Coulee Cops

Grand Coulee Police

3/8 - Police received a complaint about someone “blasting” music at apartments on Continental Heights. Police went there but didn’t hear any music. A resident said she had not been blasting music and that she hadn’t heard music be blasted either.

- A city worker told police that a woman arrived at the city shop on Dill Avenue and threatened to sue her. After some arguing, which included profanities, the woman left. Police spoke to her at her home. She told police the city worker was out to get her. The woman said she was an expert in body language and knew the city worker was a liar because of the way she was standing. As no crime was committed, police simply documented the incident.

- A man was caught defecating behind a row of commercial shops on Midway Avenue. Police found him “finishing up” and found a “steamy” pile of excrement near him. Police asked if the excrement used to belong to him, and the man confirmed that it did. He cleaned up the mess bare handed, according to the police report. Police told him to try a gas station in the future.

- A man “nodded off” in his truck parked along Grand Coulee Avenue in front of a residence. Police checked on him, found he wasn’t impaired, and left him alone.

3/9 - Cardinal Road residents separated for the night after a disagreement. The residents were intoxicated, and the living room was seen by police to be in disarray.

- Someone reported seeing a suspicious SUV near the city shop, flashlights being used, and the SUV driving down Dill Avenue. Police checked the area and didn’t see an SUV and also didn’t see any signs of entry into the shop.

3/10 - Police went to an A Street residence where an alarm had been activated. The occupants said everything was fine and the alarm must have been activated accidentally.

- Police generated a case number for a missing radio at the request of the fire chief, who said the radio went missing some time ago.

3/11 - Someone reported a woman’s dogs were being let out by her son, whom they wanted police to talk to about it. The dogs were in the yard when police went to the home, but no one answered the door. The police report doesn’t state what street the home is on.

- Police pulled a car over in a parking lot above the Grand Coulee Dam after watching it be driven erratically, having poor lane control and slowing down and speeding up between 25 miles per hour and 35 mph. Police could smell alcohol, and saw the driver to have watery, bloodshot eyes. The driver was alone in the car. He told police, “We been chillin’.” After performing a sobriety test, the man was arrested for driving under the influence, then released to his mother who is also the owner of the car he was driving. 

3/14 - A woman reported a cashier running her foot over with a cart while at Safeway, and said that there were some heavy items in the cart. She said he also gave her a “dirty look.” She didn’t require medical attention. After some thought, she told police she wanted to press charges. She was unhappy that nothing happened after speaking with the store manager. Police went to the store and spoke to the cashier who said the woman had an altercation at the pharmacy before then having issues in the checkout lines, and had cussed at people before saying he ran her foot over with a cart. Another employee also said that the woman had been acting erratically and causing a disturbance. Police asked a supervisor to review security footage and make a copy of it for them.

- Police looked into a report of a suspicious person at the Midway Avenue post office who was said to have been sitting on a concrete landing. Several hours later, another report of a suspicious person described someone wearing the same clothes and crawling on the ground in the area between the post office and a motel with a flashlight in an area marked “No Trespassing,” and identified the person. Police concluded it was the same person. Police spoke to the man who said he didn’t see the sign while out for a walk.

3/15 - Police investigated an incident involving a possible assault. Police spoke to a man at a Kelso Avenue residence who described that while golfing, one of his brother’s friends hit on his brother’s girlfriend, upsetting his brother. Nothing physical had occurred. He described the car that the brother and girlfriend left in and police pulled it over near Pole Park. The girlfriend said she had dropped off the brother, and described the same story before she was free to go.

- A man was arrested and taken to jail after violating a no-contact court order his ex-girlfriend has against him. He was seen yelling at her outside the Grand Coulee Police station by a passing tribal officer. The man had also recently violated the order a previous time.

- Police received a report of a man at North Dam Park walking behind a woman and yelling . Police found them both outside city hall, and spoke to them. They explained they are from Bridgeport and were just having an argument. Police didn’t see any signs of physical injury, and the couple left in their truck.

- A woman reported an SUV driving erratically while crossing lanes as it passed her near Pole Park. Police located the vehicle and spoke to the driver who said he knew the incident and felt the woman had misinterpreted the situation, explaining he knows police patrol that area regularly, and was careful not to speed even while passing someone, causing him to pass closely to her vehicle.

- Police responded to the Hi Dam tavern where people were said to be about to fight. Staff said that people had been arguing and kicked out about 20 minutes earlier and had left.

3/16 - Police spoke to a Roosevelt Drive resident who was concerned that her neighbor’s security cameras could record audio as well as video and believed it was illegal to record audio. The law she referenced, it turned out, was referring to certain protocols for court proceedings. Police spoke to the neighbor who explained he installed trail cameras because of recent burglaries. Police determined his cameras were perfectly legal as long as they didn’t “violate a reasonable expectation of privacy.”

- A woman reported that a man had been at her house smoking marijuana and taking pain pills, then left and later accused her of stealing his pills,  saying he was going to call the cops. She said police could search her residence if they wanted to. The man called police about the incident the next day, and police searched the woman’s home on Division Street. She showed police her own medications, as well as four pills she said the man sold her. Police took those pills and went back to speak to the man who said he felt the woman hid the nearly full bottle of pills. He denied selling her the four pills, and police explained that they couldn’t give them back to him as they weren’t in their original bottle, and that they couldn’t do anything further about the lost or stolen bottle of pills because it was a “he said/she said” situation. 

