Police question man about harassing calls

For months now, an unknown man has been calling the Penobscot Regional Communications Center with what police described as harassing and obscene messages, maybe hundreds of them.

The telephone calls were tying up the toll-free emergency line and the dispatchers while the messages were becoming increasingly aggressive, reported Brewer police Sgt. Jay Munson. When a trace could be made, dispatchers found they were being made closer and closer to the regional dispatch center, located in downtown Bangor.

“They were barraged by this guy for six months,” acknowledged Brewer police Officer John Knappe, who with Munson would confront the caller.

The calls were coming in from pay phones in Bangor, but the caller was gone, disappeared, by the time police arrived.

That changed Thursday night.

The man called the PRCC, again making references to this “whore nation” as well as what dispatchers could do with any charges they were thinking about filing against him. The call was traced to the Big Apple convenience store on South Main Street in Brewer, near the police station.

Knappe was on another incident at the time, but radioed that he recalled seeing a man walking on South Main Street in the direction of the Big Apple earlier. Knappe reported that the man was wearing dark pants, a dark nylon jacket and had dark hair. The man was carrying a bag.

Munson suspected that with the calls originating in Bangor, the man lived across the river in Bangor and would be headed there, across the Joshua Chamberlain Bridge. And that’s where Munson found the man, about midway across the bridge.

Munson and Knappe then confronted the man, who they reported had tomato juice on his face and presented them with a state identification card from Louisiana.

The 42-year-old man claimed to be shopping in Brewer, including for quahogs and soda, Munson said, but couldn’t adequately explain why he hadn’t gone to Shaw’s supermarket on Main Street in Bangor, which is closer to his Cedar Street home.

Also, police said, his voice sounded like the one making the obscene calls.

The man claimed that he hadn’t done anything wrong and hadn’t called 911, although he admitted freely that he had called the dispatchers’ toll-free number, which he rattled off by heart for the officers. The man rambled from subject to subject and told police many things, including that he was studying political science, Munson reported.

The case against the man has been sent to the Penobscot County District Attorney’s Office for review, Munson said.

A man stopped for speeding in Bangor late Thursday night faces a drunken driving charge as well as two civil drug summonses.

The car was caught on radar doing 43 mph on Main Street, where the speed limit is 25 mph, and the police officers approached the car after it had pulled through the McDonald’s drive-through and then parked in front of the Main Street fast-food restaurant.

Officer Brian Nichols reported that he could smell a moderate amount of alcohol coming from the driver’s mouth and that the man’s eyes were glassy and slightly bloodshot. The driver, Orville A. Patterson Jr., 43, of Holden, was unsteady on his feet and during a field sobriety test swayed back and forth and side to side, according to Nichols. During one test, Patterson nearly fell over and Nichols had to end one test early, concerned that Patterson might hurt himself.

Nichols arrested Patterson, and Officer Steve Jordan searched the man’s car. In a green bank bag, Jordan found a plastic bag with marijuana in it, rolling papers, scissors with marijuana residue on them, weighing scales and a pill container with partially burned marijuana cigarettes in it.

Patterson’s blood-alcohol content registered 0.14 percent on the Intoxilyzer test, or more than 11/2 times the legal limit of 0.08 percent. Nichols charged him with operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicants and issued two civil summonses for possession of a usable amount of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Brewer police were alerted to a possible drunken driver heading home to North Main Street early Friday morning.

A taxicab driver had picked up the man from one Bangor bar and driven him to another, only to see the unsteady man get into a blue Geo Storm and drive off. While in the cab, the man had made references to living on North Main Street in Brewer.

The cab driver called his dispatcher, who notified the Penobscot Region Communications Center. Officer John Knappe was set into motion to intercept the motorist. Knappe reported catching up with the car by Gettysburg Avenue and followed him until the car pulled into a driveway.

Knappe spoke briefly to the driver, Michael Hopkins, 40, and returned to his cruiser to adjust the strobe lights so that field sobriety tests could be administered.

While at his cruiser, Knappe heard the sound of something hitting the snow behind him. A passenger riding in the police cruiser told Knappe that Hopkins had stretched his arms out and in the process had thrown something into the snow.

That something, as Knappe discovered, was a small wooden box containing a used marijuana pipe.

The officer had Hopkins perform the field sobriety tests and reported that the man failed, noting that Hopkins had stumbled briefly. An Intoxilyzer test registered Hopkins’ blood alcohol content at 0.08 percent. He was charged with operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicants and with possession of drug paraphernalia.

– Compiled by NEWS reporter

Doug Kesseli