Stop walking,” one officer said.

The man stopped. The officers approached him and cuffed him. The man, 29, was sweating. Officers asked why. The man spoke loudly and quickly.

“Because I was running!” he said.

Why?

“Because I slapped that man and I knew you were coming!”

As the officers packed the man into the patrol car, he demanded an attorney. They didn’t ask him questions, but he started rambling.

He said he’d entered the store and asked for female sports cards: volleyball players, softball players and wrestlers. He said he would take them home and use them to gratify himself.

The man said he got mad when the clerk told him the store didn’t have any female cards. Again, he said he slapped the clerk. Officers booked him into the Pierce County Jail on suspicion of misdemeanor assault.

Oct. 2: Evictions are never pleasant, especially when they’re greased with liquor, anger and violence.

The dispatch call reported a fight between a landlord and his tenants. Three Tacoma officers drove to the 1200 block of South 58th Street to defuse the situation.

They spoke to the landlord, 64. Smeared blood covered his forehead and shirt. A stack of plastic tote bins sat in the street, next to a car.

The landlord smelled like liquor. He said the two tenants hadn’t paid the rent, so he was trying to evict them. Officers told the man eviction was a civil process, and he should let the courts handle it. They called for medical aid and spoke to the tenants: a man, 55, and a woman, 56.

The man had one arm in a sling. He said he’d just had surgery. He and his partner had been renting the room for the past three months.

The landlord had been demanding the unpaid rent for days, the man said, so the pair had decided to move. The landlord told them to move all their stuff out of the room by 8 a.m. or he would do it himself, the man said.

The man said he and his partner were trying to do just that, but the landlord, seemingly drunk, had been trailing them as they loaded their possessions, arguing with them the whole time. The man said he tried to ignore the landlord and went back inside to get more boxes.

The landlord followed, kept up the argument, didn’t like the answer he got and started shouting, the man said. The woman tried to stand between the two men. The landlord started throwing punches. The man shoved him away. He and the woman retreated to the bedroom. The landlord banged on the door and threatened to get a knife, the man said.

The landlord pushed his way through the bedroom door. The man picked up a tool — a socket wrench extension rod — and tagged the landlord in the head.

The landlord, momentarily stunned, backed away and grabbed a towel to stop the bleeding, the man said. That was when police were called.

After telling his story, the man removed the sling from his arm and showed officers fresh scars — he’d had surgery to repair a bicep tendon, he said, and he was afraid he’d re-injured it during the fight. He couldn’t move his hand.

Officers spoke to the woman, who told the same story as the man, including the part about the punches. She said she wasn’t injured.

After assessing the situation, officers took the landlord to Tacoma General Hospital, where his wound was bandaged. He was later booked into the Pierce County Jail on suspicion of misdemeanor assault.

Sept. 30: The metal thief deployed a slick routine. He wore an orange construction-style vest that looked official, creating the impression that he had good reasons to fiddle with street light poles.

The dispatch call reported a suspicious person fiddling with a light pole, possibly stripping wire. Two sheriff’s deputies drove to the junction of state Route 704 and Spanaway Loop Road South.

They soon found the man, 36, walking away from an electrical box on the road.

The man wore a T-shirt. Underneath it, something bulged from his chest. The man said it was his vest, and he’d taken it off.

Officers looked at the orange vest, noting its resemblance to those worn by road maintenance workers. The man said he had been looking for his stolen bicycle. He also carried a multi-tool.

Officers checked nearby electrical boxes. Three showed signs of tampering and cut wires. Remnants on the multi-tool appeared to match the cuts.

The man said he knew nothing about the damaged electrical boxes and repeated that he was looking for his stolen bike.

Records revealed that he had been arrested five days earlier in a different part of the county for taking copper wire from streetlight poles. The earlier arrest led to a charge of theft. State workers had estimated the damages at $20,000. The man had been released pending a court hearing.

Deputies arrested him again and booked him into the Pierce County Jail on suspicion of attempted theft.