No-English Traffic Ticket
Can’t speak English? You better not be pulled over in Texas … Nearly forty people have gotten "no-English" traffic violation tickets:
The Dallas Police Department said it was embarrassed by what it calls a mistake by rookie Officer Gary Bromley after he stopped Ernestina Mondragon for making an illegal U-turn.
In addition for being cited for the U-turn violation, Mondragon received another ticket for being a "non-English speaking driver."
Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle issued an apology:
"We don’t have abilities to determine proficiency in any language, and we shouldn’t be doing it in the first place," Kunkle said. "I apologize to the Spanish-speaking Hispanic community."
After a review of the records, Kunkle said about a half-dozen officers had issued a total of 38 similar citations. He said police would recommend to the courts that any pending cases be dismissed.
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Police Tasered and Handcuffed ... an Emu!
Forget tranquilizer darts – that’s the stuff of Hollywood. Real police officers use taser, even on a wayward emu:
Authorities in Mississippi said they had to handcuff an emu and shock it with a Taser to remove the ostrich-like flightless bird from a roadway.
Oh, and they used handcuffs, too. I’m assuming they meant emu legcuffs: Link (Sadly, no photo of the cuffed emu)
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Bob Dylan Picked Up by Police
Legendary musician Bob Dylan had a brush with the police last month in New Jersey. Long Branch police officer Kristie Buble responded to a call about an “eccentric-looking old man” in a residential neighborhood. Buble approached the man and questioned him. He had no ID, and said he was Bob Dylan and was checking out a house that had a “for sale” sign. Buble later said,
“Now, I’ve seen pictures of Bob Dylan from a long time ago and he didn’t look like Bob Dylan to me at all. He was wearing black sweatpants tucked into black rain boots, and two raincoats with the hood pulled down over his head.
Buble decided to humor the old man who didn’t know the address of where he was staying, and gave him a ride to the hotel he described. There were tour buses parked there, and entourage members vouched for Dylan’s identity. They went so far as to produce his passport for the officer.
A police department source said Buble had taken her share of good-natured ribbing from some of the older officers.
“To really appreciate the story from our end, you have to see Kristie,” one cop said. “She looks like a 16-year-old kid, next to this living legend. It was unbelievable.”
Link -via Boing Boing
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Toddler Beat Cops at Hide-and-Seek
Natalie Jasmer was so good at hide-and-seek that her frantic family called the cops to help them look for the two-year-old toddler:
Natalie went missing Tuesday evening while playing the game with her brother and sisters and the best efforts of neighbors, police and firefighters called by her frantic parents weren’t enough to turn up the tot.
The terrifying ordeal for her parents ended happily after more than an hour of scouring the neighborhood around the 10th Street mobile home park where the Jasmers live.
In the end, it was the family dog that flushed her out.
“Copper found her,” Natalie’s brother Kenny Findley said, crediting the mutt with discovering the tiny girl asleep inside a drawer underneath the washing machine in the family’s home.
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Officer, Arrest This Dog
Photo via Duo de Hale [Flickr]
A man in Kenya found his dog had ate eaten his rent money. To get even, he brought his dog to the police station and ordered the police to arrest his dog. When they wouldn’t do it, he offered them a “fee” to get them to lock the dog up. The officers put the dog in jail and ended up getting fired for taking a bribe as a result. The dog was returned to his owner who now is trying to sell the pup and trying to figure out how to pay rent.
I’m somehow doubting the landlord will buy the old “my dog ate my rent money” story.
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To Protect and Serve (Doughnuts, That is)
When a local bakery got in economic trouble, the brave officers of the Michigan police department swooped in to protect it: they bought their favorite doughnut shop and re-named it Cops & Doughnuts!
"To Protect and Serve" has taken on a new meaning for the Clare Police Department.
When officers heard that the Clare City Bakery was closing its doors, they protected the business from certain demise.
Now, they’re serving up doughnuts. [...]
In addition to doughnuts, cookies, muffins, brownies, bread, fruit turnovers and other baked goods, the bakery sells mugs and T-shirts bearing the "Cops & Doughtnuts, 100 Percent Cop-Owned" logo on the backs, and "You Have the Right to Remain Glazed," and "Handcuffs and Cream Puffs" on the fronts.
Link | Cops & Doughnuts website
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Paragliding Cops
Officers of the Palm Bay Police Department in Florida keep an eye on a large area by using motorized paragliders!
