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Let’s drink, smoke meth, drive with expired plates

Let’s say you’re driving through the Springs in a car with expired registration. Would you want your passenger to be nursing an open bottle of brandy and a 40-ounce beer?

Would you yourself be wise to carry a meth pipe in your purse or to still be vibrating at an elevated frequency after ingesting some of the drug?

Probably not.

But that was the set of choices made by an El Verano woman who was pulled over a little after 9 a.m. on Nov. 21 by a Sheriff’s deputy who spotted the bad tag.

The 40-year-old woman told the deputy she was aware the registration had expired but that the vehicle didn’t belong to her. Then she gave permission for a search of the vehicle. After asking the passenger to get out, the deputy quickly spotted the 40-ounce beer in a paper bag and an opened bottle of brandy between the front seats. The passenger, a 29-year-old Sonoma resident, admitted that both the 40 and the brandy were his.

While searching the woman’s purse, the deputy found the glass pipe, but the woman explained it wasn’t hers. The deputy asked if she had used meth recently and she told him she had snorted a line earlier in the day. Since the woman had a hard time standing still and had a pulse rate of 120 beats a minute, she was arrested for being under the influence of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia. The passenger was booked on a probation violation, and the car was towed.

In other incidents reported recently to Valley law enforcement:

Wednesday, Nov. 21:

3:58 p.m. – Blue velvet and $3,200 worth of jewelry. A resident in the 900 block of Buckeye Road reported that sometime that day, between 11:15 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., someone entered her unlocked residence and stole a blue velvet jewelry box containing an estimated $3,200 worth of jewelry.

Friday, Nov. 23:

3:25 a.m. – Turning the other cheek. Deputies responded to the report of a domestic incident in the 100 block of Agua Caliente Road. After a dispute, the man called the woman a derogatory name – in front of their two children – and she reportedly hauled off and hit him five times. The man told deputies he had been charged with domestic violence in the past and therefore refrained from hitting the woman. The 33-year-old woman was arrested, charged with battery against a cohabitant and cruelty to a child.

Saturday, Nov. 24:

11:43 a.m. – Another jewelry heist. A resident of the 17000 block of Cedar Avenue reported that after being out of town for two days, she returned to find a screen removed from a front window and the front door unlocked. Missing was a jewelry box and other assorted jewelry with more than $1,900.

8 p.m. – Smile, you’re on…A convenience store in the 100 block of West Napa Street had a couple of teens walk in, wander over to the beer, grab an 18-pack of Budweiser and leave the store. The entire scenario was caught on video and police reported last week that one of the suspects has been identified and they were in the process of interviewing him.

8:49 p.m. – OK, how about $3,000 and I won’t email you again? A resident in the zero block of France Street reported that someone had left a rather rambling email on her computer claiming to be a hit man and offering to have the hit called off if she would pay him $5,000.

Sunday, Nov. 25:

2:12 p.m. – Generating a disappearance. A resident in the 18700 block of Manzanita Road reported that someone stole a Honda generator worth $2,400 from the garage sometime during the past five days. The man’s roommate said he noticed the garage door was open when he returned to the residence the evening before.

10:25 p.m. – Yet another jewelry box. A resident in the zero block of Chase Street reported that her jewelry box had been stolen. She told deputies that the last time she had seen it was two days earlier.

Monday, Nov. 26:

10:03 a.m. – Educational withdrawal. The principal of the Crescent Montessori School reported that sometime over the long holiday weekend, someone entered her office and stole a laptop computer from her desk. There was no sign of forced entry.

Tuesday, Nov. 27:

1 p.m. – Apple fan ignores Xbox. An employee of a Plaza restaurant in the 400 block of First Street West, reported that on Friday, Nov. 23, sometime between 6:30 and 9 p.m., while his vehicle was parked in the restaurant’s lot, someone removed an Apple iPad worth $600, and a MacBook Pro laptop worth $2,500 from his locked van. The thief or thieves apparently overlooked an Xbox 360 that was also in the van.

11:16 p.m. – I'm mad but don’t arrest him. Police responded to a domestic incident in the 100 block of West Spain Street where a husband and wife had apparently been arguing since driving back from San Francisco earlier in the day. The fracas continued into the evening and the wife told police her husband had grabbed her in anger and pinched her skin leaving a bruise. But, said the wife, she didn’t want her husband arrested.

But under domestic battery rules, police had no choice but to arrest the 57-year-old husband on charges of domestic battery with injury.

Wednesday, Nov. 28:

7:44 a.m. – Better than a horse head. A Sonoma Valley High School student, who parks her car on West Spain Street, discovered that someone had put a duck’s head on her windshield.

Thursday, Nov. 29:

7:17 p.m. – Grab ’n go. A customer walking through the Lucky’s parking lot had her purse stolen from her grocery cart. She told police that an unknown person wearing clothing she couldn’t describe because it was too dark, grabbed her purse, which contained her driver’s license, cellphone, medication and a pink wallet containing a debit card. The 61-year-old victim told police she immediately went to the bank and cancelled the card and put a hold on her checking account.