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Police charge man in shoplifting scheme www.privateofficer.com
Parris H. Phillips, 40, of Roxbury was found to be in possession of almost $1,000 worth of merchandise believed to have been stolen from several stores at the South Shore Plaza.
The police department reported that Officer Paul Venuto was monitoring the parking lots on the afternoon of Dec. 2 when he saw Phillips enter the mall with what appeared to be two empty shopping bags. A short time later, Phillips exited the mall with the bags that now appeared to be full.
According to Deputy Chief Russell Jenkins, Phillips removed clothing from the bags, placed the items into the trunk of his vehicle, and reentered the mall with the two bags that were now empty.
“Phillips again exited the mall a short time later, removed additional clothing from the bags, and placed the items into his trunk,” Jenkins said. “He then reentered the mall for a third time, exited a short time later, and repeated the same process at his trunk.”
WThe officer was joined by several others and they proceeded to stop and question Phillips and officers observed that one of the shopping bags was lined with tape commonly used to bypass security sensors affixed to clothing,” Jenkins said. “The officers searched Phillips’s trunk and discovered merchandise from Baby Gap, Chico’s, Bebe, and Banana Republic. Also discovered in the vehicle were three additional shopping bags all lined with tape.”
He was placed under arrest and charged with two counts of receiving stolen property over $250, two counts of receiving stolen property under $250, and possession of burglarious tools after officers discovered four pairs of pliers, commonly used by shoplifters to remove security sensors, in the vehicle, Jenkins said.
Wal-Mart to air Homeland Security video at check-outs www.privateofficer.com
Nashville TN Dec 7 2010 Walmart shoppers will soon be watching a video at the store’s checkout stands created by Homeland Security. The video has Secretary Napolitano of the US Department of Homeland Security asking shoppers to report anything suspicious either in the store or out in the parking.
Napolitano says in the video that “Homeland security begins with hometown security.” She continues to say “If you see something suspicious, in the parking lot, or in the store, say something immediately. Report suspicious activity to your local police or sheriff. If you need help, ask a Walmart manager for assistance. Thank you for doing your part to help keep our hometowns safe.”
This public service announcement is part of Homeland Security’s “If you see something, say something” campaign. The New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority was partly funded with $13 million grant and were the first to implement this campaign.
The Mall of America in Minnesota has also joined in the Homeland Security campaign to keep citizens on patrol for suspected terrorists. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is also participating in the campaign at airports across the US.
Security round up shoplifters in New City www.privateofficer.com
Over this past weekend, police said at least eight people were charged in connection with separate shoplifting incidents at the town’s major shopping areas in Nanuet and West Nyack.
On Saturday, police said an 18-year-old New City woman was accused of taking $386 worth of merchandise from the Macy’s department store at Palisades Center in West Nyack at about 1:30 p.m. Police said the woman was charged with petty larceny and released pending a Jan. 19 hearing in Clarkstown Town Court in New City.
At 3 p.m. on Saturday, police said Ryanne Hunter, 23, of Nyack, was arrested in connection with the theft of 11 items worth $64 at the Target department store at Palisades Center. Hunter was charged with petty larceny and was released pending a Dec. 22 hearing in Town Court.
At 2:45 p.m. on Saturday, police said Gail Sporbert, 46, of Highland Falls, was arrested in connection with the theft of $65 worth of merchandise from the Sephora store at Palisades Center. Sporbert was charged with petty larceny and released pending a Dec. 22 hearing in Town Court.
At 4:45 p.m. on Saturday, police said Ciera Norfleet, 20, of Nanuet, was arrested in connection with the theft of $381 worth of clothing and electronics from the Target department store at Palisades Center. Norfleet was charged with petty larceny and was released pending a Dec. 20 Town Court hearing.
At 8 p.m. on Saturday, police said Jessica Pierre, 20, of Spring Valley, was arrested in connection with the theft of $45 worth of merchandise from the Sears department store at the Nanuet Mall. Pierre was charged with petty larceny and released pending a Town Court hearing in January.
At 2:25 p.m. on Saturday, police said Kenneth Tazurik, 50, of Yonkers was arrested in connection with the theft of $95 worth of merchandise from the Target department store at Palisades Center. He was charged with petty larceny and released pending a Dec. 22 hearing in Town Court.
At 9:30 p.m. on Friday, an 18-year-old West Nyack woman was charged with petty larceny in connection with the theft of $49 worth of merchandise from the JC Penny department store at Palisades Center. She was released pending a Town Court hearing.
Also on Friday, a 16-year-old boy was accused of petty larceny in connection with the theft of two bracelets worth $160 at the Macy’s department store at the Nanuet Mall. The boy was released pending a Jan. 3 Town Court hearing.
Source:Patch News
Man arrested after he threatens to kill security officer www.privateofficer.com
Officers had to make not one but two trips to the local bar, after an out-of-control customer allegedly became aggressive with bar employees. Francisco Javier Carrillo was arrested early yesterday morning at a north side bar, where he allegedly threatened to kill the security guard then attacked him.
