Police Make Two Disorderly Arrests after Officers Threatened

Two Newport men overnight were reminded that threatening to beat up or getting in the face of police officers responding to citizen noise complaints is a good way to get arrested.

Police charged Darryl Anthony Smith, 27, of 15 Meeting St., Newport, with disorderly conduct early Friday morning after he allegedly threatened to beat up officers who responded to a Van Zandt address for a report of a man yelling obscenities.

Police said they got to the apartment building at around 12:29 a.m. where a relative of Smith said he was asked to leave the area and refused. He had reportedly been at the Newport carnival all night and police were told he was “extremely intoxicated, according to a police report.

Police said Smith swore at responding officers, tore off his shirt and hat and approached officers in an aggressive manner, threatening to beat them up.

Smith was warned to leave the area and police told him that he was being disorderly.

Officers picked up Smith’s clothes and handed them back to him, but Smith decided to throw his shirt and hat at an officer, striking the officer in the head.

Smith then charged toward the officers with clenched fists, yelling obscenities.

Police were able to get Smith to the ground and handcuffed after a struggle.

Later, at around 3:37 a.m, police charged Freddie D. Hicks, 23, of 3 Sgt. Weidman St., Newport, with disorderly conduct after he allegedly got into an officer’s face and thrust his ID towards the officer in an aggressive manner.

Police said they were dispatched to a John Chafee Boulevard address for a noise complaint and found Hicks and four other people talking loudly on the front porch, according to a police report.

The three men at the gathering were uncooperative, police said, and started giving the officer advice about the city’s noise ordinances.

According to a police report, when the officer asked Hicks for his ID, he reportedly told the officer he “wasn’t giving him [expletive] and continued to swear. After demanding to know if the officer was “asking” for his ID or “demanding” his ID, he finally took out the ID and “reached in his back pocket, grabbed his ID, and in a rapid manner, brought his clenched right hand up towards my face, simulating a punch,” the officer reported.

The officer reportedly blocked Hick’s hand and the ID fell on the ground. All this time, Hicks reportedly was standing in an aggressive manner and got very close to the officer.

It was then that the officer promptly restrained hicks and took him into custody.