Police say drunken vandal taken into custody, charged

Springfield Police had their hands full when a local man got into a confrontation with residents of a downtown building, allegedly pulled off a window screen and tried to break into an occupied apartment.
http://rutlandherald.com/article/20140707/NEWS02/707079937

Published July 7, 2014 in the Rutland Herald Police say drunken vandal taken into custody, charged By ERIC FRANCIS CORRESPONDENT WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — Springfield Police had their hands full when a local man got into a confrontation with residents of a downtown building, allegedly pulled off a window screen and tried to break into an occupied apartment. Sgt. Jon Molgano said John Johnson Jr. was taken into custody June 29. On the way from the station to the Springfield jail where Johnson was lodged for the night, he repeatedly spit at the partition in the cruiser, police said. Molgano said police had to disinfect and scrub out the cruiser due to the volume of projected sputum. A holding cell at the police station received similar treatment. Johnston made a calm and uneventful appearance in the courtroom in White River Junction on June 30. He was released after he entered innocent pleas to felony counts of attempted burglary and attempted home invasion as well as to misdemeanor counts of assaulting police with bodily fluids, providing false information to police, vandalism, disorderly conduct and two counts of violating court-ordered conditions of pre-trial release. Early on the evening of June 29, Valley Street residents reported that Johnston appeared to be drunk as he walked up to a second-floor apartment and started pounding on a door and pulling apart pieces of a staircase and a deck outside an apartment while loudly yelling “I want Dave!” Molgano wrote in an affidavit filed with the court. Witness Christian Santangelo later told police he’d been washing dishes in a friend’s apartment when Johnston, whom he did not know, tried to force open the kitchen door before “ripping the window screen and sticking his head through the window.” Santangelo said he yelled at Johnston to leave before he grabbed a ball bat and “unsuccessfully tried to scare (him) off for an estimated five minutes” during which Johnston allegedly did up $1,000 in damage to the landing as he ripped balusters off of the staircase, Molgano wrote in his report. Molgano said minutes later, as he was responding to the area, he spotted Johnston walking barefoot next to the Park and Main Street intersection downtown. After determining that Johnston had been drinking, Molgano said he handcuffed Johnston and removed “a very thin, fixed-blade knife from Johnston’s pocket” before walking him to the police cruiser. After Johnson spit on the surveillance cameras and generally made a mess of the holding cell, Molgano said dispatchers called officers to respond back to the cell because “Johnston was on the floor claiming that he was stuck.” “Johnston was found not to be stuck,” Sgt. Molgano wrote. “While I was driving Johnston to the prison, he spit at the partition separating us multiple times.” Johnston, whose criminal record consists of more than a dozen prior misdemeanor convictions, had been in court earlier in June where he pleaded innocent to misdemeanor counts of simple assault and disorderly conduct stemming from an alleged fight on the evening of June 8 during which a window was broken on Main Street. During his court appearance, he was also charged, and pleaded innocent to, a misdemeanor count of raising a false public alarm. Springfield Police Officer Daniel Deslauriers said he recognized Johnston as the person who was shown on a surveillance photo pulling the fire alarm inside the apartment building at 33 Main St. on the evening of May 8, which drew a full response from the Springfield Fire Department. “I questioned Johnston (and) he stated that he did not remember pulling the alarm as he was intoxicated that evening,” Deslaurier wrote in his affidavit filed with the court.