Unlike most other area police departments, Overland Park doesn't allow citizen ride-alongs. That is, you can request and receive a ride with an on-duty police officer in most cities, and see law enforcement in your city first-hand. Not in OP.
Recently I've ridden with Kansas City and Kansas City, KS officers, and attended an 11 p.m. - 3 a.m. sobriety checkpoint in Independence.
Overland Park declined my request to ride with one of the "saturation" patrols tomorrow night, on New Year's Eve. But OPPD PIO Jim Weaver invited me to attend the roll-call briefing before that event at 10 p.m.
I'll be there, and will post whatever I can tell you.
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Friday, December 30, 2005
Another vicious Chihuahua attack
If I posted Was pit bull attack child abuse? and Guilty: Another pit bull owner, I'm duty-bound to post this:
- FREMONT, Calif. (AP) — A pack of angry Chihuahuas attacked a police officer who was escorting a teenager home after a traffic stop, authorities said. Story
I'm also duty-bound to show the nicer side of Chihuahuas. So, from the library of the Kansas City Star, here's a pic that shows how appealing these little pets can be:
Happy New Year, everyone!
Shop til you drop: 15+ years for meth
Too late to get into the meth business by scurrying around convenience stores and buying pseudoephedrine - Eddie R. Staggs has already thought of that; now, like him, it's locked up.
From U.S. Attorney Todd Graves' office:
KCPD wagon drivers: Unheralded
It occurred to me that when the two Kansas City police paddy wagon drivers ran into each other on a call the other night, that was the only time I could remember them making the news.
So I looked at the last five years of KCPD annual reports to see if the department promoted wagon drivers as well as it did other units. Lookie here:
Yes, bagpipe players get more picture time than wagon drivers in the department's annual publication. And wheelmen (motorcycle cops)? There's everything but their kids' pictures in there. Here's the closest picture I found to a police wagon:
Conclusion:
- The wagon driver, like other police officers, is your friend. Even if he/she is putting you in the back of the vehicle.
- Snaps to the KCPD for posting 15 years of annual reports (with tons of stats) online - something no other area police department comes close to.
Identity theft, online and off
This person is worried about credit-card fraud and identity theft. It's been a busy holiday shopping season, and those issues are in the news. The message seems to be:
- Check your credit-card accounts online, don't wait for the statement to arrive. Time is money in these scams.
- It's not enough to rip those junk-mail credit-card come-ons in two and toss 'em. Get a shredder ($20-$30) and shred 'em!
The threat of online fraud and identity theft may be scarier, but victims more often say it happened the old-fashioned way - their wallet, purse or mail was stolen, or their trash dumpster-dived.
Some stories today and this week:
Safeguarding your identity - McClatchy News Service
Many companies advocate rules on identity theft - LA Times - data companies losing consumers' personal data, what to do?
Feds charge man with identity theft - Seattle Times
Identity theft: Report it quickly - Indianapolis Star
The upside of credit card theft - Motley Fool
Fake 'Fresh Prince' back in jail - eonline
The Federal Trade Commission - logo: "Protecting America's Consumers" - contracted out a telephone survey of 4,057 adults in 2003 that resulted in this fascinating 93-page Identity Theft Report, which has been widely quoted.
Other resources:
FTC Dot Cons Jukebox - well-presented info on a wide array of modern frauds, scams, schemes and rip-offs.
FTC credit-card do's and don'ts
FTC Congressional testimony on identity theft and Social Security numbers - subcommittee discussion of FTC-sponsored telephone survey.
Good MSNBC story about this from early this year
Leawood PD activity as of 4:43 a.m.
Daily report from Leawood police - now in PDF format. If anyone wants me to continue to post this report in Microsoft Word format, leave a comment here or email me a greeves@kcstar.com.
Open 12-28-05 9:22 p.m. to 4:43 a.m. today
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Probation in brain-damage beating
Former NFL linebacker Steve Towle (left) of Lee's Summit was placed on probation and fined $125,000 Wedneday for slamming a fellow motorist to the ground in a traffic argument Sept. 7:
- (Victim Rudy) Babbitt, 49, was taken to a hospital, placed on a ventilator and underwent at least two surgeries. He eventually was transferred to a rehabilitation hospital and now is recovering at home.
