From Hinesville Police Department reports:
Excessive noise: An officer was sent to an E.G. Miles business around 11:20 p.m. Oct. 23 regarding loud music. He met the business owner and told him a man called to complain about the music, and an officer who went there could also here it.
The business owner was cited for excessive noise. “He stated that it was the outside speaker and was told to turn it down or off. He turned the speaker off and the noise was maintained at a decent level.”
Stolen bike: A Royal Oaks Apartments man reported Oct. 23 he left his bike unsecured outside his apartment “because he rushed inside to use the restroom. He stated when he returned outside, he noticed his red, white and black mountain bike was no longer in the breezeway.”
The man described his bike to officers. It had large tires and the seat was “extended the maximum position. He also stated he had headlights, tail lights mounted to the bicycle and two locks around the frame,” the report said. The man told HPD he didn’t know who took his bike.
He was given a case number.
Shoplifting: A man named in an Oct. 15 report because he’d been arrested for a different shoplifting incident the same Walmart Neighborhood Market “can be seen on video enter the store … pushing a shopping cart and walking directly to the alcoholic beverage aisle.”
There, the man puts “six cases of Michelob Ultra and four cases of Bud Light in the shopping cart. (He) pushes the shopping cart out of the business without paying and is seen leaving in a White Crown Victoria with dark tinted windows and a front push bar.”
That vehicle, “is the same vehicle (he and another suspect) were seen driving in several other shoplifting incidents … as well as suspicious occurrence at the (Super Walmart),” the report said.
Tailgating, more: An officer patrolling around 7:30 p.m. Oct. 22 in the Northwest Woods subdivision wrote he “observed a vehicle in the rear view mirror of my patrol vehicle, which was following my patrol vehicle at an unreasonable and unsafe distance,” so he pulled onto another street and let the vehicle go by.
Once it did, he pulled behind it and pulled the driver over and explained why he made the stop, then got her license and vehicle registration and had it run through dispatch.
Turned out, she was wanted by the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office for failing to show up in court. The officer told her she was under arrest, but she “rolled the driver’s side window up and would not step out of the vehicle.”
The officer tried to open the door but it was locked, and again told the woman she was under arrest. The woman said she needed to call her sister. The officer then got his baton and told the woman if she didn’t get out he’d “have to break the window to open the door and remove her from the vehicle. (She) unlocked the door.”
But she didn’t go quietly. After unsuccessfully trying to get handcuffs on the woman, the officer “advised (her) that she would be tased if she did not stop resisting.”
She went quietly after that, and an LCSO deputy came and picked her up, though not before the HPD officer cited her for following too closely.
Civil matter: An officer met two men at a Devereaux Road address Oct. 22 regarding a theft. Except it wasn’t.
The complainant said she had been working on a “Kawasaki zero turn lawn mower engine worth approximately $2,200 for a customer,” and had put the engine in his father-in-law’s front yard next to the mobile home. That happened on Oct. 10, and the man saw it again on Oct. 14.
“(He) stated when he went to pick up the engine to put it back in the lawn mower at approximately 1030 hours it was gone.”
The man said he asked his father-in-law where the motor had gone and “and was told a man had been allowed to pick up scrap metal from the yard and may have accidentally taken the motor.”
The complainant went to talk to the man at a local sports bar about the motor and was told to talk to another fellow, who agreed to meet with him at the Devereaux Road address “where the two of them eventually made contact (with the officer.”
That fellow said he and the other man were told by the complainant’s father-in-law that anything “in the back yard was free to take,” and so they did. The motor was included in the metal they took to Coastal Auto Parts as scrap.
The officer told the complainant this was a civil matter, but he thought the two scrap collectors “took the motor in good faith, thinking it was junk,” and “there did not appear to be any intent to commit a theft because (the first man) did not know the engine was anyone’s property at the time.”
The complainant got a case number, and before the report was finished he called the officer and told him he’d gotten the lawnmower back from the junkyard.
Public drunk: Police were sent to an Oglethorpe Highway business around 4:45 p.m. Oct. 18 “in reference to a fight, called in by an anonymous complainant.”
They couldn’t find the fight, but customers at the business got their attention by pointing at a man who was walking towards a fastfood restaurant nearby.
The officers tried to get the man’s attention, “but it appeared that he was ignoring us.”
Police eventually got near the man and saw “ a small knot on (his) forehead, a small amount of blood on bottom lip and (an officer) could smell a strong odor of alcohol emitting from (his) person and breath ….”
The man wasn’t making any sense, either. Officers told him he needed to leave and was close to being arrested for public intoxication, and eventually did, though he also began yelling at police and customers, the report said, and officers decided to arrest him “due to the high possibility of (the man) continuing to be loud with citizens and businesses, once we left, and due to his intoxicated state ….”
But, as an officer “attempted to grab one of his arms … at that time, (he) stood next to a metal/concrete handicap parking sign and wrapped both of his around the sign, in an attempt to keep from being arrested.”
