RED WING, Minn. (AP) ¯ Two teenagers in a car decked out with sirens and lights were arrested on suspicion of impersonating police officers near Red Wing.
A suspicious motorist noticed the impostors when they pulled up behind him with lights flashing and sirens blaring early Sunday. Goodhue County sheriff's department spokeswoman Kris Weiss says the Ford Taurus did not have any official police markings. The motorist took down the license plate number.
Deputies tracked the vehicle down and pulled it over in Welch Township. They arrested an 18-year-old man from New Brighton and an 18-year-old Lakeland man.
Posted by: Mike ||
03/26/2008 14:56 ||
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#1
We have a number of these here on Guam too - non-law enforcement-public private vehix [muscle cars and 4WD offroad pickups, etc.] modified wid police- or ambulance-style sirens and horns. I'm told its becuz their operators luv the colors and sound.
Robbers don't usually leave phone numbers behind, but on Monday, at a Northwest Side muffler shop, a man asked employees to give him a call when their boss came back to open a safe, an employee said Tuesday.
When the 18-year-old returned a few hours later, plainclothes Chicago police officers shot and wounded him the leg, police said. Ruben Zarate of the 5100 of West Schubert Avenue was charged Tuesday with attempted armed robbery and aggravated assault of a police officer, the Cook County state's attorney's office said.
The incident started about 8 a.m., when the masked man, armed with a revolver, came in to Velasquez Mufflers For Less at 2600 N. Laramie Ave. and began demanding money, said Jose Sida, 37, a mechanic. Employees told him they had little money and couldn't open the safe, so the man left two phone numbers for them to call when the owner returned with the combination, Sida said. "He said, 'You guys better call me because otherwise I'm going to come back to shoot you,'" Sida said.
Instead, an employee called Chicago police. Officers dressed in plainclothes came to the shop and told employees to call the man, Sida said. The man returned about noon, wearing the same mask and black clothing and officers told the employees to get to the back of the shop, Sida said. A police source said the teen pulled a gun from his hooded sweat shirt and at least one officer opened fire. Zarate's injury was not thought to be life-threatening, the source said. That's too bad.
Sida said the teen's idea to leave his phone numbers was "stupid," but said employees were just following police instructions to call him back.
Employees now are worried the man's friends may return to get back at the shop employees for calling police. "We followed police instructions, otherwise he would have come back for sure [to rob us]," Sida said.
#1
I couldn't figure out why the employees needed to apologize for calling out the coppers. Then, I realized it was Chicago. Always importent to be polite to the crooks in Chicago.
Posted by: Titus Cloling7944 ||
03/26/2008 12:54 Comments ||
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#2
My professor in Business Law said that he quit criminal law cause his clients were so stupid.
This is what he meant. Right up there with the bank robber that wrote his demand note on the back of his own deposit slip.
#3
And if the employees had been armed, and shot the stupid idiot on the first trip, they would have been arrested, charged with attempted murder and firearm violations. And the robber would have sued them for violating his civil rights.
Besides which, thanks to Mayor Daley's strict gun control laws, nobody in Chicago has a gun anyway.
Posted by: Rambler in California ||
03/26/2008 15:09 Comments ||
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#4
"Besides which, thanks to Mayor Daley's strict gun control laws, nobody in Chicago has a gun anyway."
I guess the robber didn't get the memo? ;-p
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/26/2008 16:12 Comments ||
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MANATEE COUNTY Prosecutors have decided to drop a soliciting charge against one of two 93-year-old men who were picked up during recent undercover prostitution stings. The state, however, will continue to pursue a case against the other elderly man.
Carlos Underhill, 93, will not be charged, although he does not deny stopping to chat with the "good-looking girl" who made eyes at him and turned out to be an undercover cop. Underhill says that he was going to give the woman a ride because he saw her sitting at a bus stop "with her boobshonkersgroodies (breasts) hanging out."
He admits that he found her attractive, but that he found the sex talk confusing, and that he told her he had to come back later to wiggle out of the awkward situation. It was even more embarrassing, he said, to call his daughter from jail and ask her to pay his bond. "My daughter and I haven't talked about it since," he said.
Police say Underhill was willing to pay $30 for sex, and that he promised to come back a few hours later to consummate the deal. But prosecutors say that they cannot move ahead with the criminal case because there is no way to prove that Underhill planned to come back.
Underhill was fined $150 for trying to pick up a prostitute in 1990, when he was 75. In the February case, he says that he was not cruising Tamiami Trail for sex, and that all he wanted to do was chat with the buxom woman who smiled at him as he drove past. "All I was going to do was talk," he said Monday. "It wasn't for sex. I am 93, you know."
