Archive
Tacoma security officer attacked by shoplifter www.privateofficer.com
Tacoma Wa. Feb 12 2011 Local police arrested a man late Thursday night after he attacked a security guard at a Pacific Avenue Walgreens store, Tacoma police report.
Police said the security guard attempted to detain the man for shoplifting at 11:18 p.m. but the man physically assaulted the guard before fleeing the area in a car.
Tacoma police quickly located the car but the driver failed to pull over. A slow speed pursuit began until the driver finally stopped.
He was arrested for investigation of strong-arm robbery, police said.
The security guard at the store at 5602 Pacific Avenue was treated at the scene for minor injuries by the Tacoma Fire Department.
Source:thenewstribune.com
Cincinnati police officer gets community service for public indecency charge www.privateofficer.com
BATAVIA OH Feb 12 2011 — A Cincinnati police officer convicted of public indecency will do community service for his crime.
Robert McDonough III was arrested in May 2010 after officers said McDonough pulled his zipper down while not wearing underwear, then went up to several people inside the Eastgate Mall Sears in an attempt to determine who would tell him that his zipper was down.
McDonough was tracked down through a purchase he made at the store earlier.
A judge sentenced McDonough to 64 hours of community service on Wednesday.
His current status with the Cincinnati police is unknown. He was one of several sergeants demoted to a lower rank during budget cuts in 2009 and was assigned to desk duty after his arrest last year.
Source:WLWT
Police investigate $26,000 theft from Chicago ATM www.privateofficer.com
Chicago IL Feb 12 2011 Police are investigating the disappearance of a large sum of cash from a local ATM machine.
Security officers at the Hyatt Regency McCormick place, 2233 S. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, say the machine is missing $26,000.
An employee of the armored car service Pendum Inc. noticed the missing money during a cash load Jan. 20 and told the Minnesota-based firm Transaction Systems that operates the ATM.
Last week, an employee for Transaction Systems notified Chicago Police about the lost money. The employee said that Pendum Inc. personnel have exclusive access to this particular ATM.
Right now it’s a complete mystery and police are investigating.
Carlisle High School teacher charged with sex crimes with students www.privateofficer.com
Carlisle police arrested Alexander Patrick Dyer, 34, of Indianola on Wednesday on charges of sexual exploitation by a school employee and lascivious sexual contact with a minor.
Dyer has taught for a decade, the last three years in Carlisle, according to the district’s website.
Most recently, he taught concert band, jazz band and marching band at the northeast Warren County school.
He was not listed as being in custody at the Warren County Jail late Wednesday.
Efforts to reach Dyer by telephone late Wednesday were unsuccessful.
Carlisle Superintendent Tom Lane also could not be reached for comment.
Warren County Attorney John Criswell declined to comment on the case.
Source:DesMoines News
Michigan judge questioned-security guard arrested in computer hacking www.privateofficer.com
INKSTER Mi Feb 12 2011 – One day after a Channel 7 Action News investigation into Inkster Judge Sylvia James, and how she runs the city’s 22nd District Court, there are new questions about the people who work for her, and charges that should keep them out of the courthouse altogether.
It’s clear that Judge James controls what happens in her court room, including what people can and can’t wear and who works for her.
Chief Judge James told Action News, “…the court employees are court employees, but they are paid by the funding unit.”
That funding unit she’s talking about is the city. But the judge chooses her people, like long-time security officer Mike Green. On Monday, Green was charged with four felonies for breaking into a court-house computer, and stealing documents for an upcoming trial.
Despite those charges, and the maximum sentences they carry of up to 22 years in state prison, Green was back at work in Judge James’s court, the day after he was arraigned on those charges. Judge James’s own personnel policy says being charged with a felony is reason for dismissal. So why is Green still on the job? Judge James has yet to return our calls.
The Inkster City Council tells Action News they have been concerned about Green for years. It’s insurance and liability that drive their concerns. Green wears a gun on his job as court officer, but they say he’s never completed gun safety training, which is required of city employees.
