Crime & Safety
When Intoxicated Pair Who Met in AA Quarrel, West Des Moines Police Step Up
Police wade into the "he said, she said" world of alleged addicts.
A West Des Moines couple who told police they met in the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step program quarreled with police acting as intermediaries.
According to the West Des Moines Police Department report, a 43-year-old "obviously intoxicated" woman said her former boyfriend had been calling and texting her “nonstop” to say “he is on his way over with a gun.”
When Officer Shawn Miller arrived at her apartment, he found no sign of the former boyfriend, a recovering meth addict the woman claimed to have met in AA three months ago.
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At one point, the woman “changed her story and said she had met him at her mother’s AA meeting seven months ago,” Miller wrote.
The woman told Miller that she had felt badly for the man, 51, because he had no place to sleep but his car. She said the man told her he had a gun, but didn’t threaten to harm her, according to the report. The man denied owning a gun.
Officers told the man not to return to the apartment and to stop calling and texting.
He didn’t.
While Miller was taking the report, the offending party called again. The alleged victim of the harassment gave the officer the phone.
“He said [the victim] gets like this,” Miller wrote in his report. “They love each other."
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