Carrillo was kicked out of the bar for being rude and aggressive with the bar staff. Police were initially called out the first time, but after Carrillo refused to leave the parking lot, officers were called out again. Carrillo was arrested for criminal trespassing and assault on a security officer.
New Orleans hotels sues security company for negligence www.privateofficer.com
The Warwick Corporation filed the lawsuit against Blackhawk Protection Service LLC Nov. 30 in Orleans Parish District Court. Blackhawk’s insurance providers are also named as defendants in this case.
Warwick says it hired Blackhawk Protection in March 2007 to provide security for the Warwick Hotel on Gravier. In December 2009 Warwick says staff was contacted by the New Orleans Police Department and told of a break-in and burglary at the hotel.
The thieves allegedly broke into the hotel and stole copper piping, televisions and furniture, among other things.
Warwick is suing Blackhawk and its insurance carriers for negligence and faulty performance. The company is asking for an unspecified amount of money to cover the cost of the stolen items, damages and attorney fees.
Attorneys Jerald L. Album and Michael T. Wawrzycki, of Metairie, are representing Warwick. They ask for a jury trial.
Armored car robbed in St Louis www.privateofficer.com
The robber may have stolen as much as $18,000, a police source said. The male driver of the armored car was not injured in the robbery, which happened about noon.
The robber is described as a black man about 35-45 years of age, 5-foot-10 and 215 pounds. He was wearing a blue puffy coat with gray hoodie at the time of the robbery. He ran north from the scene.
Soldier’s wife found dead at Fort Campbell www.privateofficer.com
FORT CAMPBELL, Ky.Dec 7 2010 — Military officials are investigating the death of the wife of a U.S. Army soldier on the Fort Campbell post this weekend.
According to a news release Monday, Fort Campbell police and emergency workers responded to a 911 call on Sunday afternoon and pronounced 21-year-old Linzi R. Jenks dead in her home on the post on the Tennessee-Kentucky state line.
Fort Campbell spokesman Rick Rzepka said the cause of death is under investigation by special agents with the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command. A spokesman for Army Criminal Investigation also declined to provide details while the investigation was ongoing.
Rzepka said he could not release the name of the soldier Jenks is married to but said he is an enlisted soldier assigned to the rear detachment of the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division. Rzepka said Jenks has two children.
Jenks’ grandmother in Indiana told Channel 4 News Linzi Jenks is married to Robert Jenks and that the couple’s two sons are 3 1/2 months and 18 months old. The grandmother said authorities are holding Robert Jenks.
Brittany Camp, a friend of Linzi Jenks, said the couple met while studying at a school in New Albany, Ind. Camp said Linzi Jenks was happy and “the biggest sweetheart.”
Police killed more often in car crashes than gunfire www.privateofficer.com
Baltimore MD Dec 7 2010 When we think about police dying in the line of duty, we tend to flash to a thought of a criminal maliciously gunning down an officer.
But a more common fate for law enforcement officers is to be killed in a vehicle collision. According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, as of last week there had been 70 officers killed nationwide in vehicle incidents compared with 54 killed by gunfire in 2010. Crash fatalities among officers were up 49 percent over the same period in 2009. The majority are killed in crashes involving a single moving vehicle.
The Baltimore Police Department has lost two of its own to such crashes in recent months. In September, Officer James E. Fowler III died when his Chevy truck went off a road in central Pennsylvania while on his way to a police training course at Penn State University. Less than a month later, Officer Thomas Portz Jr. was killed when his patrol car ran into a fire engine parked on U.S. 40 while responding to a call.
There is no denying these officers’ service. Nor is there any doubt about the tragedy of their deaths. But now that the funerals are over, it would be a mistake to brush aside the disturbing questions raised by these crashes. Not about two individuals but about the police department’s training and culture when it comes to operating motor vehicles.
In neither case is there anything to indicate anyone other than the driver was at fault.
Fowler drove off U.S. 22 near Lewistown, Pa., Sept. 27 and hit a berm. Baltimore police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the crash was “weather-related.”
Portz was answering a call about an injured person in the street when his patrol car hit the fire truck at a speed Guglielmi estimated at 70 mph. He was killed and four firefighters were injured.
In the days immediately after such losses, nobody wants to dwell too much on the errors that led to needless deaths. But at some point, the city and the department should take a hard look at how its officers drive — and give an accounting to the mayor, the City Council and the public.
In Fowler’s case, blaming the weather avoids hard facts. It was early fall. There was no ice or snow on the highway. We’re talking about rain. Every driver, police officer or not, is expected to drive at an appropriate speed and muster the required concentration to keep a vehicle on the road even in miserable conditions.
The Oct. 20 Portz case is even more disturbing — and not just because no injured person was found. It raises serious questions about how the department trains its officers to respond to emergencies and how it reacts to fatalities when they do happen.
Guglielmi gave the standard defense of the officer’s apparent decision to rush to the scene at high speed. “If it’s your daughter or your mother having a heart attack, you want the police there in two seconds,” he said.