3/17 - Police noticed a car parked the wrong way at the drive-through ATM machine located at The Star newspaper building on Midway Avenue. Police spoke to the driver, who was wearing a blonde wig. The man is known to police to have a suspended license, and police suspect he was wearing the wig to conceal his identity while driving around. The man said he didn’t know there was a proper way to go through the drive-thru ATM and police pointed to an “exit only” sign. The man was told he had to park his car because of the suspended license and the man said he understood. The officer later saw the man and his car on Alcan Road, where he went into his residence, having ignored the order not to drive. The man was cited for not having a license and for expired tabs on the car.

- Police were told that a suspected murder victim’s phone was pinging to a certain location and were asked to check the area for the possible deceased person or their phone. Police saw no signs of foul play at that location, which was not given in the police report. Police were then told by detectives that it was a mistake, and the location was somewhere the family of the possible deceased person said the person used to stay at sometimes.

3/18 - A woman was reported as being intoxicated and trying to start fights in the parking lot outside of the Hi Dam tavern in Grand Coulee before leaving in an orange car. The car was pulled over near the top of the Grand Coulee Dam. Coulee Dam Police were also at the pullover location. An officer spoke to the driver, who said he was getting the woman out of a bad situation. When asked to step out of the car because he was suspected of driving under the influence, he drove off from the traffic stop heading north. Police followed the car across the bridge in Coulee Dam to Holly Street, where it stopped in a yard about five feet from the front door. The man was taken down by police near the front door. The Coulee Dam officer noted seeing a gun next to the man on the ground after he was taken down, as well as a knife, creating a dangerous situation as police attempted to cuff the man. The woman was yelling at police and had her hands raised in an aggressive manner, which gave police probable cause to arrest her for obstructing police. Both she and the man were cuffed after some struggle. The woman was also told she was banned from the tavern. The man began apologizing, according to the Grand Coulee Police report. The man and woman were both taken to the police station in Coulee Dam. The man was cited by Grand Coulee Police for driving while intoxicated and for disobeying a police officer by fleeing a traffic stop. Grand Coulee Police turned custody of him over to Coulee Dam Police after being told by a Coulee Dam officer that that officer wanted to take him and the woman to Okanogan County Jail on previous misdemeanor charges, and so left the man in their custody instead of taking the man to Grant County Jail for the DUI charge. He later learned that both the man and woman were released rather than taken to jail. The Coulee Dam Police reports notes that the decision to release them was made later in the evening but doesn’t say why. It’s worth noting that sometimes jails have booking restrictions, and there are sometimes other reasons why people can’t be taken to jail. The car keys were given to Grand Coulee Police for safekeeping and to keep the man from driving.

- Police spoke to a woman on Weil Place about a complaint that her dogs were running loose and barking, disturbing nearby motel guests. The dogs were tied up in the yard. Police told hotel management there was nothing they could do at the time, but that they could fill out a code enforcement request.

3/19 - A Banks Avenue resident reported that a rock broke a wide window on his Jeep. Nothing appeared stolen and he believed the rock could have rolled down a nearby hill.

- Police looked for a pickup that was reported as possibly having a drunken driver after it was seen driving all over the road, going to the Four Corners gas station, the driver being unable to get out of the truck, then continuing south on Midway Avenue. Police searched all around for the truck and told other departments about it, but it wasn’t found.

3/19 - Police pulled a car over on the Bridgeport Highway near Burdin Boulevard for having a taillight out. Police learned that the driver, a woman, had a protection order against one of the passengers, her son. The driver said she was taking him to pick up medication. The son was arrested and he was taken to jail for violating the no-contact order.

3/20 - A man told police that another man intentionally swerved into his lane, and he nearly crashed to avoid a collision. He said they have a dispute over television boxes. The officer told the man he’d have to witness the infraction in order to do something about it, but did document the incident. The man thanked the officer. 

Coulee Dam Police

3/12 - Police removed rocks from SR-155 near milepost 11 because they were an “extreme” hazard, and state patrol, which was also responding, was far away, coming out of Moses Lake.

3/12 - Police spoke to a man in the process of evicting family members from a Grand Avenue residence in Electric City. The man described the people being evicted as acting crazy, getting drunk, acting in a threatening manner, cranking up the furnace and opening all the windows. No crimes had been committed, and police told the man about options for speeding up the eviction process.

3/14 - A driver was pulled over near Central Drive for going 30 miles per hour in a 20 mph zone. The driver said she was late getting her son to school. The report doesn’t note if she was ticketed or not for speeding.

- A man was pulled over after swerving over the centerline while driving south on SR-155 into Coulee Dam. Police performed a sobriety test on the man, who blew a breath sample of 0.117, above the 0.08 limit. He was charged with driving under the influence and released.

3/15 - Police went to a traffic accident on Roosevelt Way and River Drive where a car bumped into another car. There was no damage to the vehicles. The driver of the vehicle that bumped into the other one told police the car in front was going very slow and kept “brake checking” them. Police told that driver to keep a distance even if the vehicle in front is going slow.

- Police documented an incident on Grand Avenue that involved a woman having an issue with her daughter in law, saying she had called her lewd names and had locked a door accessing a basement, making the woman use another door to leave the basement and get back into the house.

3/17 - Police documented that a window had been removed from an RV on Goodfellow Street. The owner said that she didn’t see anything missing.