This week, the Eau Claire Police Department found themselves responding to one hectic dog, a stalled car and a license plate confusion. 

The first incident occurred at 11:12 a.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 28 after a report was received of a small dog loose in the Hibbard lot. Officer Evenson responded to the scene, searched the lot and surrounding streets, but was unable to locate the dog. 

The officer then made contact over the phone with the man who filed the report, who said he had seen the dog running around on Park Place Road, and not in the Hibbard lot. He then informed the officer that the dog had a collar with a heart-shaped tag. 

The officer checked Park Place Road but was unable to locate the dog and ended the investigation. 

The second of these stories took place around 7:55 a.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 4, when Officer Xiong was on patrol, driving west on Clairemont Ave. The officer pulled behind a vehicle on the intersection of Clairemont Ave and Stein Blvd that had its emergency flashers on. 

The driver explained that she was waiting to be towed as her car would not start. The officer checked the record for the driver, which was all clear. 

The towing service arrived twenty minutes later, and the vehicle was soon removed from the intersection. 

The third and final notable event occurred at 11:29 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 6, when Officer Evenson decided to investigate an email he received, which made him aware of a car that showed one license plate number on its front bumper and another plate number on its rear bumper. 

Parking employees at UW-Eau Claire discovered a silver BMW sedan, which did not have a valid parking permit, parked in the Phillips lot at 10:30 a.m. on Friday.

The officer ran the plates and discovered they were both registered to the car. One of the plates was the vehicle’s previous number and the other was valid. 

After checking records, the officer found everything to be all clear and also discovered the name of the vehicle’s owner. The officer contacted the communication center and was given the driver’s number. 

The officer’s call was not responded to at first, so they left a voicemail before receiving a call back a few minutes later. 

The owner’s spouse answered the call and spoke briefly with the officer before handing the phone to the owner. 

The owner said he knew about the issue with the plates but had not been able to remove the invalid one on the rear bumper, as it had rusted onto the car. 

The owner assured the officer that the car had an appointment to have the faulty plate removed the next day. 

As for why the car had been parked in the Phillips lot, the owner’s daughter had driven the car to UW-Eau Claire for an extracurricular, but he was not aware that his daughter would be going to park it on the property and apologized. 

The officer exchanged a few more words over the phone before the call ended. This concludes the most recent police reports around the UW-Eau Claire area.

Curtin can be reached at [email protected].