Meanwhile, in the case of Frank Milio, prosecutors have issued subpoenas and plan to take him to trial in April. Milio, according to police records, tried to pay $20 in November to an undercover officer on 14th Street West. Milio recently told the Herald-Tribune that he was only flirting with the woman. "I haven't had that in years," he said. "Ninety-three is kind of old."
Posted by: Fred ||
03/26/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Business must be pretty slow for the vice squad if these old fahrts are their prime catch of the day.
#9
At 93, I think these old codgers are dealing in fantasy and wishful thinking. These undercover prostitution stings border on entrapment. Besides, having fake prostitutes (undercover police) in the neighborhood detracts from the neighborhood and encourages criminal activity just as do real hookers.
#10
The old man was greeted with giggles from the girls at the cat house. One of them said, "His money is good, back in a sec!", winking at the other girls.
She had to help the old guy up the stairs, then took off her clothes and lay down in bed.
She was pretty surprised when he doffed his trousers, and thought that 40 years before, he must have been something popular with a tool like that.
She started giggling when he put on an extra large condom. What's the use?
But she was puzzled when he started shoving wads of cotton into his ears, then up his nose as well.
"What's dat for?", she asked.
"If there's one thing I cain't abide worse," he said, "than the sound of a woman screamin', it's the smell of rubber burnin'."
Mike Gravel, once an actual senator from Alaska, last seen accusing the other Democratic candidates of being sellouts and wanting to nuke Iran, has switched to the Libertarian Party.
Tough break for the Libertarian Party.
Posted by: Mike ||
03/26/2008 14:40 ||
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I think it's gone now, but for two or three weeks there was an old beater abandoned by the side of the road here. On it was a Ron Paul sticker. Because it's your God-given right to leave junk cars wherever you damn well please!
Cops think "Boy 2" was sent by his parents to his "country of birth". "Boy 3" was under 15 and was remanded to Social Services. Draw thine own conclusions.
A 15-year-old boy in Malmö has been sentenced to eight months in a youth detention centre after being found guilty of involvement in the rape of two girls in the city last October. The boy was found guilty by Malmö District Court of illegal detention, attempted rape, aggravated sexual coercion and robbery. And for all that, he gets eight months in juvenile hall. And the Scandis call us a barbaric country.
The crimes took place after a group of around ten boys convinced two girls to join them in a cellar on Bangatan in Malmö. Once downstairs, they were dragged into a garbage disposal room and a storage area and subjected to a number of sexual attacks.
Two of the group, a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old, were indicted on a number of charges. In the case of the 17-year-old, the charges included one of aggravated rape. But only the younger boy turned up in court. The 17-year-old escaped from the institutional home where he lived. Social services believe that the boy may have been taken by his parents to his country of birth. A warrant has been put out for his arrest.
A third boy was also suspected of sexually assaulting the two girls. As he was under 15, however, he could not be charged and was instead handed over to social services.
JHINNA, India - Wearing a bulletproof vest, the police officer balanced himself precariously on a rock and looked through binoculars at the thick bamboo and teak jungle growth ahead. Twenty-two other officers, equipped with AK-47s and night-vision devices, spread themselves around in the day's fading light, some crouching, others hiding behind trees and rocks.
"Do you see any bandit movement, sir?" an officer asked from behind a tree.
"Not yet, but we have information he was here yesterday," responded the first man.
In a two-hour search that followed, the officers combed a patch of dry jungle in the central Indian plateau, looking for an elusive bandit called Thokia, Hindi slang for "the one who shoots."
The operation was a surreal mix of medieval and modern tactics. To find their way, the team relied on village whispers about bandit sightings and Google Earth satellite images.
On this evening, they came up dry, again.
"Ambika Prasad Thokia is the most wanted bandit in this area today," said Beni Prasad Ahirwal, a police officer in the search party. "There are 64 cases of murder and kidnap against him. There is a $12,000 reward on his head. He cannot hide in these jungles for long because we are making his life hell."
Madhya Pradesh, a region of jungles, forbidding rocky ravines and grinding poverty, has harbored bandits and renegades since at least the 12th century, historians say. From 1957 to 2001, nearly 5,700 bandits have come and gone in the province.
In the past five years, Thokia, 33, has become part of the local folklore, a Robin Hood figure.
He and his gang of 20 have killed several police officers and other bandits. They have abducted businessmen and public works contractors for ransom. They also have managed to build a reputation of never hurting poor people.
