Winthrop police logged 197 calls in the week of Sunday, November 1 through Saturday, November 7, according to the department’s weekly journal, a 50-page dispatch log from the Metro North Regional Emergency Communications Center posted on the town’s police logs page. The week brought four arrests, a pedestrian hit by a car outside the Mobil station on Main Street on Election Day morning, and a Wednesday entry unlike anything else in the log: a car abandoned at Main and Pleasant streets with its window smashed out, which the log says was left behind when federal agents pulled the driver from it and took him into custody.
The journal records what dispatchers were told and what officers reported back, not the results of any investigation. This account uses street-level locations and leaves out the names of callers, officers and anyone not charged. The log prints no names for the four people arrested. A charge is not a conviction.
The federal arrest
At 7:17 a.m. on Wednesday, November 4, an officer was sent to 81 Main Street at Pleasant Street for what came in as a possible abandoned vehicle with its windows reported smashed out. The officer found a gray 2026 Toyota Corolla, not running, with the keys inside and a window broken. There was no phone number on file for the registered owner. A second officer then reported what had happened: the car had been left at 6:46 a.m. “when federal agents came and removed him from the vehicle and took him into custody,” according to the narrative. The car was towed, with the reason recorded as “federal arrest,” and the officer took an incident report. The log does not identify the federal agency, the driver or the basis for the arrest, and Winthrop officers are not recorded as taking part in it. The same intersection came up again Friday night, when the traffic lights there malfunctioned and the DPW came out to reset them.
Pedestrian struck on Election Day
At 10:03 a.m. on Tuesday, November 3, a woman was hit by a black 2025 Kia EV6 at the Mobil station and mini mart at 30A Main Street. The call came in as a pedestrian struck with injuries to the head and back. She was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital by Cataldo Ambulance. The driver was cited at the scene and released, and officers wrote both an incident report and a crash report. An officer delivered the woman’s keys to her home so her husband could retrieve her car, then gave him a ride to get it.
Election Day otherwise passed quietly in the log. On Monday an officer put flyers on cars at the Larsen Rink on Pauline Street and told nearby residents there would be no parking at the rink on Tuesday for voting. At 10:06 p.m. Tuesday an officer checked the middle school on Payson Street after the polls closed and found people still inside working.
The four arrests
The week’s first arrest came out of a crash. At 2:37 p.m. on Sunday, November 1, a black 2023 Toyota RAV4 crashed on Tafts Avenue near the Deer Island end of the street. Officers asked for a Spanish-speaking officer to translate for a field sobriety test, and a Revere officer came to interpret. Tafts Avenue toward Deer Island was closed to everyone but residents and workers while officers worked. The RAV4 was towed, the owner, who had been a passenger, was taken for medical treatment, and a 38-year-old man was arrested and charged with operating under the influence of drugs, negligent operation of a motor vehicle and operating with a license suspended for a prior OUI.
At 10:30 a.m. Monday a traffic stop at Pleasant Street and Villa Avenue turned up a driver with a suspended license. A 51-year-old man was arrested and charged with operating after suspension, and the white 2018 BMW X1 was towed.
At 12:08 p.m. Wednesday an officer at Adrianna’s Cafe and Pastry at 19 Main Street called for backup for a man who came back as a possible wanted person. A 22-year-old man was arrested on a warrant from another jurisdiction and brought to East Boston District Court that afternoon.
At 10:34 p.m. Wednesday five units served an arrest warrant at a three-family house on Shirley Street. A 20-year-old man who lives there was arrested on two warrants. The address and the gray Ram pickup listed in that entry match a well-being check three days earlier, on Sunday afternoon, when a caller said she believed her friend was in an abusive relationship there and could not say exactly which house it was. Officers tracked the caller’s phone, located the truck, got a picture of the man confirmed, and made entry to an unlocked apartment that had been left empty “possibly in a hurry.” The woman texted her mother’s phone that she was safe and wanted nothing to do with family or police. Officers advised the family of their rights, flagged the address and the man as hostile to police, and went back Monday morning to find the apartment vacant.
Shoplifting at the CVS, twice
The manager of the CVS at 3 Woodside Avenue called at 2:30 p.m. Monday to report that two school-age kids had come in, taken merchandise and run out, and asked to show officers the video. By Tuesday afternoon an officer had followed up at a Waldemar Avenue home, where the mother and the two juveniles were described as apologetic and offered to write an apology letter to the store. On Wednesday afternoon a CVS employee called again: two people had taken about $70 in merchandise at about 2:30 p.m., and the store had it on camera. An officer took the video and a list of the items and assigned a report.
Section 12 transports, a child removal and a DCF call
Two people were taken to Mass General on Section 12 orders, the involuntary psychiatric evaluation process under state law. On Wednesday afternoon fire and EMS called for police at the King Gardens apartments on Kennedy Road for an elderly woman described as unable to care for herself. On Saturday night a man called from Shirley Street to say his 22-year-old girlfriend had cut her wrists; she was found in the driveway and taken to Mass General, with her boyfriend following.