Police Chief Bill Berger says they are a way for the department to have a bird’s eye view of the semi-rural city at minimal cost.
“Because we don’t have a lot of roadway here, this gives us the ability to basically take short cuts,” said Berger.
The vehicles and training cost $10,000 per officer, which is cost-effective compared to using helicopters. And they have other benefits.
Chief Berger sees the gliders as an ideal tool for searching for missing elderly people who have wandered away.
“The problem with helicopters is you can’t go below 1,000 feet,” said Berger. “The canopy of trees in our community prevented the helicopter from seeing a woman who had [died] close to her car. The paragliders would have been able to get much lower.”
(image credit: ABC News)
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Drag Racing the Police
If you’re over 18, can get to the Miami area, and have $25, you can race your car against police officers driving cruisers -legally! Officers from several local departments race at County Line Drag Way once a month in an event called Beat the Heat.
“You could bring your mother’s minivan. You can bring a pure racing car. It doesn’t matter,” said Officer Jose Ayala with the Medley Police Department.
“We’re actually getting a lot of kids and adults alike come here and say, ‘We used to race in Davie. You probably used to chase us around, and now we’re here on the track and we want to race your car,’” said Officer Ron Bradley with the Davie Police.
Officers said they have seen a drastic reduction in illegal street racing since Beat the Heat started in 2007.
The next Beat the Heat race is May 23rd. Link -via reddit
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Police Doughnuts
Retired arson investigator and state trooper Ken Borders has opened a doughnut shop in Kentucky and named it Police Doughnuts.
“Being in police work for 32 years, it’s been a standing joke that cops and doughnuts, they go hand-in-hand,” he said. “I just figured that it would be a catchy name.”
Borders said Police Doughnuts is meant to recall a time when officers really did hang out at doughnut shops, whereas today’s police “are all into this fitness crap.”
And what do the police think?
“I have two words for it: hysterical and genius,” said John Keeling, a metro police patrol officer who lives in Eastwood. “I wish I had thought of it.”
Louisville Assistant Chief Troy Riggs said doughnut shops once were the only places open in the middle of the night, which is why officers hung out there, establishing the stereotype.
He thinks that’s outdated now, but “if it helps them do business, good for them,” he said.
Link -via Unique Daily
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Google Car Pulled Over by the Cops - Now in Google Street View!
Remember the story sent by Neatorama reader Chris Whiteoak about Google Street View Car in Bradford, England, that got pulled over by the police? Well, the street view has been released for UK, and Chris noticed that the entire drama was caught on the all-seeing Google’s cam!
Chris walking down the street just before he noticed the police car up the road (pan left to see it in the distance) | Police in pursuit, picking up a fellow policeman | Police pulling over the Google Street View Car
Thanks Chris!
Update 4/7/09 – Seems like this story went everywhere! Besides being featured on Digg’s front page, Chris told us that a few newspapers also picked it up. Here are the articles on The Sun, The Telegraph and Argus, Daily Mail, and Metro. Of course, none of these fine newspaper even mentioned Neatorama 
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Welcome Tenaha, Texas! That'll Be $6,000 Please or We'll Take Your Kids
Driving through the little town of Tenaha, Texas, may cost you a lot more than just gas money. A lawsuit contends that driving the stretch of highway that goes through the city is akin to highway robbery … by the police!
Howard Witt of Chicago Tribue has the story:
You can drive into this dusty fleck of a town near the Texas-Louisiana border if you’re African-American, but you might not be able to drive out of it—at least not with your car, your cash, your jewelry or other valuables.
That’s because the police here allegedly have found a way to strip motorists, many of them black, of their property without ever charging them with a crime. Instead they offer out-of-towners a grim choice: voluntarily sign over your belongings to the town, or face felony charges of money laundering or other serious crimes.
More than 140 people reluctantly accepted that deal from June 2006 to June 2008, according to court records. Among them were a black grandmother from Akron, who surrendered $4,000 in cash after Tenaha police pulled her over, and an interracial couple from Houston, who gave up more than $6,000 after police threatened to seize their children and put them into foster care, the court documents show. Neither the grandmother nor the couple were charged with any crime.