"All bandits use the caste structure to become powerful," said Dinesh Kumar Singh, an assistant professor of political science at Jiwaji University, Gwalior. "Members of the caste community vicariously derive social prestige from the bandit. They feel proud that one of their own is invoking fear among the policemen."
One of five children, Thokia was born to a lower-caste farmer with a small plot of land in Lokhariha village in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. When he was a young man, the story goes, his sister was raped. He pleaded with local police and the village council to arrest the perpetrator, but they refused. So at 23, he pledged revenge: He killed the brothers of the rapist, but the suspect still is free.
Many villagers refer to Thokia as "Brother." Some say he is a good man who was forced by circumstances to take up arms. For members of his kurmi-patel caste group, he is a benevolent protector who settles petty village disputes and donates money at weddings.
By most accounts, he also is the highest-educated bandit in Madhya Pradesh in recent years, having finished half of an undergraduate degree in commerce. He worked part time with a pharmacist learning about health care, and sometimes gives free medicine to villagers in need, thus earning another of his sympathetic names, "Doctor."
For businessmen in the area, he is simply a bloodthirsty bandit. He sends out life-threatening ransom demands on his own private letterhead that says "King of Bandits" in Hindi on top. Police say businessmen are so fearful that they often quietly hand over the money to him without informing the authorities.
A handwritten extortion note addressed to a construction company, procured from police files, begins with an invocation of the Hindu goddess Kali and demands the equivalent of more than $100,000. "Or else, your machines will be destroyed, your men will be abducted and you will not be allowed to work in the district," the note ends.
The police do not even have a recent photo of Thokia, relying on a picture from his teens. But their investigation files are full of Thokia trivia. He is 5 feet 3 inches tall and wears pants that are 30 inches around at the waist; his tennis shoes are size 10. He wears four gold rings and a thick, spiraling chain around his neck. On his right arm is an egg-shaped, dark brown mark.
Posted by: john frum ||
03/26/2008 16:26 ||
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Pakistan's new Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani is a big fan of Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai and melody queen Lata Mangeshkar.
"While in prison, I used to watch all of Aishwarya's movies on my laptop besides listening to Lataji's songs. And let me admit that I am a great fan of Aishwarya Rai now," Gilani, a die hard romantic, told a private news channel.
Gilani, who is a descendent of Moosa Pak Shaheed, a sufi saint of Multan, became a Lata fan when he was jailed in 2001 after being arrested by Pervez Musharraf's regime on charges of misusing his position as Speaker of the National Assembly to make irregular appointments.
The 55-year-old former minister chose prison over offers from Musharraf regime to be freed in exchange for cutting off ties with the Pakistan People's Party.
With the new Prime Minister's fondness for Bollywood's actresses and musicians, Pakistanis hope to see more Indian films making their way to their entertainment-starved country.
Posted by: john frum ||
03/26/2008 12:12 ||
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He seems to be a big fan of Sherry Rehman as well...
Army and police engineers in northern India are racing against time to rescue a two-year-old girl who fell down a deep well on Tuesday evening.
The child, named only as Vandana, was playing outside her house when she fell more than 40ft (12 metres) down a man-made well in Tehra, Uttar Pradesh.
The army is digging parallel to the well to try and tunnel through to the child, who has been heard crying.
Indian TV channels have been showing pictures from the rescue scene.
Oxygen is being pumped to the young girl and army personnel say she is breathing.
They have also sent down glucose, water and biscuits while the parents have been able to talk to her.
But the situation is precarious as there is a fear of the well collapsing if the digging is carried out too quickly.
So the army is moving slowly and carefully, while doctors and an ambulance stand by.
"A parallel bore-well is being dug and we hope with the help of the army the girl will be rescued safely," the deputy inspector general of police, Kamal Saxena, told national news channel, NDTV.
Hundreds of locals have come out to watch the rescue operation, hoping to see Vandana brought out alive and well.
This is not the first time a child has fallen down wells left carelessly open in India.
Earlier this year, a young boy was rescued from a deep well in the southern state of Karnataka.
Posted by: john frum ||
03/26/2008 11:25 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Robbers don't usually leave phone numbers behind, but on Monday, at a Northwest Side muffler shop, a man asked employees to give him a call when their boss came back to open a safe, an employee said Tuesday.
MANATEE COUNTY Prosecutors have decided to drop a soliciting charge against one of two 93-year-old men who were picked up during recent undercover prostitution stings. The state, however, will continue to pursue a case against the other elderly man.