If you weigh the risks of an officer driving to the scene at 50 mph versus racing there at 70 mph for a report of an injury, I don’t see how you don’t come down on the side of the slower speed. Driving at high speeds puts the officer, the public and — as it turned out — other first responders at risk. A delay of two or three minutes in an officer’s arrival would seem to be a minimal risk to the injured person.
The spokesman declined to second-guess the decision to drive to the scene at that speed and speculated that Portz might have been distracted.
“We don’t know if he sneezed. We don’t know what happened,” Guglielmi said. Crashing under those conditions, he said, doesn’t represent a flaw in training.
With all due respect, it would. Drivers are expected to retain control in the face of distraction — even a sneeze.
The fact that an officer would feel compelled to drive so fast to a fairly routine call makes me wonder what messages were absorbed at the police academy and in the department itself. Don’t police realize their driving is scaring people?
Guglielmi said the city has determined that so far this year there have been 224 police-involved crashes in Baltimore that the officer could have prevented. He said that’s not bad considering the police log up to 1.2 million miles a year. Maybe, but a better message to come out of the commissioner’s office would be that it’s 224 too many.
On PoliceOne.com, Capt. Travis Yates of the Tulsa, Okla., Police Department, a national expert on police driving, was unsparing of his profession in an article called “How We Die — the Untold Story.”
“I fear that we have somehow minimized these collisions by calling them ‘accidents’ and throwing our hands in the air as if we can’t do anything. Whatever we’re doing, it’s not working,” he wrote. “I do not shy away from placing blame square on the shoulders of police chiefs and sheriffs for the failure to train their officers.”
When I asked Guglielmi about whether Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld had taken any particular initiatives in the field of police driving safety, he couldn’t think of any.
Perhaps it’s time the commissioner took some steps to send a strong message through the ranks — as Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier did in the 1990s.
When it comes to driving, the officers who best protect the public are the ones who protect themselves.
Source:Baltimore Sun
Shooting at Alabama Wal-Mart leaves one dead www.privateofficer.com
HUNTSVILLE, Ala.Dec 7 2010 — Police say a Tennessee man killed a man and wounded a woman in a Walmart parking lot in Alabama before fleeing back to his home and trying to shoot himself.
Huntsville police spokesman Harry Hobbs identified the suspect as 44-year-old Luke Bates of Taft, Tenn. Police believe Bates shot and killed 25-year-old Stan Ryan Malone on Monday and wounded 41-year-old Martha Ann White of New Market, Ala., outside the Huntsville store where the two victims worked.
Police say Bates fled back to his home about 25 miles north in Tennessee, and a family member found him there with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Hobbs said White is in stable condition. He said Bates is in critical condition.
Hobbs said White and Bates were once in a relationship but were not longer dating.
O’Hare Airport officers under seige since new shipping rules www.privateofficer.com
Chicago IL. Dec 7 2010 New shipping regulations put in place by the Department of Homeland Security led to the seizure of 30,000 Cuban cigars at O’Hare International Airport, which were flown in from Switzerland, U.S. Customs officials said Monday.
Chicago Customs and Border Protection officers have been “under siege” over the past two weeks as Swiss companies are now forced to ship packages on cargo planes rather than passenger jets, officials said.
Seventy-thousand more cigars are sitting in Customs’ storage as officers work their way through piles of boxes containing the illegal shipments, which arrived at the airport over the past two weeks, said Brian Bell, a Customs spokesman.
On Nov. 8 the Department of Homeland Security banned shipments of small packages weighing over 16 ounces on passenger flights, about a week after two explosive packages on a Chicago-bound flight from Yemen were intercepted.
“The Swiss post had no way to move their mail. They had to contract on cargo planes, so they stockpiled until they could get flights into the Unites States,” Bell said. “All the sudden there are all these yellow and brown boxes and they are all cigars.”
Customs officials said before the new regulations they would typically seize a few boxes of cigars a week.
About 700 shipments have been seized over the past two weeks, with 2,000 more waiting to be processed, Bell said.
“They just kept coming and coming,” Bell said. “The next day rolls around and there are more and more of them.”
The “popular contraband” will be destroyed in an industrial incinerator, he said.
Officials said many Swiss online retailers have statements on their websites stating that they have no problem shipping the Cuban cigars to the United States.
“(Swiss) individuals who were buying them from Cuba and would take 100 or 200 orders to the post office,” Bell said. “Now they had to wait to get space on a cargo flight once their order piles up.”
Bell said he researched the prices of some of the seized cigars, which ranged from $10 up to $55 apiece.
“Our officers stationed at CBP mail facilities routinely discover and seize a variety of contraband arriving from all over the world, but this is the first time in Chicago we have seen this level of activity involving illegal cigars,” said David Murphy, Chicago BDP Director of Field Operations.
The U.S. government banned the importation of Cuban goods or services in 1963 under the Trade with the Enemy Act, according to Customs officials.
“Prior to November 8, nine out of 10 times you were flying with postage on your flight,” Bell said.
Letter class mail is still shipped on passenger flights, as long as the parcels weigh less than 16 ounces.
“If we have a company purchasing the cigars, we will investigate them,” Bell said. “We are definitely putting a hurt on a couple companies.”
Source:www.dailyherald.com
