BREMERTON, Wash. — Bremerton police recently used an unconventional but effective way to clear a roadway while taking a tree-climbing suspect into custody.
This past week, an officer was called to a report of a suspicious, abandoned vehicle blocking the roadway near Pendergast Park.
When the officer arrived, they found a 1994 Honda Accord parked in the middle of the roadway-- with no driver in sight and no way to drive around the car.
According to Bremerton police (BPD), the vehicle history showed that its possible owner had a felony warrant.
The officer decided to call for other officers and wait for the car’s owner to come back.
Eventually, she did.
According to BPD, the woman associated with the vehicle returned to it, unaware that officers were nearby.
When they moved in, she ran off and went out of sight down a hillside, according to BPD.
BPD said when they caught up to the woman, she was 10 feet up in a tree.
When they asked the woman to come down, she explained that she was “harvesting moss” for Easter, according to BPD. The woman came down and was taken into custody without incident.
The car was still blocking the road when the police got back to it. Instead of waiting for a tow, the officer called a former car thief who is now “on the right side of the law” and was walked through the process of how to start the old car, and was able to move it out of the roadway.
Just to be clear, the police department used the word “stole” in quotation marks in their headline as a joke, but it should be noted that no actual theft took place.
The vehicle was moved “lawfully to clear a hazard, with some very unconventional (but effective) technical support,” BPD wrote on Facebook.