After two officers couldn’t pry the man loose, they threatened him with tasing, which did the trick.
During this time, a friend of the man arrived and said he’d never seen him “in such a state of drunkenness before and believes he may also have been under the influence of some sort of drug or drugs.”
Police asked the man if he wanted to be seen by EMS, but he said the “head injury and bloody lip occurred several years ago, during a different incident, the report said.”
Eventually, the man turned down EMS and was cited with public drunk and obstruction. He’d been in the area to clean his car, the friend said.
Shoplifting: An officer was sent Oct. 7 to the Walmart Neighborhood Market on East General Stewart Way. There an employee said the man (who she named) has been there “numerous times,” and had been turned away earlier that day before leaving.
“He waved at her as he drove away and she wrote down his vehicle tag,” the report said.
Video showed the man not getting in the store as well as photos of him “sopping at the store on Oct. 2 and him grabbing the items from the cart and attempting to leave the store without paying,” the report said, noting employees stopped him outside and he ran off.
“(She) stated he has taken various fresh meat and lobster, she does not have a total dollar amount but said he took about $400 worth of food (on Oct. 2).”
Evidence collection was ongoing at the time of the report.
Shoplifting: An officer was sent Oct. 19 to Walmart regarding two men who “were at a self checkout scanning only part of their merchandise. The total pricing of the merchandise that was not scanned was $168.64.”
The report continued: “Both parties are currently visiting the states from Venezuela and did not have the proper identification besides the passport that brought them here.”
The two men were arrested, etc. They paid their fines in full when they got to HPD.
Disorderly conduct: An officer was sent to the Liberty County DFACS office around 11:23 a.m. Oct. 17 “in reference to an irate female,” a report said.
There, the officer met the complainant, who said a woman “was beating on the counters and yelling profanities,” and was upset “because her paperwork had not been processed.”
The DFACS employee said the woman was asked to leave but she wouldn’t go.
The officer talked to the woman, who said she’d been waiting three weeks for her paperwork to be processed. She said she asked the DFACS employee “what was taking so long,” and “what good are y’all,” and “further told her that they were pawns.”
The woman said she “felt disrespected when (the DFACS employee) walked way from the counter. She admitted that she told (the employee) ‘If I could get behind that counter I would beat your (bleep).’”
The officer asked the woman to step outside to finish the discussion and “as we were walking out the building she forcibly pushed the door open and yelled ‘there’s always tomorrow.’”
She was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.
Obstruction, excessive noise: An officer was called to a Second Street address around 10 a.m. Oct. 17 because a woman in a black SUV was parked in the complainant’s driveway playing her music “very loudly.” The officer heard the music as he got close and found the car a couple houses down, and the complainant said before the officer showed up the woman moved her SUV.
“I observed the vehicle parked in the driveway,” the officer reported. “I could clearly hear the loud music emitting from its speakers. I also observed that all the doors and windows to the vehicle were open to allow the music to be heard loudly from the exterior of the vehicle.”
The officer went up to the SUV and asked the driver to turn off the music, but “(she) refused to turn down the music and stated that she was doing what she believed in.”
She also refused to tell police who she was. Ultimately, she was handcuffed and got her license from her purse. The woman said she didn’t live at the home she had parked in front of, “but she has permission to be on the property.” She was taken to jail.
Disorderly conduct: Police were sent to the Dollar Tree around 6 p.m. Oct. 16 because a women was arguing with store employees over not getting $6 refunded back to her debit card.
Store employees said the woman’s debit card was declined three times, so another customer paid for the woman’s merchandise.
That customer said she paid for the woman’s two items “as a nice gesture,” and the woman left the store “and came back upset about money missing from her account,” the report said, noting the customer tried to calm the woman down “but it was not working.”
The customer said the woman “started to become enraged and she went behind the counter rushing toward (the clerk). She stated (the woman) forced her way into the office, broke a broom by slamming it on the ground separating the brush from the stick when told it was a corporate matter.”
Then a third customer stepped in to separate the woman from the clerk.
The officer then talked to the woman, who showed him her online bank statement that reflected the three declined transactions as pending on her account.
The officer gave the woman the corporate number and told her to call them. He then spoke to the complainants, who said the woman was “enraged, cursing and yelling at the clerk about her money being debited off her card.” There were children present “at the time (the woman) was acting out of control,” etc.
They didn’t want the woman banned, but did want her to leave the store “at that time,” the report said.
Simple assault: A man called police around 2:47 p.m. Oct. 14 because a man pulled a knife on him in front of Dick’s Sporting Goods. The man, who has a Hispanic last name, said he may have cut off the other man, who was African American, off on Veterans Parkway because the man followed him from Ranger Joe's and pulled up behind him as he and his wife were getting out of their car.
“He stated the black male stated to him that he needed to go back to his country,” the complainant said.
It turned out both men were military – the victim was a sergeant -- and the man with the knife got back in his car and drove off. He was later identified, but didn’t return a call to police. He got a voicemail asking him to call police as soon as possible.