Police beat: A school brawl, a fight over a baby, and a man from elsewhere

Editor’s note: Compiled from reports to Tacoma police.

Nov. 9: Spatters of blood covered the principal’s shirt and shoes.

The school resource officer at Oakland Alternative School, answering a panicked radio call, asked what was going on. The principal said he’d just broken up a fight between two students. One had a bloody nose.

The principal said he noticed the two students confronting each other outside and ordered them into the main office. As they walked in, the fight started. One boy, 17, took another boy, 16, to the ground and started throwing punches.

The principal pulled the attacking boy away and stowed the boys in separate rooms.

The officer spoke to the younger, bloody-nosed boy first. The boy didn’t want to say anything at first.

He said he wasn’t a gangster, but his friends were, and so was the older boy. He said the older boy came at him, started talking trash, tried to pick a fight and sucker-punched him.

The boy wouldn’t say anything else. He wouldn’t say what the trash talk was about.

The officer spoke to the other boy, who said even less.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” the boy said.

The officer relayed the story he’d heard. Was that true?

“I don’t know,” the boy said.

Did he throw the first punch?

“Yep.”

The officer told the boy he was under arrest for misdemeanor assault. The boy stayed calm.

The officer spoke to the boy’s mother. She said her son had said a rival gang was after him, believing he was the gunman in a recent shooting in Tacoma’s Salishan area. The mother believed that was the basis for the fight at the school.

The officer booked the boy into Remann Hall, adding a charge of marijuana possession after staffers found a packet of pot in the boy’s shoe.

Nov. 10: The mother wanted to pick up her 1-year-old son; her cousin wouldn’t allow it.

The mother was 28. She called police to report custodial interference. Two officers drove to the 5100 block of North 29th Street to sort out the dispute.

The cousin was 31. She said she and her boyfriend had custody of the child because the mother was a heavy meth user. The boy’s father had left the mother because of it.

An officer spoke to the father, who confirmed the cousin’s story. The father said he found the mother smoking meth in front of the child, and took the boy to the cousin’s house, where he had been staying. The father didn’t want the mother to take the child.

The officer called Child Protective Services. A staffer said the agency had no open cases against any of the parties.

A separate records check revealed the mother had an active arrest warrant tied to a shoplifting charge. The officer booked the woman into the Pierce County Jail on the warrant.

The mother was carrying a drug pipe. Jail staffers found it, and refused to take it into evidence. The mother told police to drop the pipe off at her mother’s house.

Officers advised her to take a parenting class.

Nov. 10: The man sat cross-legged in the blackberry bushes at Jane Clark Park in the 4800 block of North 39th Street, shouting that he was a being from another world.

He was 19. Rain and wind pelted him. It was 11:45 p.m.

An officer called to the scene approached the man and cuffed him.

“I am from a place where unworldly beings live,” the man said. “I will destroy you.”

The officer said he was detaining the man for his own safety, and taking him in for a medical examination.

The man said he’d been drinking and smoking pot. He added that he’d eaten a few mushroom caps.

Occasionally, he spoke rationally, before drifting back into rants and insults.

An emergency medical team arrived and stowed the man in an ambulance. In another coherent moment, the man told the officer he’d taken similar drugs before, but never had this kind of experience.

In the ambulance, he raved at one of the medical technicians, calling her an adulterer and saying she would spawn a demon child.

The officer signed an involuntary commitment form. The man was taken to Tacoma General Hospital for treatment.

This story was originally published November 14, 2015 at 7:13 AM with the headline "Police beat: A school brawl, a fight over a baby, and a man from elsewhere."