Sheboygan toilet clogging suspect charged for alleged criminal damage

McLean Bennett | Sheboygan Press

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SHEBOYGAN – A 34-year-old Sheboygan man charged in connection with a rash of plugged toilets in downtown-area women’s restrooms told police he couldn’t explain why he’d used soda bottles to clog the cans.

Prosecutors on Monday charged Patrick D. Beeman with 12 misdemeanors, all for criminal damage to property. That was after they accused him in the string of incidents dating to April 2017 and that left an estimated $2,000 or more in damage to women’s toilets around Deland Park.

Each of the misdemeanor charges carries up to a nine-month jail sentence and as much as a $10,000 fine. Beeman is scheduled to make his initial Sheboygan County Court appearance July 9.

According to a criminal complaint:

Beeman told an officer he couldn’t explain why he got "urges” to look for bottles in the garbage and then put them in toilets, prosecutors said. Police tracked him down after an official with a temporary staffing agency where Beeman had worked reported similar problems involving toilets at companies where Beeman had been placed.

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Joe Kerlin, Sheboygan's parks and forestry superintendent, said earlier this year the city had reported issues involving public toilets as early as 2016, but hadn't begun carefully tracking the incidents until later.

Prosecutors' case against Beeman doesn't stretch back that far. Records filed in court on Monday accuse him of targeting city toilets in 11 incidents beginning in April 2017. He's also facing a charge for an incident involving a toilet inside an apartment where Beeman told police he'd been staying.

Kerlin this year also estimated repairs had cost the city between $2,000 to $3,000, though prosecutors calculated costs on the lower end of that scale.

Police began seeking help finding the suspected serial clogger in March. That's when an officer found a plastic bottle wedged inside a women's overflowing toilet at the Deland Community Center, and then discovered the incident matched a string of similar reports stretching back nearly a year.