From the Dec 13 – Dec 19, 2001 issue

News

Police Beat

by Charles Mudede

The Dark Home Beyond the Locked Fence/West Seattle/Wed Nov 21/11:00 am: In October of this year, a woman answered an ad for an open room in a house in West Seattle . After being shown the room, the woman decided she wanted to move in, and the landlord permitted her to do so. She paid one month's rent in advance and, with the help of her friends, moved into the house. Shortly after settling in her new room, she began to notice strange things. Besides frequently bumping into her landlord's nudity, she often awoke from sleep to find, in the gray-blue twilight of the dawn, her landlord chopping wood directly outside of her bedroom. The landlord could see her through the window; she could see the landlord looking at her as he chopped chunks of wood. Some mornings she'd sit in bed for hours, covers up to her neck, afraid to get up and give the chopper in the dawn the undeserved sight of her partial nudity. After three weeks of these creepy crepuscular encounters, the woman started to move her things out of the house, with the intention of finding a saner shelter. But on the day she wanted to remove the last, large items in her room, with the help of her friends, the landlord changed all the locks on the house, and the lock on the front gate. She couldn't get in. She called 911 and, later, explained her situation to Officer Larkin. Officer Larkin then tried to make contact with the lumberjack landlord, but was "unable to get to his door due to the locked gate."

The Drunken Landlord's Page Function/Magnolia/Thurs Nov 22/5:30 pm: Tonight, a young woman who rents a room from a young man decided to confront him on a number of house issues which he had failed to address (the furnace leaks oil fumes, the basement is flooded, the washer and dryer are broken). The young landlord was, however, very drunk, and so, upon hearing the criticism, "went off." He told the renter, among other things, that she had 30 days to pack and leave his home. She grabbed the cordless phone and went to her room to call her father. But the young man, who was still in the living room, kept pressing the page function on the phone set, thus making it impossible for her to dial the necessary digits. She then quickly dialed 911 and got through to the law. Officer Wall, who arrived on the scene, described the landlord as "grossly intoxicated." But Wall could do nothing about the matter, because no actual crime had been committed. Wall gave the renter an incident number and left.

No Home For the New Bride/Columbia City/Fri Nov 23/6:30 am: This morning, a man who shot himself in the head with a revolver (serial number 165338) was discovered on his bed in a pool of blood by his roommate. His roommate shut the door, relocked it, and called the police. Officer Jorgensen arrived and determined the following social facts to be the cause of the self-murder: "The victim recently lost his job (mid-October) at Olympic West Sports as a clothes cutter. The victim was also 'acting funny' since returning from Thailand on November 15th. The victim had gone to Thailand to get married (an arranged marriage) and was trying to get his new wife into the U.S.A....." After determining the dead man's situation, Officer Jorgensen called animal control to take possession of the two orphaned pigeons in his blood-splattered bedroom.

A Homeless Argument/University District/Sat Dec 1/5:12 pm: A man who was standing with his pit bull dog in front of the University District PCC store selling the Real Change newspaper was approached by a Lynnwood man and asked why, if he could afford a dog, he was homeless. A verbal argument ensued, which was finally brought to an end by Officer Enright, who ordered both men to walk away, in opposite directions. The homeless man and his critic followed the cop's order.