On Thursday afternoon officers assisted the Department of Children and Families with a care and protection order at a Pearl Avenue address. The entry says units stood by while custody of the children was transferred from the parents to DCF, and it closes with “DCF has the children.”
Other medical calls included an elderly man on Irwin Street who was reported unresponsive with a possible heart attack Monday afternoon and was alert and awake by the time the officer arrived, then taken to Cambridge Health Alliance; a 65-year-old woman at the Fort Heath Apartments who was intoxicated and verbally aggressive toward neighbors and refused treatment; and a 911 hang-up on Revere Street Wednesday evening in which a child told the dispatcher that her mother had had surgery and something was wrong before an adult in the background said “who are you calling, hang up.” Officers went anyway and found a woman who had fainted, was conscious and alert, and declined transport.
Threats, harassment and a 258E order
A woman came to the station Thursday afternoon to report that a man she had previously reported for stalking her at Honey Dew Donuts had driven past her on Shirley Street that day, said he would “get her” and shouted obscenities. A report was taken. Earlier Thursday a Wilshire Street woman reported that her housing manager was entering her room without permission, texting her constantly and, she believed, singling her out because of her skin color. Officers told her it was a civil matter, took a report and advised her she could seek a harassment order at district court; she said she was moving out in two weeks. Thursday night a woman came in with her husband to report that a neighbor had violated a Chapter 258E harassment prevention order.
A Sunnyside Avenue tenant reported Tuesday morning that the woman downstairs was in the hallway yelling at her to leave and threatening to perform an exorcism on her, which she described as an ongoing problem. Officers restored the peace and advised both of their rights. On Monday a man came to the station to document what he described as road rage: he said a driver had followed him from Winthrop through East Boston after he picked up his children, behaving aggressively, and that it had happened once before.
Break-in, identity theft and a hacked website
A basement tenant on Highland Avenue reported Monday night that his landlord had texted him around 2 p.m. to say someone had broken into the multi-family house. Another tenant had found all the doors open, and he found his own apartment door frame broken. Nothing appeared to be missing, and he noted the landlord had never called police. A Somerset Avenue resident reported identity fraud Sunday night. On Saturday a business owner came in to report that someone had hacked his company’s website and used its credentials to make a purchase. On Saturday afternoon a Pleasant Street homeowner showed officers doorbell video of a man she believed was impersonating a National Grid employee, with no vest and no paperwork; officers checked two men in the area, neither of them involved, and searched the surrounding streets without finding him.
Also in the log
A woman turned in a black pellet rifle she found under the front of her car in the Crest Avenue parking lot on Thursday. A Nahant Avenue resident reported two juveniles on motorbikes going the wrong way at high speed Monday evening, and on Tuesday the DPW reported three juveniles on motorcycles riding on the field and up and down Kennedy Road; one stopped for the officer and his father came to put the bike in his van, a second was found hiding under a slide and walked the bike home after the officer reached his mother out of town, and the third got away. On Friday morning officers escorted an 18-wheeler that could not make the turn at Sturgis Street and Shore Drive back onto the truck route to Deer Island and told the driver he may need a police detail next time. A woman who knocked on a Shirley Street door at 7 a.m. Friday asking for cash turned out to be out of gas; officers got her a gallon and sent her on her way. A Pond Street woman was reunited with her car after an officer drove her home from the station lobby Tuesday evening, where she had been evaluated for an altered mental state. On Saturday an officer escorted a driver on Brookfield Road back to her driveway after learning the car was registered to her father, who had recently died, and told her not to drive it until the title was in her name.
Traffic and parking
Officers made 39 traffic stops and wrote citations on 24 of them, mostly for speeding, failure to stop, equipment and number-plate violations, with 11 verbal warnings. The speeding citations clustered on Veterans Road, Shirley Street and Revere Street, including a driver clocked at 40 in a 25 on Pleasant Street Sunday morning. One Wednesday stop outside fire headquarters on Pauline Street produced a citation for a child not in restraints and a crosswalk violation. Eight vehicles were towed during the week, including three for revoked insurance; one of those owners returned Tuesday with proof of a current policy and got the plate back. Overnight directed patrols wrote 34 parking tickets on Veterans Road, Fremont Street, Lincoln Street, Shirley Street, Bartlett Road and at Delby’s Corner, where one patrol ticketed 10 cars at 1:58 a.m. Thursday.
Monday was the busiest day of the week with 39 entries, followed by Friday with 32. Saturday was the quietest with 21. The week before, October 25 to 31, the department logged 218 calls, covered in last week’s log story. The department posts the journal weekly, usually on the Sunday or Monday after the week ends.
