Gainesville Police arrested Freeman J. Polite, of Hawthorne, after he fled police with an open container of alcohol. He was walking on Southeast 11th Avenue when an officer saw him holding an aluminum can protruding from a brown paper bag.
From a downtown bicycle trail, Freeman ran into the woods. Once police caught up with him, he admitted to running away and throwing a 16 ounce can of Natural Ice beer away, according to the arrest report.
While booking Polite at the jail, police found his car keys. Officers searched his car and found two grams of crack as well as drug paraphernalia.
He was arrested Saturday on charges of having an open container and resisting without violence.
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Two Ocala men were arrested Saturday after a resident of Southwest First Avenue and her guests felt threatened by two men they didn’t know standing on the sidewalk.
Leslie Ann Cleaver called police and told them the men — who stood in the dark watching her and her friends in the front yard — seemed to be “casing her house” to rob it later, according to the arrest report.
At about 9 p.m., Gainesville Police officer Nicoloff Visvambhara arrested 27-year-old Ualthan Bigby Jr. and 25-year-old William James Ross Naugler on charges of loitering and prowling.
In the report, Visvambhara wrote that the men “could not alleviate my fears of why they were in the neighborhood.”
A version of this story ran on page 8 on 9/3/2013 under the headline "Weekend arrests: open container and prowling near a house." The earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Polite ran from the Rails to Trails Conservancy. He actually ran from a downtown bike trail into the woods.
