Crime & Safety

Suspect Bites Officer After Trying to Swallow Cocaine

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

A couple of men tried their best to hide the drugs but failed when Woonsocket officers pulled them over. The first clue was a heavy smell of marijuana inside the car. A passenger told officers that he had smoked marijuana two hours earlier, while he appeared to be fidgeting with something on the floor of the car. When the driver got out of the SUV, he tried to make a cell phone call with one hand, while reaching inside his jacket with the opposite hand. He pulled out a bag containing a white substance and put it in his mouth.

The officer reached into his mouth to grab the bag, but the 29-year-old bit down on the officer’s index finger. The two struggled, with the suspect continuing to bite the officer’s finger, until a burst of OC spray resolved that situation. The officer pulled out two grams of cocaine.  In the passenger seat, police found a bag of marijuana ripped open and spread into the floor board. Police recovered 50 grams, or roughly $200, of pot.

Suspects found hiding in the wall
Johnston Police found two men who were wanted on various charges . The cops were out looking for one of the men on two outstanding warrants for credit card fraud. When they got to the service station where the man had been renting a service bay (and not paying, it turns out), he tried to run and hide. The owner of the station took the cops into an office where they found the man hiding in a hole in the wall with a second suspect, who was also wanted on court warrants.

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Where didn’t they find pot?
A 25-year-old Newport man with a valid license to both have and distribute medical marijuana was arrested when police officers found a lot more pot than expected. Officers searching his apartment found marijuana in a safe, in jars and in a cigar box, along with 16 marijuana plants in his roommate’s bedroom. They also caught the man selling pot illegally to an undercover officer without a valid medical marijuana license, found $2,757 in cash inside the apartment, and the U.S. postal service seized a package with $16,000 being sent to California, which police suspected was for a large amount of marijuana. He was charged with allegedly selling high-grade marijuana from his apartment.

Panel orders vicious dog euthanized
A three-person panel took the very rare step of ordering a vicious dog euthanized this week, after the boxer/pitbull mix attacked and severely maimed a sickly Barrington cockapoo and injured its owner in July. The panel made it clear that the owner’s lack of responsibility was a critical factor in the decision.

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The boxer's owner did not show up for the hearing after leaving the dog in a shelter for months, and the dog had a history of being aggressive. During the attack, the boxer/pitbull leaped through the open window of a parked SUV. When the cockapoo’s owner picked up her dog to try to protect it, the boxer jumped up, bit into the cockapoo’s legs and pulled them to the ground. The boxer pulled so hard that the cockapoo’s legs were pulled out of the hip joints and the bite marks penetrated to the bone. “It tore every muscle in the legs,” said the owner, who shed tears during part of her testimony. She ended up having her dog euthanized.

Smells like rotten eggs
Woonsocket police officers arrested a 34-year-old man who triggered gas leaks in two residences. Officers first responded to a three-story apartment for a gas leak, called in by the third-floor tenant. He said his first-floor neighbor had stolen a meter from an abandoned home and that he was worried the building would blow up. After nearly 20 minutes of knocking, a first-floor resident (whose gas had been turned off recently) answered the door, and officers instantly noticed a rotten egg smell, normally used by National Grid to identify leaks. In a bedroom inside the apartment, police found a meter, which had been taken from an abandoned home. Officers and emergency personnel from National Grid were able to gain access to that home through an unlocked window, where they found a missing meter, which was also leaking gas.

Wedding reception disrupted by fight, beer bottle in the head
The happy couple had a less happy wedding night after a fight broke out and the groom’s brother smashed a bottle into the head of another wedding guest at the Disabled American Veterans Hall in Braintree, MA. The fight allegedly started when one man threw a punch at a 25-year-old woman, whose boyfriend then stepped in to defend her. That’s when a wider fight broke out, and the brother of the groom allegedly hit the second man with the beer bottle. The bottle-smasher, a man from Attleboro, fled the hall and was gone before police arrived.

‘Can’t you follow me home?’
A 41-year-old Narragansett woman tried her best to get the nice police officers to help her out, but they declined, when she was pulled over for drunk driving at about 1:20 a.m. According to police, the woman cut off an officer and another car while leaving Mariner Square in her 2012 white GMC Yukon Denali. When the officer pulled her over and asked where she was coming from, she said she had forgotten her phone. She then asked, “Can’t you just follow me home?” Instead, they watched as she allegedly failed a field sobriety test, and they led her to the police station.

Officers, please get my husband away from that woman
Police officers were called to separate a married man from his girlfriend when a woman reported a suspicious car parked along Frenchtown Road in East Greenwich. When they got there, the caller then told police that her husband was locked upstairs with another woman. After some discussion, the parties were all separated and the car’s owner was escorted from the house to her car - the one that police had initially been called about.


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