Candy cane theft

My first weekly report of 2020, it was another slow week for police activity. Yes we did have a good bit of fireworks on New Year’s Eve, but other than that it was rather peaceful on the police front. Officers handled 54 calls for service and conducted 80 traffic stops. Those traffic stops resulted in 41 citations and 39 warnings, that was a close one….if it had tied we would have gone into overtime.
We arrested one fellow at around 1 PM on New Year’s Eve, he had a felony warrant out of Hidalgo Co. that was from 2013! You can run, but you can’t hide. He was among those ringing in the New Year at the Atascosa Co. Jail. That was our only arrest for the week. We only had one property crime reported as well. Wayne Newman, the city parks guy, reported that a 3 foot candy cane decoration was missing from the Veterans’ Park Christmas display. He valued it at around $50, what a boring theft. With all the cool stuff we have on display somebody took an old candy cane.
On Monday night, officers worked two single vehicle roll-over accidents on city streets. One on Railroad St. and another, just as they finished up, on Live Oak St. Alcohol was not a factor in either one of the incidents.
We were very fortunate to have almost no reported crimes during the Christmas/New Year holiday. It certainly wasn’t because things were slow in town, everything seemed busy with long drive thru lines at all the fast food places and H.E.B.’s parking lot busting at the seams.
I patrolled New Years’ Eve along with several other officers, we made about 8-10 contacts with people “popping” fireworks. We didn’t issue any citations; I thought we were doing a decent job until midnight hit. At midnight it seemed like the whole town erupted in fireworks, I was looking for a white flag so I could surrender.
I was thinking how different it is in 2020 as compared to 2000. In 2000, people would see something happening in town and they would call me to get the “low down.” In 2020, with all the social media, I normally find out what is going on from someone else. In 2000, if a house had a lot of “come and go” traffic you might think they were “slinging” dope. In 2020, you just figure they order a lot of stuff off of Amazon.