Law roundup: Meth chef blamed for setting off fire alarm

A fire alarm went off in an apartment building and a child reportedly told responders that someone was “cooking meth” in one of the apartments. A water leak in a sprinkler had reportedly set off the fire alarm.

A passerby thought a man reportedly wearing a mask who left a store with an infant in a carrier and walked through the parking lot, where he got into a sedan, was suspicious enough to call the police. They felt officers “should be aware,” because heaven forbid, a man goes shopping with a baby in tow.  

Parents were allegedly targeted by a scammer who said they were in a parking lot with their daughter, who “messed up a drug deal” by knocking over a case full of drugs and was hurt. A female’s voice was heard crying in the background during the elaborate calls to the father.  The anonymous caller told the father to meet him in a parking lot and get his daughter.  

The father told police his wife received a similar call while on her way to pick the daughter up from school. Officers drove through the store parking lot and noted that there have been scams where anonymous people lured victims to a store to buy gift cards and send the "redeem codes" to them for payment. Scammers then resell the codes online.   

Someone requested that officers to be on the lookout for a man and his truck, alleging that there was a court order banning him from the area. The person making the request suspected they saw him that morning. Officers reportedly had the man flagged for assault, drugs, weapons and being known to keep firearms by the driver’s seat. 

Officers stopped a man driving a truck with partially obstructed plates, finding it odd that he was parked at a gas pump but filling his tank with his own gas out of a can. The stop came on the heels of recent reports of a man allegedly drilling gas tanks and stealing fuel.   

The truck bed also contained lumber, which added to officers' suspicions given a spate of recent construction site thefts. The driver allegedly admitted to not having a driver’s license or insurance on the truck and said he was moving to Kalispell and the lumber was for his residence. The license plates belonged to him but were assigned to a different vehicle. He was ticketed and released.  

Sparks were reportedly coming out of the exhaust pipe of a vehicle that was traveling on the U.S. 93 Bypass.