Inkster Mayor Hilliard Hampton tells Action News, “The court is covered by the insurance of the city. If we’re going to issue money for a gun, there has to be some sort of qualification, annual qualification for those sort of things. After all, at the end of the day, we are responsible.”
Our sources confirm it was Green’s loaded gun that Judge Sylvia James had inside her carry-on luggage as she tried to board a plane at metro airport in August of 2007. The council is also responsible for the gun Judge James has purchased for herself with court funds—she also has not completed the city’s gun safety training.
Action News spoke to the State Supreme Court administors and they tell us that Green should not be working for the court. They also say they will look into other questions we put to them about James and how she runs her court.
Source:WXYZ
Aflac Insurance security guard protects the ducks www.privateofficer.com
Columbus GA Feb 12 2011
Those ubiquitous quacking ducks in the Aflac commercials may get the on-screen fame, but six real live ducks actually live on the company’s campus in Columbus, Ga. And ever since security guard Bill Zimmerman was assigned to the area that encompasses the duck pond, he’s become the official company caretaker of the animals.
Each morning he lets the ducks out of their overnight pens; then he cleans their beds while they hang out all day on Aflac’s quarter-acre pond. At night, when everybody goes home, the ducks do, too: Zimmerman treks to the pond, where the ducks waddle up to him to be fed, watered, and put to bed. He says they know the sight of him, and come running when they spot him. “They get used to the blue uniform,” he says.
Zimmerman loves his feathered friends. “It’s like caring for a kid — that’s what I call them is my kids,” he says. “If I have to leave Aflac for any reason, hopefully they’d let me take one of the ducks with me.”
Unarmed security guard held at gunpoint during store robbery www.privateofficer.com
Salt Lake City Utah Feb 12 2011 An unarmed security guard had a close call when the downtown Salt Lake City convenience store he was shopping in was abruptly robbed by a gunman Thursday night.
Salt Lake City police Detective Lisa Pascadlo said the robber, wearing a bandana, forced the man to the floor of the Maverik store at 206 W. North Temple and searched him for a weapon after initially thinking he was a police officer.
The gunman let the security officer alone after a clerk and another person in the store convinced him the man was not armed. The robber then demanded cash from the till and cigarettes, and fled on a woman’s mountain bike about 11:35 p.m. Thursday.
The suspect was described as wearing a tan or yellow hooded sweatshirt with lightly striped sleeves.
Wynn Resort executive found dead in Las Vegas www.privateofficer.com
LAS VEGAS NV Feb 12 2011 (AP) – Authorities are investigating the death of a 41-year-old casino executive in a luxury residential high-rise off the Las Vegas Strip.
The Clark County coroner’s office says Sharla Perry was pronounced dead about 2 a.m. Thursday. A cause of death was pending autopsy and toxicology results.
Las Vegas police Officer Barbara Morgan said Friday there were no obvious signs of foul play, but due to Perry’s age detectives were investigating.
Perry was director of VIP services for the Wynn Las Vegas resort.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports she was discovered at the Turnberry Towers late Wednesday, several hours after security officers made “verbal contact” with someone in the apartment.
The Review-Journal says Perry had a medical condition and her mother had asked officers to see if she was OK.
Hospital security’s tip leads police to serial muderer www.privateofficer.com
Las Vegas NV Feb 12 2011 A trucker suspected in a series of rapes and murders of prostitutes across the United States has been arrested in Las Vegas, where he allegedly confessed to one of the murders, Denver police said on Thursday.
Chester Leroy Todd, 66, has been a fugitive since 1996 when a first-degree murder warrant was issued for him in the strangulation death of Sherri Majors, Denver Police spokesman Sonny Jackson said.
The 27-year-old woman’s beaten and strangled body was found adjacent to railroad tracks in downtown Denver on March 17, 1996, a day after witnesses at a pool hall saw her accept a ride from Todd.
His abandoned tractor-trailer rig was discovered at a Sioux City, Iowa truck stop days later. Evidence recovered from the truck linked Todd to Majors’ murder, police said.
In 2006, the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program issued a bulletin saying the agency was compiling a list of suspects in a series of rapes and murders of prostitutes who frequented truck stops in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Indiana and Pennsylvania.
