Save Newport Real News in Newport Beach
The violent and homeless troublemaker who calls himself “Sarge” was arrested last week on felony burglary charges on a commercial building. This is the same man who was arrested just a few weeks ago for strong-armed robbery on a woman, stealing the contents of her purse. Businesses throughout the area now have restraining orders on him, legally requiring him to say 30ft away from all of their businesses.
His long wrap sheet would make people guess that he would be held for far longer on each of his charges, as he is now being arrested multiple times per week, but California’s bills of AB109 and Prop47 ensure that we now must release criminals due to over-crowding, and drug charges have been turned into comparatively minor crimes, making their legal responses equivalent to a slap on the wrist.
Sources inside the NBPD have confirmed that this is a very, very solid case, however, and expect it to be pretty open and shut.
If tried and won as a felony burglary case, it could be punishable with up to three years in prison. A more likely scenario is a year or so. Early release due to good behavior is not likely for this particular character. Conflicting reports on the ability of “Sarge” to bail himself out leave an open question as to where he will spend the time before he is officially tried on this case… so we could see him back, but it won’t be for long.
A huge “thank you” to our Newport Beach Police Department for getting this guy out of our neighborhood, and making us all just a little bit safer.
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UPDATE: 8/17/2015@10:40am:
After much public questioning about why it took so long remove Sarge from his previous “parking situation”, I spoke to Deputy Chief of Police McGill and he gave me the full scoop. Apparently, that particular parking lot was being monitored by a city contracted parking service– not the local police. This parking service claims that for the first several weeks, they were simply “short-staffed” and could not patrol that particular lot. Thus, he got a free ride. After the complaints began rolling in, the police spoke with the service that Newport has hired to maintain the lot, and they professed that they simply hadn’t been. From that day forward, the police worked to get him out– but because of the parking service, were several weeks behind in their abilities. Personally, I’m just glad he is gone.