- Babbitt’s mother, Gladys Babbitt, said he still has a long rehabilitation period ahead. He can’t use his right hand and continues to struggle to speak clearly, she said.
Earlier posts:
Sept. 09 - Don't
call it road rage
Sept. 10 - Road-rage
story make take darker turn
Sept. 13 - Getting
smart about NFL violence
Sept. 14 - Authors:
It's the NFL's fault
Back in September, I interviewed sports-crime expert Jeff Benedict (right), co-author of the 1998 book, Pros and Cons: The Criminals Who Play in the NFL:
Q: Has this problem gotten better, worse or about the same since you wrote your book?
BENEDICT: I have not kept a good pulse on what’s going on in the NFL. I did a book a year or two ago about the same problem in the NBA, so I had some revisits to the NFL then. But I don’t have a real fresh sense of what’s going on right now.
I think I can say generally, though, that there’ve been some things that have improved and some things that haven’t. I’m not in a position to give you a statistical answer as to whether the crime rate has gone up or down since 1998.
What I can say more broadly is that, in general, professional athletes are increasingly finding themselves on the wrong side of police reports despite what I would consider greater scrutiny by the press in their off-the-field behavior.
Conventional wisdom might suggest that with the spotlight on them more – much more than it was in the 1970s, when Roger Staubach played and people didn’t really pay attention to this stuff – nowadays people do pay attention. It’s a subject of enormous interest, and the leagues invest an enormous amount of money and time in trying to do everything they can to prevent players from getting into these situations.
However, it keeps happening over and over again, and the severity of these offenses is rising, not shrinking. So can I tell you it’s 10% higher now than then? No. But if you look at the types of crimes that players are being charged with now, we’re seeing increasingly that they involve more serious instances of violence, use of weapons, sometimes it’s simple things like carrying unlicensed guns, passing through airports that aren’t allowed.
But the point is, I think that the professional sports leagues, particularly the NFL and the NBA, have a lot of work to do with their players.
Q. They haven’t fixed this problem by any stretch of the imagination, it sounds like.
BENEDICT: Well, I wouldn’t say they’ve fixed it, that’s for sure. But I also think you’ve got to give the leagues credit to the extent that they have implemented a lot of programs that are well-intended. I don’t think they’re just designed to present good PR, I think they earnestly have tried, because there’s a business incentive to do this, to try to do everything they can to prevent this stuff from happening.
Unfortunately, you can’t control what these players do 24-7. And a lot of times they are off the field and outside the reach of the coaches and administrators. And these guys get themselves into situations.
Awful-smelling turkey offal
I had to look up a word in the Star story today about the smelly plant in Carthage, MO:
- Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt on Wednesday ordered the temporary shutdown of a Carthage plant that turns turkey offal into oil because of the stench it emits.
Turkey what? But, according to the plant, this stuff is golden. It's not just turkey innards they can turn to oil, parent company Changing World Technology says. Other stuff they can make into oil:
- Tires
- Plastic bottles
- Harbor-dredged sediment
- Old computers
- Municipal sewage sludge
- Cornstalks
- Paper-pulp effluent
- Infectious medical waste
This is great. Now if they can just hold the smell down. And, maybe, hold the infectious medical waste?
Crime photo of the week
This is Richard Causey, former top accountant at Enron, arriving at court in Houston yesterday to plead guilty. I like this photo. There are a couple of other white-collar-crime execs pictured in The Star today. The business section's a regular police blotter. Maybe I'll make a photo montage.
Cell phone story no fun anymore
The story of the Blue Springs woman who supposedly swallowed a cell phone to keep it away from her boyfriend is a good lesson: there are two sides to every story.
Blue Springs police - and The Star, and this blog - reported the story based on only the boyfriend's account; the woman was in the hospital and couldn't talk. Here's the first page of the original police report with the officer's narrative:
- Reporting party stated other party didn't want him to have cell phone so she attempted to swallow it. Other party was transported to St. Mary's to have the cell phone removed.
Turns out, the case is a pretty nasty assault instead, allegedly. The suspect, who surrendered today, is pictured here.
