A man told police an ex-girlfriend is the reason he wound up at a local hospital.

Officials at Parkridge Hospital called police when James Watkins showed up and said he had been assaulted.

Watkins told police his ex-girlfriend, Brenda Hayes, came over at 1:30 a.m. He said she was complaining about finances. He said he got upset about the complaining and called her a b----.

She responded, he said, by punching him in the face. He said when he tried to restrain her hand, she bit him on the wrist.

He declined to prosecute.

* * *

Regina Tate of Northgate Auto Brokers noticed that one of the surveillance cameras was not working.

She checked the video system and it showed a white male slipping under a sliding door. He entered a garage at the rear of the business. While he was at it, he disabled one of the cameras. The man, who was slim, was wearing blue jeans, a dark blue hoodie and white sneakers.

He got away with several items, including a Kenwood CD player and some amps.

* * *

Police were called to Bart's Lakeshore on Lake Resort Terrace on a report of a man unconscious in the parking lot.

Officers found Jeremy Mashburn standing in the parking lot with a small crowd around him. The crowd dispersed as police approached.

Mashburn had an injury to the back of his head and there was blood on the parking lot. His mouth was bloody and his lip was swollen. One knuckle was scraped. He had a very strong odor of alcohol.

He said he did not know how he had been injured.

A waitress said when she found him lying on the parking lot she could not rouse him.

Mashburn declined to go for medical treatment, so police charged him with public drunkenness and took him to Parkridge, where it took two staples to close the laceration on his head.

* * *

Pat Howard said she was in her wheelchair on Gateway Avenue when four vicious dogs chased her.

An officer found one of the dogs off Boynton Drive and called the McKamey Animal Trust.

* * *

At the Doubletree Hotel downtown, manager Phil Barrow said Mercury cab driver Freddie Cody had been hanging out in the lobby soliciting customers.

The cab driver said he was being persecuted because he is black.

He was told to stay off the hotel property.

* * *

There was a report of a white male wearing all black and with a bandanna over his face walking the neighborhood in the vicinity of Aletha Drive.

Anthony Vasquez said he was just out running. He said the bandanna is to keep his face from getting chapped.