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Charlotte Fox News Director Arrested For Theft
CHARLOTTE, NC Dec 22 2010 – Police charged the news director at Fox Charlotte for allegedly stealing items from a grocery store Sunday morning, and they say this isn’t the first time it has happened.
The most recent alleged incident occurred at the Harris Teeter (store #30) located at 3333 Pineville-Matthews Road.
According to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, Ken White, 54, allegedly took several bags of chips, Coke products, water, and apples valued at $192.86, the police report said.
White was charged with misdemeanor larceny for items valued between $50-$199.
According to the police report, there have been three occasions between Dec. 10 and Dec. 17 in which Harris Teeter Loss Prevention employees observed White taking items from the store without paying.
The police report said, “The suspect [White] entered the store and loaded up a shopping cart with merchandise and then exited the store without making any attempt to render payment for same.”
White was booked at the Mecklenburg County Jail and released on a written promise to appear in court. He is scheduled to appear in court on Feb. 2.
Source: WBTV
FBI reports crime has dropped www.privateofficer.com
Overall violent crime fell 6.2% from the same period last year, according to the report, and the new numbers include a 7.1% decrease in homicide.
The statistics were released in the first official report on crime for 2010, and are viewed as encouraging by the FBI, which compiles crime reports from law enforcement agencies across the nation. In recent years, figures for the first half of the year have proved to be a good indicator of crime levels for the full year.
Robberies during the period were down 10.7%, motor vehicle thefts and arson declined 9.7%, rapes were down 6.2%, aggravated assaults were down 3.9%, and burglaries dropped 1.4%.
The FBI report does not give reasons for the drop in crime, but criminologists have recently indicated an aging population, along with ramped-up law enforcement, have contributed to the decline in recent years. The trend has surprised experts who have historically seen crime increase during difficult economic periods.
Although overall violent crime dropped in all regions of the country, the northeastern United States saw only a minuscule 0.2% overall decline. Meanwhile, violent crime dropped 7.8% in the South, and 7.2% in both the West and Midwest.
In the Northeast, reported homicides actually rose by 5.7%. That compares with a dramatic 12% decline in homicide in the South, and drops of 7.1% in the West and 6.3% in the Midwest.
The FBI said the largest declines in reported violence — at 8.3% — occurred in cities with populations of 500,000 to 1 million.
Nonviolent property crimes dropped in the first half of this year in those larger cities by 4.8%, while falling 2.8% nationally, the report showed.
Shoplifting gang captured in Oregon www.privateofficer.com
Tacoma WA Dec 21 2010 Police arrested four people suspected of stealing nearly $7,000 in merchandise from Tacoma Mall over the weekend.
Police said they arrested two teenage girls and two women, all from the Portland area, after they descended on the mall Saturday and began shoplifting. The thieves stole more than $5,500 in perfume and fragrances and $1,500 in clothes before a fragrance store security guard spotted them pilfering more merchandise and notified mall security and police.
Police spokesman Mark Fulghum said two of the four were arrested in the fragrance store.
The two others fled. One was found hiding in a large garbage bin. The other ran to a car in the parking lot where more suspected stolen items were found, Fulghum said.
The team of thieves might have hit six stores in all.
The women, who are 20 and 40, were booked into the Pierce County Jail on charges of organized retail theft with extenuating circumstances, a felony.
The girls, both 15, were booked into Remann Hall juvenile detention center on the same charge. Fulghum said police don’t know if they are related to the women. None of them are talking to police, he added.
Organized retail theft is more than simple shoplifting. Thieves work in groups, often connected by cell phones. Some act as lookouts, others distract staff while still more steal merchandise. The state Legislature passed the organized retail theft law recently to focus attention on the growing problem and increase penalties.
Two other women were identified by police in connection with the case but were not arrested because there was nothing tying them directly to the thefts, Fulghum said. He said police are reviewing surveillance video from the stores and mall and more arrests could be made.
Police said the stolen goods are being sorted out.
Source:www.thenewstribune.com
Church’s Chicken employee dies protecting co-workers during robbery www.privateofficer.com
Decatur GA Dec 22 2010 A Church’s Chicken employee shot Saturday night during an armed robbery died protecting two female co-workers, DeKalb police say.