Officials in Tenaha, situated along a heavily traveled highway connecting Houston with popular gambling destinations in Louisiana, say they are engaged in a battle against drug trafficking and call the search-and-seizure practice a legitimate use of the state’s asset-forfeiture law. That law permits local police agencies to keep drug money and other property used in the commission of a crime and add the proceeds to their budgets.
(Photo: Howard Witt/Chicago Tribune)
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Ireland's Worst Driver Finally Caught
Prawo Jazdy has become the bane of every Irish police officer’s life over the past few years, racking up countless fines and traffic offenses. Whenever officers pulled the offender over, they were given a different address so the police didn’t connect him to the other crimes.
Now however, police have managed to catch up with Prawo, and they’ve discovered an embarrassing truth as to why they have never caught up with him before.
When translated into English, the name Prawo Jazdy, becomes "Driving License" It seems officers pulling over Polish driving offenders have been mistakenly noting down what they thought was the offender’s name, but in fact were reading the title on the card. Officers have been warned to take more care during traffic stops in the future
“Having noticed this, I decided to check and see how many times officers have made this mistake.
“It is quite embarrassing to see that the system has created Prawo Jazdy as a person with over 50 identities.”
The officer added that the “mistake” needed to be rectified immediately and asked that a memo be circulated throughout the force.
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Two Cops on the Same Force Discover They are Father and Son
Chris Walker, a police sergeant with the Petersburg police force, was shocked to find out the man listed on his birth certificate was not his father. After his mother gave him the name of his real father, Clayton Hamilton, he thought about a 53 year old police detective who had recently joined the suburban Petersburg police unit.
Although the two men are spitting images of each other, Walker thought he had hit a dead end when chatting with Hamilton, who informed Walker that his name was short for Claiborne, not Clayton.
Still, Hamilton’s age matched with what Walker’s mother had told him, and Hamilton told Walker he once dated a woman who went by the name of Billie Joe Walker.
Walker called his mother, but she was insistent that her son hadn’t found his real father, because the names didn’t match. Then Walker asked his mother if she knew a woman named Billie Joe.
“There was a pause on the phone, and she said, ‘That’s your dad,’ ” Walker told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. It turned out his mother’s teen nickname was Billie Joe, based on a hit song of the time, “Ode to Billie Joe.”
One DNA test later, Walker had found his father.
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Japanese Police: Have You Seen This Mii?
It looks like the Nintendo Wii has other applications besides video games and fitness: it also serves as a police tool in Japan!
Kanagawa police used the picture making capabilities of the Nintendo Wii to create a wanted poster for a hit and run driver:
It’s common for lifelike drawings of wanted folks to be issued but it looks like Kanagawa police decided to use the lifelike properties of the Mii making tool to create a “this man is wanted” image.
This man is wanted for a hit and run – if you see him please report him to Kanagawa police immediately.
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Cops vs. Krispy Kreme: Where's My Free Donuts?
A police officer in Brisbane, Australia, got into hot water for trying to claim … free donuts from a local Krispy Kreme:
A Brisbane police officer got into a holey row with Krispy Kreme staff, demanding to be served free doughnuts.
Shocked customers looked on as the officer argued with staff for several minutes in a bid to get his freebies, before finally storming off – empty handed and non-cinnamon-fingered. [...]
As the icing on the cake, Krispy Kreme has now decided to stop supplying Brisbane police with leftover doughnuts.
Turns out, it was a simple misunderstanding:
Before the incident, officers had been regularly popping in to collect free boxes of leftover doughnuts at the store in nearby Albert St at the end of the day. Staff were unable to sell the doughnuts and were only too happy to oblige.
A police source said the officer had become confused and thought the free doughnut arrangement applied at all times. "Everyone’s a bit annoyed because they were a nice treat at the end of the day with a coffee," he said.
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Swiss Police Used Google Earth to Find Illegal Marijuana Plantations
While using Google Earth, Swiss police discovered that not all green masses on their screen are trees and jungles. In fact, they discovered a huge marijuana plantation hidden inside a corn field!
I don't know what I'm more suprised with: the weed farm or the police using rudimentary software available to any internet user to crack the case.
Officers discovered the hemp field in the northeastern canton (state) of Thurgau last year while investigating an alleged drug ring, said the head of Zurich police's specialist narcotics unit Norbert Klossner.
The plantation, measuring almost two acres (7,500 square meters), was hidden inside a field of corn. But officers using Google Earth to locate the address of two farmers suspected of involvement in the drug operation quickly spotted the illegal crop.
