Loss of Mind Over Can of Chips Leads to Loss of Liberty

At 12:03 a.m. Monday, a 25-year-old Milwaukee man was arrested for disorderly conduct at the BP gas station at 7523 W. Center St. after creating a frightful disturbance in the presence of customers and staff.

Police arrived on the call to find the man and two women who were with him. The two women, officers said, were screaming at the suspect to shut up and calm down, while the man was screaming profanities at them and at a clerk.

“The scene was chaotic,” the reporting officer wrote.

The suspect at first refused even to leave the store to speak to an officer. When he did, the officer noted that he was obviously drunk, still very angry and mostly incoherent.

The officer said he was unable to get a detailed statement from the man, who continually interrupted him to scream at his female companions and the clerk still inside the store.

He did say that he had taken a container of chips from a shelf and proceeded to open it and eat the contents before paying, and that he thought that was why the (expletive-expletive-expletive) clerk had confronted him and made him angry. He fully intended to pay for the chips, he said.

Both officers were by then needed to keep the man from re-entering the store against their orders. When he finally said, “I’m getting the (expletive) out of here," the officer finally arrested him and, surprisingly, he did not resist.

The two women, interviewed separately, said, respectively, that the man's behavior was, “embarrassing and uncalled for” and “inexcusable and very embarrassing.”

A computer check revealed that the man was on probation for possession of cocaine with intent to sell.

When he had calmed down at the station, he admitted he had “lost his mind” over the confrontation with the clerk over a can of Pringles. He was ordered held for violation of probation and sent to the Milwaukee County Criminal Justice Facility.