Yesterday, a reader wrote:

Do u have any info on what happened at ace in mack today one chp and two sheriff’s showed up and tazed a guy … Guy was elbowing cops in the face and pulling them to the ground it was outside right in front of the store and yes I seen it I have pictures but i was across the street … Cops were being rough.

The short answer to this query, which showed up in our email box at 11 a.m., is: Yes, we now have a little bit of info on what happened. The slightly longer answer is: We have only a little bit of info, because numerous calls to several different people in the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office seeking more information on the subject, made both today and yesterday, have all gone unreturned.

Here’s what we know.

This morning’s Sheriff’s Office call logs show that at about 9:54 a.m., Deputy Tory Siipola was dispatched to the McKinleyville Ace Hardware store to respond to a public disturbance. See snapshot below.

Just a few minutes later — at 10 a.m., almost exactly — an ambulance was called to the scene in order to treat a subject who had been tasered. Here’s the audio of that:

Audio

The call logs show that an arrest was made, and give a case number — 2014-05815. This allows us to reference the incident in the jail’s Disposition of Arrests sheet.

Here we find that the tased person is one Jason Edward Balke, a man well known to law enforcement. Our records from the BOOKED database show that he has been arrested 17 times since late 2011, when our records begin, on a wide spectrum of charges — spousal abuse, public intoxication, possession of methamphetamines, petty theft and criminal threats. In 2012, he was one of three people arrested during a crackdown on thievery from the dump.

From today’s edition of BOOKED, we see that Balke was marked down as “booked” at 9:57 a.m. — presumably, either immediately before, during or after the taser delivered its voltage into his torso. The charge listed was Penal Code Section 69, “Resisting an Executive Officer. According to these dudes, the charge is like a more-serious version of “resisting arrest.” It’s marked down on the booking sheet as a felony.

Nevertheless, Balke was “released” and the case closed two hours later for reasons not stated in either the Disposition of Arrests sheet nor the Release Inmate Report. Both simply read “Case Closed: Other” — meaning, “other than for the usual reasons.”

Why was he released? Why was he tased? We don’t know. Like I said — no one is calling us back.

And that’s pretty much all we have for you, except that our original tipster sent us her pictures, apologizing for how bad they were. Here’s the best one, followed a pixelated blowup of the relevant scene. Enjoy.