Lawbreaker who bit bitten back
December 6, 2017
By Mike Weland

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Taking a bite out of crim ... er, a cop, and trying to lie down instead of climbing into the back seat of a patrol car last April proved costly to a 26-year-old Bonners Ferry man, who was sentenced last week to serve 30 days of a four-month sentence and ordered to cough up $450.

Curtis Tucker pled guilty before Judge Justin Julian to a misdemeanor charge of simple battery, a misdemeanor, after initially being charged with "Assault or Battery Upon Certain Personnel," the official Idaho title for attempting violence on the person of a peace officer, which is a felony, after he turned up April 26 at an Apple Alley home in Bonners Ferry known to be a place to smoke dope.

According to court documents, instead of coming along peacefully, as required as a condition of his probation for a February, 2017, conviction for making harassing phone calls, which also required that he refrain from going in or around places where dope was known to be smoked, due to a 2015 conviction for possession of a controlled substance, Tucker chose to bite the arm of Bonners Ferry Police officer Travis Stolley.

When a second BFPD officer, Willie Cowell, later offered to help Tucker into the patrol vehicle for a leisurely ride to jail, Tucker decided he didn't want to make the trip and instead pushed Cowell, and then fell heroically to the ground and lay there.

Needless to say, he went to jail anyway, and that brave act of defiance earned him an additional charge of resisting arrest.

On the battery charge, he was sentenced to 180 days in jail, with 150 days suspended, ordered to undergo a drug treatment program, fined $232.50 and $217.50 costs and placed on 364 days probation. He also pled guilty to resisting arrest, for which he was sentenced to another 30 days in jail, suspended, a $200 fine and 364 days probation.

A third charge, "Frequenting Place where a Controlled Substance Used, Manufactured, Cultivated, Held, Delivered, Given," Idaho's official verbiage for being caught in a place known as one in which to smoke dope, was mercifully dismissed by the prosecution.