The person is this still is believed to be the gunman who killed a Church’s employee, according to DeKalb police.
DeKalb Co. police handed out this frame-grab of a security video of robbery at Church’s Chicken on Friday. The person, with a No. 3 visible on his sleeve, in this still is believed to be the lookout in the heist, according to DeKalb police.
Investigators on Monday released surveillance captures of the two masked gunmen who entered the restaurant off Flakes Mill Road in Decatur. Police spokesman Jason Gagnon noted that the “look-out man” wore a jacket with the #3 on the sleeve, but otherwise there’s little to distinguish the two thieves.
They’re wanted in the death of 23-year-old Gary Andrews, who was shot multiple times in a back room of the restaurant around 9 p.m. He died while shielding two female co-workers from the fidgety gunmen as they opened the restaurant’s safe.
“[Andrews] was shot point blank,” Gagnon told the AJC. He died on the scene.
Gagnon said the surveillance footage didn’t reveal any altercation between Andrews and his assailants.
Author of pedophile book arrested in Fla. www.privateofficer.com
Pueblo County Fla Dec 22 2010 Florida officials filed an obscenity charge Monday against the author of a self-published how-to guide for pedophiles that was yanked from Amazon.com last month after it generated online outrage.
A Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office photo shows Philip Ray Greaves II. Florida officials filed an obscenity charge Monday against the author of a self-published how-to guide for pedophiles that was yanked from Amazon.com last month.
Colorado authorities arrested Philip Ray Greaves II at his home in Pueblo, Colo., on a Florida warrant that charges him with violating Florida’s obscenity law.
Polk Sheriff Grady Judd said his office was able to arrest Greaves on Florida charges because Greaves sold and mailed his book, “The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover’s Code of Conduct,” directly to undercover Polk deputies. Judd says Greaves even signed the book.
“He very proudly sold us his personal copy,” Judd told the Associated Press. “I was outraged by the content. It was clearly a manifesto on how to sexually batter children … You just can’t believe how absolutely disgusting it was.”
Laurie Shorter, spokeswoman for the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Department, said Greaves would be held in the county jail on the Florida charge. He was being booked Monday morning and it was unclear if he has an attorney. Judd said Greaves could be in Florida as early as Monday night.
“If he will waive extradition, it’s my goal for him to eat processed turkey on Christmas Day in the Polk County Jail,” Judd said.
Denver attorney David Lane, who has handled several high-profile First Amendment cases, said Florida could have a hard time extraditing Greaves. He is entitled to a hearing where he can argue he should not be sent there to face charges.
“The main question is whether what he’s accused of in Florida would be a crime in Colorado,” Lane said. “Obviously, it’s not a crime in Colorado because he hasn’t been arrested here.”
Writs of extradition — the paperwork necessary to send somebody to another state — are routinely signed by Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, a former Denver district attorney. But Lane, who is not affiliated with this case, said it involves a different set of issues.
“Most of other extradition cases present clear-cut cases, the defendant was dealing drugs in that other state or some other crime that is also illegal here,” Lane said.
Ritter’s spokesman, Evan Dreyer, did not immediately return a message.
Greaves has no criminal record, but his self-published book of advice on how to make sexual encounters with children safe caused a flap when it showed up on Amazon in November. The book was later removed from the site.
Judd, known throughout Florida as a crusader against child predators, said he was incensed when he heard about the book and that no one had arrested Greaves for selling it.
“What’s wrong with a society that has gotten to the point that we can’t arrest child pornographers and child molesters who write a book about how to rape a child?” Judd said.
The book included first-person descriptions of sexual encounters, purportedly written from a child’s point of view.
Greaves argues in the book that pedophiles are misunderstood, as the word literally means to love a child. He adds that it is only a crime to act on sexual impulses toward children, and offers advice that purportedly allows pedophiles to abide by the law.
Judd said he and his detectives got Greaves to sell the book to them for $50; he sent it through the mail and told officers it was his last copy.
“If we can get jurisdiction … we’re coming after you,” Judd said. “There’s nothing in the world more important than our children.”
Greaves is being charged with distribution of obscene material depicting minors engaged in conduct harmful to minors.
District school security officer disarms stabbing suspect www.privateofficer.com
Jeremiah I. Moser, 16, allegedly talked with and passed notes to a girl during a fifth-period class that warned of his desire to kill the stabbing victim, Moser’s arrest papers indicate.