Todd was the only one named as a suspect in the crimes.
According to a Las Vegas police report, Todd, who was living under the alias James Diamond, was treated at a Las Vegas hospital last month when he allegedly “confessed about a homicide in Denver, Colorado around 1996″ to a person at the hospital.
Hospital security alerted Las Vegas police, who questioned Todd. Once police determined his identity, a records search showed the outstanding warrant for the Denver murder and Todd was arrested.
Todd is being held without bond in Nevada pending extradition to Colorado, which could take up to 90 days depending on whether he fights extradition, said Lynn Kimbrough of the Denver District Attorney’s Office.
Man charges $20,000 of gas on stolen sheriff’s credit card www.privateofficer.com
YAKIMA WA Feb 12 2011 — When a Yakima County sheriff’s car went to auction a while back, a sheriff’s department gas credit card was left inside.
Over the next seven months, someone used the card to pump $20,000 worth of gas.
On Monday, a Selah man has been arrested for investigation of the theft.
KAPP reports the theft was discovered Sunday by a suspicious gas station employee who checked the card with the sheriff’s office.
Selah is just a few miles northeast of Yakima.
FBI shuts down major casino scamming organization www.privateofficer.com
Atlanta GA Feb 12 2011
FBI PRESS RELEASE The co-founder of a criminal enterprise known as the Tran Organization pled guilty last month to scamming casinos across the country out of millions of dollars, bringing to a close one of the largest card-cheating cases in recent FBI history.
Van Thu Tran, 45, along with her husband, parents, extended family, and others, participated in a surprisingly simple scheme to cheat casinos at the gaming tables.
Tran and her husband were dealers at an Indian tribal casino in San Diego in 2002 when they devised a plan to use a “false shuffle” to track cards and thereby guarantee successful betting.
“Initially, it was a pretty bare bones operation,” said Special Agent Peter Casey, one of several case agents who worked the Tran investigation out of our San Diego Field Office.
Over time, the couple branched out from an Asian card game called Pai Gow to blackjack, and they enlisted many others in the scheme—including dealers at other casinos—with the promise of easy money.
For awhile, the money was easy, because some of the tribal casinos’ security was not yet sophisticated enough to pick up on the scam. Before the ring was rounded up in 2007, some 29 casinos from Canada to Mississippi were hit for about $7 million.
Here’s how the card cheat worked:
When signaled, the crooked dealer would make a false shuffle. Through sleight-of-hand techniques that security cameras and pit bosses failed to notice, the false shuffle created a “slug”—a group of played cards whose order would not change when the rest of the cards were shuffled. When the slug next came to the top of the deck, members of the ring recognized the card pattern and knew how to bet.
“It’s a sophisticated scam, but at the same time it’s simple,” Casey said, “And that’s why it worked so well. The organization controlled every aspect of the table.”
The ring eventually began using card trackers, nearby spotters who used concealed devices to relay the order of the played cards to someone at a remote location who instantly entered the information into a computer. When the slug reappeared, the computer operator picked up the pattern and relayed it to the spotter, who then secretly signaled the bettors. One finger on a cigarette, for example, might mean bet, two fingers might mean stand pat. “It was almost like a catcher giving signs to the pitcher in baseball,” Casey said. In one instance, the ring won $900,000 in blackjack during a single sitting.
Some of the casinos realized they were being cheated, even if they weren’t sure exactly how, and called the authorities. We opened a case in 2004. But even as the Indian tribal casinos beefed up their security, the Tran Organization was hitting other casinos in the U.S. and Canada.
All the while, the ringleaders were living large. Tran and her husband had two homes in San Diego and property in Vietnam. They drove high-end vehicles and bought expensive jewelry—most of which was seized and forfeited when they were arrested.
We broke the case with the help of surveillance, wiretaps, an undercover operative posing as a crooked dealer, and strong partnerships with Internal Revenue Service investigators, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, the California Department of Justice, and the Ontario Provincial Police.
To date, of the 47 individuals indicted in the case, 42 have entered guilty pleas to various charges.
