Moon rise, dusk South East Street looking East
Alcohol once again played a major role in overnight mayhem Friday, with the seasonably clear comfortable weather and bright full moon playing a supporting role.
Not that I believe a full moon has the power to bring on temporary madness.
But after one particularly bad run late last night for first responders, I'm starting to wonder ...
The initial bad signs started earlier than usual (9:15 PM) with a UMPD officer reporting "a fleet of yellow school buses full of drunk kids" driving slowly around the outskirts of campus. Three minutes later AFD responded to the first ETOH (alcohol OD) call of the night: A male resident of Van Meter Dorm passed out in the basement "laying in his own vomit."
AFD on scene UMass Parking lot 34, 11:45 PM
At 9:24 PM UMPD requests another ambulance for a student in lock up who passed out. A few minutes later the same officer requests, "clean up in the cell block bathroom."
A little before 11:00 PM AFD responds to JFK Southwest Tower 12th floor for an ETOH male passed out in the lounge. About 45 minutes later UMPD requests an ambulance for a student passed out in the parking lot of lot 34 off Massachusetts Avenue.
Then comes the call from Hell: A young man flipping out from a combination of "booze, speed and ecstasy". A1 transports him to the Cooley Dickinson Hospital with a UMass police officer along for the ride because the patient was so "agitated."
About an hour later the UMPD officer who rode shotgun in A1 reports back to Dispatch that the perp assaulted one of the medical staff in the ER.
Monkey Bar is busy around midnight
At the stroke of midnight, with the glorious moon high in the sky, A5 responds to Puffton Village for an ETOH college aged female. And with that call all five ambulances are now tied up, almost all of them for "substance abuse" runs.
Fortunately no serious medical incidents requiring an ambulance occur, as AFD would then have to rely on mutual aid, and the patient would have to wait until an ambulance from a surrounding town arrived to transport them to the hospital (Although an AFD fire engine would have responded with an emergency first responder aboard to stabilize the patient until that ambulance arrived).
Busted! DUI Fearing Street midnight
FST #fail
Also at midnight APD pulls over a car on Fearing Street for driving with no lights (must have been the full moon). The young man is given a Field Sobriety Test, fails, and is arrested. At the time Fearing Street is a bee hive of activity with clusters of students ambling in every direction.
At 12:25 AM an Amherst police officer near 695 Main Street reports a young man being taken into "protective custody" because at this point, "he can't even figure out his name."
12:45 AM Fearing Street: Four school buses filled with "college aged youth"
At 12:45 AM I come across the four yellow school buses dropping off a crowd of boisterous passengers on Fearing Street at exactly the same location of the DUI arrest a half hour earlier.
At 1:45 AM I hear yet another report of a drunk young male only this one is wandering in the middle of a main thoroughfare, South Pleasant Street. And since the address given is pretty much my house, I head that way (at reasonable speed of course) from town center.
The 20-year-old male is attempting to thumb a ride but is being a tad too, err, aggressive about it. I swerve to avoid him, although I was taking a left to go into the access road to my house anyway, and the headlights immediately behind me belong to an APD supervisor.
After a 15 minute or so "discussion" the young man is taken into "protective custody." By now the APD cell block is filling up with youthful perps awaiting the Clerk of Courts arrival to send them on their way with a promise (and $40 processing fee) to appear at Eastern Hampshire District Court on Monday morning.
Meanwhile the moon, so far overhead, is still beaming brightly ... looking peaceful.