“Now don’t going telling him or anybody else or I’m gonna kill you,” the note read, according to police.
It was just after the final bell on Friday that Moser, who is charged as an adult, allegedly carried out his threats by sinking a kitchen knife into the back of a 10th-grade boy, who police said Moser believed had “upset a female friend of his a few weeks prior to the incident.”
On Monday, Principal Patricia Burlingame “spoke from the heart” to the high school students in a live telecast to talk about what happened and to remind students to report threats of violence, district spokesman Tom Bradley said.
“She reiterated the importance of the students keeping the employees aware of any threats or rumors of violence,” Bradley said.
The student who was stabbed is recovering and cleared to return to school, although Bradley said the boy didn’t attend classes Monday and will likely opt to stay out of school until after the holiday break that begins Thursday.
According to police, Moser, who is 6 feet tall and weighs 200 pounds, had stashed a kitchen steak knife in his locker Friday and waited until the end of school, when he allegedly walked over to the stabbing victim and told him to walk over to the Fieldhouse.
As the stabbing victim was walking, police said he turned and saw Moser, who was walking behind him, pull out the knife from his right front pants pocket. The 10th-grade boy unsuccessfully tried to block Moser from stabbing him, police said.
The knife entered between the 10th and 11th thoracic vertabrae and went “laterally from the center of the back to the victim’s left side,” Moser’s arrest papers state. Police also pointed out that the attending doctor at Altoona Regional Health System, Altoona Hospital Campus, said had the knife gone straight into the boy, he “may have died.”
District security Officer Bob Johnston is credited with jumping in and disarming Moser before he could inflict further injury, police said.
Moser ultimately confessed to the stabbing, police said.
Moser, who is due to appear at Central Court on Wednesday for a preliminary hearing, remains in Blair County Prison in lieu of $50,000 cash bail. Among the charges he is facing are attempted homicide, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and recklessly endangering another person.
Source:Altoona Mirror
Alabama Target store employee charged with theft www.privateofficer.com
HUNTSVILLE, AL Dec 22 2010 — Decatur police on Monday arrested a Target store employee and charged him with stealing in excess of $2,500 from the store.
Decatur police said Terry Glenn Vickers Jr., who worked a register in the electronics department for a short time, was arrested Monday on 1st degree theft of property charges.
He was taken to the Decatur City Jail and later booked into the Morgan County jail on a $5,000 bond
Source:AL.com
Armored truck accident injures guard www.privateofficer.com
MALOTT WA Dec 22 2010 – A security guard suffered a head injury Dec. 21 when the armored car in which he was riding in tipped onto its side just south of Malott.
Jason Lee Pearce, 29, was taken to Mid-Valley Hospital, Omak, the Washington State Patrol said.
Brandon R. Deliyiannis, 23, Wenatchee, who was driving the armored vehicle was not hurt.
The armored truck was southbound on U.S. Highway 97 when it went off the road and rolled onto its side 20 feet off the road, the patrol said. The cause is under investigation.
The truck received $5,000 damage.
Both men were wearing seatbelts.
Jacksonville police officer commits suicide www.privateofficer.com
Authorities said Officer Kevin Meyer died in the hospital on Friday as a result of his suicide attempt.
Meyer was under investigation by JSO’s Integrity Unit. On Dec. 2, investigators went to Meyer’s home on the Southside and found him unresponsive. He was then rushed to the hospital.
Police have not yet disclosed the nature of the investigation into Meyer.
Source:News4Jax.com
Student arrested selling brownies laced with marijuana www.privateofficer.com
Park Ridge Police Cmdr. Lou Jogmen said Maine South’s school resource officer and deans were informed that the girl, a student, was allegedly attempting to sell marijuana-laced brownies to other students for $10 each.
The student was sent to the Dean’s Office, where five brownies were found inside her backpack, Jogmen said. According to the police report the student admitted the brownies contained marijuana, he said.
The brownies will require crime-lab testing to determine the amount of marijuana they contain, Jogmen said.
The teenager faces a charge of possession of marijuana with intent to deliver and is awaiting a petition to Juvenile Court. She was released to a parent following her arrest.
