Curses, Foiled Again
State police arrested Lonnie Meckwood, 29, and Phillip Weeks, 51, for robbing a gas station in Kirkwood, N.Y., after their getaway car ran out of gas.
Police arrested fugitive Evariston Tenorio, 48, after they found him hiding in tall grass in Woodburn, Ore., when his cell phone rang, alerting officers to his whereabouts.
Don’t Have a Cow
When Tammy Nuttelman called 911 because some cows had escaped from her farm near Juneau, Wis., she began swearing at the dispatcher who told her escaped cows weren’t an emergency. “I got seven fucking cows out, maybe going to the fucking highway, and you need to let everybody know that there are loose cows out there!” Nuttelman said, according to the transcript. “They’ll probably cause a major fucking accident, you hear me?” The dispatcher finally called a sheriff’s deputy, who came to Nuttelman’s house to cite her for misuse of 911. Afterwards, Nuttelman told Milwaukee’s WTMJ Radio News that she overreacted, explaining, “I mean, who doesn’t when you call 911?”
After sheriff’s deputies in King County, Wash., stopped two men for tying a rope around a bull’s neck, attaching the rope to a 1989 Buick Century and dragging the animal for at least a half-mile along the road, driver Jonas Arnbrister, 75, explained they were moving the bull to a new pasture and always moved the bull like this because “he is stubborn.” Sgt. John Urquhart told The Seattle Times that passenger Terrance Neff, 57, added, “You have to be that way with cows.”
Bad Greed vs. Good Deed
After learning that Massachusetts drivers challenged more than 250,000 tickets last year, state legislators voted to charge drivers $25 to contest citations in the future, regardless of whether charges are dismissed or upheld. Lawmakers estimate the surcharge will add $5 million to state revenue, not counting any money collected from fines. Explaining the change was necessary to offset an $18 million shortfall by the state’s trial courts, State Sen. Stephen M. Brewer told the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, “Is it something I’m happy about? Heck, no. But there’s a mountain of things we’re not happy about.”
The sheriff’s office in Livingston Parish, La., announced it was “discontinuing its participation in the parish’s photo-enforcement program, commonly referred to as ‘the speeder van,’” after the Carroll Baptist Church had a photo-radar van towed from church property. It had been parked without permission. The sheriff’s statement noted that the representative of Australia’s Redflex Traffic Systems, whose vehicles issue automated tickets for between $100 and $464, objected to paying the towing fees to recover its vehicle and made “improper comments” to the towing company employees. Since parish officials approved the contract with Redflex a year ago, residents had complained because it parked its unattended vehicles on private property, including on lawns. Law enforcement officials didn’t embrace Redflex, either, ticketing its vehicles for petty but valid violations. In April, the sheriff’s office had to refund 2,488 tickets after Redflex unfairly set its speeder van where the speed limit suddenly dropped from 70 to 60 mph.
Ironies Illustrated
Online bookseller Amazon.com used the wireless network that sends digital books to its Kindle readers to remotely delete some digital editions of two titles without notice from the Kindles of customers who bought them. One of the books was 1984, George Orwell’s novel where government censors erase all news articles embarrassing to Big Brother. The other was Orwell’s Animal Farm. People who bought the rescinded editions reacted with indignation, according to The New York Times. “I never imagined that Amazon actually had the right, the authority or even the ability to delete something that I had already purchased,” Charles Slater, who bought the book last month, said.
Fire interrupted a cremation in Hampton, N.H. Foster’s Daily Democrat reported intense heat from the crematorium apparently sparked the blaze, which spread through the wooden roof structure of the Remick & Gendron Funeral Home.
Compiled from the nation’s press by Roland Sweet. Authentication on demand. Submit items, citing date and source, to P.O. Box 8130, Alexandria VA 22306.