WELLFLEET — An employee at Bay Sails Marine on Route 6 was flushing out his boat Saturday evening at the end of a beautiful late September day when he noticed a new, distinctly unsolicited mural decorating the marine supply store’s back shed. The medium: graffiti paint on concrete. The message? Unclear.
“BLM” appeared twice, joining “Justice 4 Breonna” and a disparaging comment about President Trump in the tableau’s political section. Then there was a series of hieroglyphs: a hot dog, a broken heart, a middle finger, a reference to the Illuminati, two stick-figure men in hats. The phrase “Im the coochie mann” figured prominently, as did “WAP” — an abbreviation popularized by rapper Cardi B.
“I can’t say I understand all the symbols,” said Lyle Butts, principal of Bay Sails Marine, “but I will say there’s a little talent there. It must have taken some time.”
As for a possible culprit? In Butts’s estimation, it’s probably “a local kid who saw this on TV and thought it was a smart-ass thing to do.”
Wellfleet Police Chief Michael Hurley would like to clarify: the vandalism was not, in fact, a smart thing to do.
“We’re reviewing camera footage from all over,” he said. “We’re in touch with local departments, and we’re actively seeking the public’s help.”
Butts is eager to avoid a repeat incident. Cameras for Bay Sails are arriving next week — and in the meantime, he has the situation under control.
“I won’t stand for this,” he said. “I worked all my life to create this place. Every extra dollar I had went into it. For someone to come in and do something like this? Ridiculous.”
Of Face Masks and ‘Fascism’
Officers patrolling Provincetown’s mask-mandatory Commercial Street on Friday morning received a slew of reports about a man refusing to cover his nose and mouth.
One caller told officers the man was fighting with “at least five different people.” Another said he’d referred to several women with the same rude expletive. Police Sgt. Glenn Enos said he’d had an exchange with the man about the proper use of a face mask.
After a 20-minute search, Det. Meredith Lobur located the man, later identified as Brian Aldred, a Quincy resident, outside the Wired Puppy. She asked for his name; he informed her, according to Officer Thomas Radzik’s police report, that “I’m done talking to you,” then walked away.
Radzik and Seasonal Officer Karolina Gawedzki approached Aldred, asking him to calm down. He clenched his fists, spread his legs, tensed his upper body, and informed his interlocutors, with a choice expletive, “You’re all … fascists.”
Then came a moment of national focus for Aldred. “This is America,” he yelled. “Is this really America 2020?” When Radzik informed Aldred he was to be arrested for disorderly conduct, he responded that the officer was kidnapping him.
“I was up all night drinking,” Aldred told Radzik during his booking. He agreed to take a preliminary breath test, which produced a blood alcohol content reading of 0.174 percent. (The state’s maximum allowable blood alcohol level is 0.08 percent.)
Aldred was arraigned in Orleans District Court on disorderly conduct charges on Sept. 28.
Car Flipped, Driver Fled
When State Trooper Patrick Bosworth arrived on the scene of a crash at Exit 12 on Route 6 in Orleans Saturday night, he found a 2006 Toyota Avalon with “extensive front end damage” lying on its roof, a mangled guardrail, and officers from the Orleans police and fire depts. One thing Bosworth didn’t find was the driver.
A witness told officers he’d seen a young white male get out of the Toyota and head into the roadside woods. Officers established a perimeter and, soon enough, made out a man in a white T-shirt standing in the thicket. They ordered him to leave the woods. He didn’t.
Twenty minutes later, he made his way to the highway on ramp, where he identified himself as Roland Kaplan, 25, an Eastham native. Kaplan told officers he’d been just a passenger in the vehicle, then told them he’d been driving, then called himself a passenger again.
Bosworth’s vehicle inventory revealed deployed driver-side airbags but no passenger-side ones, plus a collection of empty White Claw cans in the car’s back seat. Kaplan elected to refuse a breath test, but failed to properly execute the three standardized field sobriety tests Bosworth administered. While being booked and fingerprinted, he stated he was “drunk.”
Kaplan was released from custody on Sept. 27 and arraigned in Orleans District Court the next day on four charges: operating under the influence of liquor, negligent operation of a motor vehicle, leaving the scene of a property damage accident, and a marked lanes violation.