"It was an interesting chance discovery," said Klossner.
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Most Ticketed Cars 2008
ISO Quality Planning, a company specializing in helping insurance companies identify risk, has compiled a list of the most heavily ticketed vehicles on the road, and lead feet everywhere can check it out.
The group analyzed traffic data on 1.7 million drivers and established the probability of a driver of a given line of vehicles being ticketed. The Hummer and Scion tC dominated the list, receiving 463% and 460% over the average, respectively. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Jaguar XJ sedan and the Chevrolet Suburban attracted a mere 11% and 16% of expected tickets. Given that both the Hummer and the Jaguar are high-cost vehicles, it flips the idea that a huge price tag automatically means more police attention.
Link - via lifehacker
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14-year-old Patrols Chicago
Police are investigating how a 14-year old boy passed himself off as a Chicago police officer for an entire shift. When he showed up for work in uniform, the teen was assigned a patrol in a squad car. He never drove or handled a gun, but the deception was not noticed until his shift was over.
Assistant Superintendent James Jackson said the ruse was discovered only after the boy’s patrol with an actual officer ended Saturday. Officers noticed his uniform lacked a star that is part of the regulation uniform.
Police said they were investigating how the deception went undetected for so long in what they described as a serious security breach.
Police didn’t identify the boy because of his age. He has been charged as a juvenile with impersonating an officer.
Link -via J-Walk Blog
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Eloping Kids' Plan of an African Wedding Foiled by the Police!
Mika and Anna-Lena wanted to elope to Africa to get married where it’s warm, but the couple’s plan was foiled by police. It’s a good thing, too, since the two lovebirds are only five and six years old!
The budding lovebirds, identified as Mika and Anna-Lena, packed bathing costumes, sunglasses and a lilo and headed for the airport. They even had the presence of mind to invite along an official witness – Anna-Lena’s seven-year-old sister. [...]
The following morning, as their parents slept, the intrepid trio walked 1km (0.6 miles) to the local tram station at Langenhagen, where they hopped aboard a tram for Hanover central station.
But the group aroused the suspicion of a guard as they waited for a train to the airport, and police were called in.
Officers persuaded the children they would not get far without tickets and money, but consoled them with a free tour of the police station, where they were shortly picked up by relieved parents.
Link – via Blue’s News
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Smiley Masks for Thai Highway Patrol
Thailand, nicknamed "The Land of Smiles" by countless tourist books, are living up to its name: the highway policemen in Thailand will be wearing smiley masks to "lift the mood of motorists":
The new cloth masks, which hook behind the ears and cover the mouth and nose, will help "reduce the stress from drivers when they see the police," said Somyos, the Highway Police commander.
To that end, he said, some 200 police booths would also distribute holy water, chewing gum and mints.
He defended his force when asked why drivers needed smiley masks and gum and holy water to calm down when approached by a patrolman.
"The police are not that scary," he said. "When I was in the United States, their highway police seemed to be more fierce than Thai police. I was scared of them."
Photo: Sarot Meksophawannakul/Bangkok Post
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Cops Raid a House to Find Christmas Trees Under a Grow Light: Where's the Probable Cause Now?
Barry Cooper is a former policeman who now sells DVDs on how not to get busted on drug charges. While I find this approach sort of dubious, his latest "cop-baiting" stunt is quite intriguing: did he show that the police in Odessa, Texas were using illegal means to raid homes?
KopBusters rented a house in Odessa, Texas and began growing two small Christmas trees under a grow light similar to those used for growing marijuana. When faced with a suspected marijuana grow, the police usually use illegal FLIR cameras and/or lie on the search warrant affidavit claiming they have probable cause to raid the house. Instead of conducting a proper investigation which usually leads to no probable cause, the Kops lie on the affidavit claiming a confidential informant saw the plants and/or the police could smell marijuana coming from the suspected house.
The trap was set and less than 24 hours later, the Odessa narcotics unit raided the house only to find KopBuster’s attorney waiting under a system of complex gadgetry and spy cameras that streamed online to the KopBuster’s secret mobile office nearby.
The attorney was handcuffed and later released when eleven KopBuster detectives arrived with the media in tow to question the illegal raid. The police refused to give KopBusters the search warrant affidavit which is suspected to contain the lies regarding the probable cause.
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