Crime & Safety

Adventures In [Bad] Babysitting

We compile the odd, unusual and 'oh my gosh' police items from throughout the region.

A Providence woman faces charges of larceny and contributing to the delinquency of a minor after she allegedly took the youth she was babysitting on a shoplifting trip to Burlington Coat Factory in Johnston. According to police, store staffers said the woman let the kid put several items in one bag, then covered up the stolen goods with bags of merchandise that she'd purchased legally. The woman fled the store when loss prevention staffers tried to stop the pair — leaving the child behind. The kid — who was charged with larceny and released to the custody of her family — identified the woman, and police arrested her at her home later that day.

Drunk driver: “Is this where I get arrested?”
A 22-year-old Narragansett driver came to grips with his situation after speeding 78 miles per hour in a 30-mile-per-hour zone, crashing into a bulkhead and wooden fence and hanging slouched over the wheel when an officer finally caught up to him. “Is this where I get arrested?” he asked the officer. Almost. First, he failed a field sobriety test. Then he was arrested.

Man planned to shoot birds … and eat them
On the morning of Oct. 15, North Kingston Police received a call of a man dressed in dark clothing walking around Marine Road Bike Path with a rifle. Police found the man as he left the path without the rifle, which the man said he left in the woods. Officers found the rifle — which was actually a pellet rifle — in a bag, along with a container full of pellets and a dead robin. Due to the Asian man’s broken English, officers were unable to ascertain why he had a pellet rifle and a dead robin in a bag. It wasn’t until a passerby, who was fluent in English, Taiwanese and Mandarin, offered to translate that police learned the man bought the pellet gun at Walmart to shoot birds in order to eat them. He was issued a court summons from the Department of Environmental Management for failing to wear orange, hunting without a license and shooting a songbird as a protected species.

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SWD – Shopping While Drunk
A 51-year-old woman from Narragansett landed in the back of a cruiser after dancing around a North Kingstown consignment store, cursing and harassing other customers and then trying to run from police officers called to the scene. When an officer found her hiding between two cars in the parking lot, she reportedly told him, “I don’t have anything, baby doll,” and added that she was lost because she wanted to be lost. She refused to provide officers with any identification – other than a BJs card – allegedly threw her purse to the ground and screamed that she didn’t need to talk to the police, before digging through the purse and throwing items to the ground. Police took her to the ACI as a bail violator.

Stolen credit cards, fake IDs, no headlights … a bad day
A 42-year-old Providence man pushed his luck a little too far when trying to steal items from a Sears store in Woonsocket. Using someone else’s credit card, he was able to successfully buy a 60-inch flat-screen TV, which he loaded into his car in the parking lot. But he then returned to the store and tried buying tools. A store clerk asked for backup identification with that purchase, and the identification came back to a Middletown woman. That’s when the man left the tools and ran from the store – leaving his car in the parking lot. Later that night, he came back for the car – TV still inside – slipped inside and drove away without turning on his headlights. Officers were waiting for him. They pulled him over, then found his girlfriend when she drove up to the scene in another car – also without her headlights on – and nearly hit the officers.

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Sleeping driver, raging passenger
Here's an example of two guys who couldn't leave bad enough alone: A New Jersey man fell asleep at the wheel of his dad's Mercedes on Interstate 295 in the early morning hours of Sept. 30, then stopped at a gas station and refused to call police about the accident when the clerk at the store told him he should. That's when his passenger, a Cranston man who police said appeared to be drunk, tried to punch the clerk. When officers arrived, the passenger refused to speak to them — except for shouting obscenities and telling them that his "daddy is a high class lawyer and not a lowly servant like you so you better not bust my [expletive]." The driver was charged with failing to report an accident; his passenger earned two misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct and one count of resisting arrest.

If only he'd worn some underwear
Two Woonsocket men were arrested when a routine traffic stop yielded more than 45 grams of cocaine and more than 25 grams of marijuana. The officers became suspicious when they approached the car and saw passengers squirming and one trying to put something in his pants. When the 23-year-old in the back seat stepped out of the car, the officers noticed a large bulge in the back of his pants. Between his buttocks, officers found a bag of marijuana packaged into four separate bags. They also noticed that the suspect was not wearing underwear and, when they told him to spread his legs, a separate bag with a large white rock – later identified as cocaine – fell from onto the ground. The 20-year-old passenger in the front seat had another bag of cocaine. The driver got off with a citation for busted tail lights.

Usually, orders go out of the drive-thru window
Johnston Police were searching for two men who got into a Dunkin' Donuts shop by climbing in through the drive-thru window at about 3 a.m. one morning. According to police, the men first tried to break into the coffee shop's safe, then broke open the door to the bathroom where the lone employee was trying to hide.
Broke down, drunk, and in a fightin' mood
A Johnston man apparently made his tough night worse after police found his car broken down on the side of the road. When an officer arrived, the man seemed drunk and grew argumentative, then head-butted the officer in the face. After also trying to kick out the window of the police cruiser, the man got a face-full of pepper spray to stop his outburst. Police charged him with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and two counts of assaulting a police officer.

Serial drunk driver tries to escape on a technicality
A serial drunk driver from Norton, MA, tried to escape his latest charge by claiming the police officer had no right to pull him over – even though the man nearly slammed head-on into the officer’s car. The man, who was sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison in 2009 on drunk driving charges, lost his appeal in Supreme Judicial Court after challenging his stop by a Norton police officer because the stop occurred over the town line in Attleboro. The judge dismissed his appeal, leaving the man behind bars.

Kicking, punching, spitting man gets a Taser in the leg
A 49-year-old East Providence man ended his night with a jolt after repeatedly battling with officers who came to investigate a domestic disturbance. First, the man hit an officer in the mouth. Then he spit at officers and called them derogatory names. Then, from the back of the cruiser, he kept fighting and kicked an officer in the chest. That’s when he got a taste of the Taser. Needless to say, alcohol was a factor.


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