A man Yakima police say battered his way through the gate around the police department's gate has been charged with first-degree malicious mischief.
Jose Guadalupe Mendez, 53, of Everett also has been charged with driving under the influence, first-degree criminal trespass and making a false statement to police.
He's accused of breaking through the gate at the Yakima Police Department's headquarters and ramming a parked police motorcycle in a secure entrance to the building, which also houses the city jail.
A Yakima police officer was in his patrol car in the parking lot on the west side of the department's headquarters, 200 S. Third St., around 6:40 p.m. Sunday when he heard a crunching at the parking lot gate, according to a probable cause affidavit.
A 2000 Honda Accord was at the gate, which had been rammed open by the car, knocking it from its tracks and rail, the affidavit said. Once inside the parking lot, the Accord went to the the building's secure vehicle entrance, and when the door automatically opened, the car sped inside and hit a YPD motorcycle parked inside, the affidavit said.
The car then backed up and made another run, and the officer ordered the car's driver, Mendez, out of the car. Mendez complied, but while on the ground made obscene gestures at the officer and swore at him, the affidavit said.
Officers smelled intoxicants on Mendez, the affidavit said, and found three empty bottles of Coors Light in the front passenger seat and an ice chest in the back with ice in it. Mendez refused to perform field sobriety tests or to blow into a portable breathalyzer, the affidavit said.
Mendez, the affidavit said, also gave officers two false names.
At his preliminary appearance hearing in Yakima County Superior Court Monday, Judge Elisabeth Tutsch ordered him detained and set bail at $15,000.
