-- Suspicion Confirmed: After
Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Donna Jane Watts ticketed Miami Police
Department officer Fausto Lopez in 2011 for speeding to an off-duty job at 120
mph, naturally some in law enforcement began harassing her as a
"rat," according to a February Associated Press report. One
provocation stood out -- other officers' accessing Watts' driver record by
claiming to be on official business. Watts identified those officers' employers
and recently filed a lawsuit under the federal Driver Privacy Protection Act,
which provides penalties of up to $2,500 for each of the more than 200
unauthorized searches by 88 officers from 25 police agencies. [Associated Press
via msn.com, 2-11-2014]
Timothy Margis, 38, had risen
professionally to become the director of Public Safety of Concordia University
in River Forest, Ill. He is also the man who was fired in February after
admitting that he had committed a "lewd act" in a colleague's office
(which police later explained involved masturbating into a woman's shoe). (2)
Catherine Dajnowski, 40, was arrested in February in Boca Raton, Fla., after
she had climbed into a shopping cart in the parking lot of a Publix supermarket
and would not allow a Publix employee to return it to the store. Dajnowski
called 911 three times from the cart, demanding that police come make the
employee leave her alone -- the third time during which a sheriff's deputy was
standing right beside the cart. [OakPark.com, 2-20-2014] [South Florida
Sun-Sentinel, 2-21-2014]
The surveillance video of The
Shambles bar in Chicago showed that an attempted break-in one night in January
went awry when the unidentified perp removed the front entrance lock but gave
up and fled seconds later when he couldn't open the door -- which he was shown
furiously pulling on, oblivious that it was a "push" door. (2) Robert
Williams, 42, was charged with robbing a PNC Bank in Laurel, Md., in February
after starring in the surveillance video by twice spilling his entire loot
($20,650) on the bank's floor. After he finally gathered the bills and fled in
a pickup truck, police punctured the tires, and when Williams tried to run, he
slipped on the ice, slashing his head open. [DNAinfo.com (Chicago), 1-15-2014]
[WRC-TV (Washington), 2-20-2014]
-- Rape-prevention activists
estimate that local governments have backlogs of untested evidentiary
"rape kits" that total up to 400,000 nationally -- signifying free
crimes for rapists, lost justice for victims, and ruined reputations for men
wrongly arrested. (As TV police dramas emphasize, many rape victims are
reluctant to submit to the indignity of swabbing and photographing so soon
after being violated and comply only because detectives assure them of the rape
kit's importance.) Memphis, Tenn., has an inventory of 12,000, and the state of
Texas at least 16,000 -- dating back to the 1980s. However, the cost of testing
(about $500 each) is daunting for many city budgets, according to a February
report by the Rape Kit Action Project in New York. [CBS News, 2-23-2014]
-- More Texas Justice: After 37
years in prison, Jerry Hartfield goes to court in April for a retrial of his
1977 conviction (and death sentence) for murder in Bay City, Texas. Actually,
the 1977 conviction was overturned, but before Hartfield could demand his
release (he is described in court documents as illiterate with an IQ of 51),
the then-governor commuted the sentence to life in prison in 1983. It was only
in 2006 that a fellow inmate persuaded Hartfield that the commutation was
illusory -- since there was, at that point, no "sentence" to commute.
Hartfield's lawyers call Texas' treatment a blatant violation of his
constitutional right to a "speedy" trial, but prosecutors suggest
that it is Hartfield's own fault that he has remained in prison the last 30
years. [Associated Press via Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 2-14-2014]
-- Inexplicable: (1) Three
suspects fled with about 30 pieces of jewelry from a burglary at Timothy's Fine
Jewelry in Broomfield, Colo., in January, but not before creating a puzzling
scene on the surveillance video. Crushing the glass cases with sledgehammers,
they moved quickly around the store, all the while constantly telling each
other, "I love you, brother." (2) Glenn Rundles, 32, was captured
only days after robbing two women at knifepoint in East Post Oak, Texas, in
January -- despite a wanted poster called by some the "worst police sketch
ever," a "cartoon" of a comically round-faced man (displayed at
http://huff.to/1cXWT3p). [KCNC-TV (Denver), 1-21-2014] [Huffington Post, 1-30-2014]
The lukewarm prosecution of two
Steubenville (Ohio) High football players for an August 2012 rape was
foundering until Internet hacker Deric Lostutter, 26, raised the incident's
profile, but now Lostutter faces a vindictive prosecution and the possibility
he could serve a prison sentence five times longer than the wrist-slap
detention the now-convicted rapists served. When Lostutter took interest, many
Steubenville students and residents had been hoping to quiet the case or even
blame the victim, but (according to November reporting by Rolling Stone)
apparently one Steubenville High official managed to convince the FBI that
Lostutter's hacking of the official's personal emails was a greater national
threat than the rapes and provoked a SWAT raid on Lostutter's modest farmhouse.
(Besides the football players, the city's school superintendent was indicted
for tampering with evidence and three other officials for false statements and
failing to report child abuse.) [Rolling Stone, 11-27-2013]
An alcohol-hammered Troy
Prockett, 37, was arrested in January near Hudson, Mass., after his car spun
out of control on Interstate 290 and he fled on foot, pursued by state troopers
who followed him to a tree, which he had climbed to about 30 feet up. Playing
innocent, Prockett asked if the troopers had yet "caught the guy who was
driving." The driver was still loose, Prockett said, even though only one
set of footprints led to the tree (but, Prockett explained, that was because
the real driver was carrying him piggyback!). Finally, as firefighters were
arriving to climb after him, Prockett (according to the troopers' report)
"rambled on about being an owl." [WCVB-TV (Boston), 1-9-2014]
Not Ready for Prime Time: Andre
Bacon, 21, was arrested in February in the Cragin neighborhood in Chicago
after, police said, he tried to carjack a woman who was about to get in the car
in her garage. The woman gave up her keys, but ran out and closed the door as
she left, locking Bacon in the garage with no way out. Police arrived minutes
later to find Bacon sitting meekly in the driver's seat. [Chicago Tribune,
2-2-2014]