Small Town Misfit

Durango, CO
3:15 p.m. A man was letting his child drop-kick a small puppy in a parking lot in the lower 100 block of Mercado Street.

Found in the Durango Herald

Erie County, NY
A Wickham Drive resident called police to report that a
duck had made a nest underneath a shrub.

Found in Bee News

Taos, NM
12:27 a.m. Welfare check, 201 Kit Carson Park — Reportant advised there is a boy 6-feet tall who was kicked out of his home and is living inside the tube slide, reporting party is with CYFD.

Found in the Taos News

Cincinnati, OH
Cincinnati Police figured a stolen safe dumped in the woods near Lunken Airport wouldn’t stay there long. They were right.

Police were notified Sunday a safe had been stolen from the Airport Playfield golf course. A search located it in the nearby woods.

Police speculated it had been dumped because the thief couldn’t get it out of the area. So police staked out the safe, and about 8:40 p.m. Tuesday a man came to retrieve it.

He carried it about 100 yards, but police said the safe weighs 150 pounds, so he put it down and tried to pry it open.

A police dog tracked him down and bit him on the ankle.

Police charged Howard Davidson, 35, of Eastern Avenue, with safecracking, receiving stolen property and possession of criminal tools.

Found in the Cincinnati Enquirer
Thanks Luann!

Grass Valley, CA
At 2:59 p.m., a woman called to request deputies check on her adult daughter on the 10000 block of Mooney Flat Road. She said her daughter had been missing for four and a half years, and she thought she was dead. The woman said she thought a stepmother killed the family. A deputy checked on the house and found that three juveniles living there were fine and that the mother and daughter have not gotten along for several years. A deputy called the mother back, but she did not answer her phone.

Found in the Union

Grass Valley, CA
At 7:23 p.m., a woman called to report seeing her daughter’s therapist on the 400 block of Spring Street looking at pornography on his computer. She was taking her daughter to his office and before arriving, she looked in the window and saw him looking at the pornography. She was concerned about leaving her 9-year-old daughter with the therapist. An officer made contact and determined no crime was committed, but he took a report.

Found in the Union

Lake County, WI
A City of Pewaukee man at 2:24 p.m. Dec. 14 complained of a funny- tasting dairy beverage that made his mouth and throat burn.

According to the police report, the man bought the sealed Hood Calorie Countdown drink in the morning at Pick ‘n Save, 601 Ryan St., and drank it at about 11:30 a.m. The man stated it tasted like fingernail polish or something like acetone.

The man went to Elmbrook Memorial Hospital, where a doctor stated there was no lasting injury, the report said. Pick ‘n Save took the beverage back to be sent to a lab for testing.

Found in the Lake County Reporter

Atlanta, GA
A police officer saw that a man had dumped three trash cans in the middle of Juniper Street. The man also took two small rugs from the porch of a nearby house, and he threw the rugs onto the road. When the man saw the police officer, he tossed a plastic hubcap at the officer’s car. The man was impersonating the president, according to the police report. The gray-haired man, age 63, wore khaki pants. He was arrested for disorderly conduct.

Found in Creative Loafing

Colerain Township, OH

Tired of snowman abuse, Matt Williquette decided to go hi-tech.

Williquette, 26, has a 12-foot inflatable snowman in his Crest Road front yard that has been vandalized three times in the last two weeks.

Tired of having Frosty punctured, Williquette bought a digital video recorder and stuck it in a nearby tree.

He captured video of two men using a screwdriver to punch yet another hole in Frosty. Police used the video to capture one of them today.

Hamilton County Sheriff’s deputies arrested Robert Snell, of the 2800 block Overdale Drive, Colerain Township, at 11:30 this morning.

Snell was charged with criminal damaging, a second-degree misdemeanor.

“I’m very relieved,” said Williquette, a packaging designer for Procter & Gamble. “People can finally sleep better around here.”

Williquette placed the 12-foot Frosty in his yard as part of his Christmas decorations. He also has in his yard a 6-foot inflatable snow globe, about 30 large candy canes and 4-foot inflatable snowman.

He has no idea why the vandals limited themselves to the largest inflatable decoration.

“The question I have is, ‘Why me?’ And why Frosty?” Williquette asked.
“I had more (decorations) to put out there but with Frosty going down I wasn’t going to chance it.”
Williquette placed white masking tape over the first two punctures to get Frosty inflated again.

Sick of seeing a deflated Frosty, Williquette used a video camera and bought new computer software to set a trap. The camera operated essentially the same as a motion detector, recording when something moved.

“Me sitting in front of the window every night wasn’t going to get it,” Williquette said.

After he heard a commotion last night and saw Frosty deflated, Williquette called police.

“The investigation continues to snowball; any future developments will be reported,” the sheriff’s office reported.

Snell’s name came to police from a tipster who’d seen the video.

The second man in the video hasn’t been identified.

With a bit of luck, Frosty will return to duty tonight.

“I just got to find some black duct tape to patch up his little charcoal area in his stomach and he’ll be back up and running.” Williquette said.

Found in the Cincinnati Enquirer
Thanks Luann!

Taos, NM
11:49 p.m. 204 Paseo del Pueblo Sur — Reportant advised he had report for residential burglary taken last week and wants officer to go back and take fingerprints off the wall that he has because he saw this done on “CSI” and he knows it can be done.

Found in the Taos News

Goleta Valley, CA
The subjects surrounding a university student treated for severe alcohol poisoning claim the victim was a willing participant in the drinking games that jeopardized his health before he landed in the hospital. The young man, 21, suffered from alcohol poisoning after acquaintances, in a prank, reportedly “willingly kidnapped” him, challenging him to partake in drinking games.

Unconscious and colored in Sharpie ink, the man, who the victims unloaded on the front lawn of a sorority house in Isla Vista, also had evidence of duct tape restraints on his body.

Found in the Goleta Valley Voice

Durango, CO
1:11 p.m. A woman in the back of a pickup was mooning pedestrians at Eighth Avenue and Rim Drive. She was arrested for indecent exposure.

Found in the Durango Herald