02-08-02

A creative would-be thief found that ATMs aren't easy to crack, even with a backhoe.

Early last Thursday morning, a man stole a backhoe from a construction site in Bend, Ore., police said. Under the guise of plowing the snow from the street, he maneuvered the construction vehicle to the U.S. Bank a half mile away.

"We had a winter storm probably put about two to three inches of snow on the ground," said Bend police Capt. Bob Wittwer. "Because we had a lot of snow equipment out there, it did not look out of the ordinary."

While he plowed the snow from the bank parking lot (apparently to avoid rousing suspicion) he slammed the backhoe's arm into one of the free-standing ATMs there.

Eventually he knocked it loose, and tried unsuccessfully to scoop the entire device into the bucket.

"It wouldn't fit; he couldn't quite pick it up."

Breaking the ATM lose triggered a bank alarm, but by the time police arrived, the suspect had driven the backhoe off.

He took the machine back to the construction site where he found it, and apparently jumped in his own car and drove off.

"We've never had anything quite this unique," admitted Wittwer. "We're hoping he'll brag to somebody and they'll tip us off."

When you're wanted for armed robbery, it's probably not a good idea to visit your alleged accomplice in jail.

York police admit catching David Ruppert, 21, was relatively easy when the suspect went to York County Prison to see Robert Haley, 18, who is also accused of holding up a woman making a night deposit at First Union Bank in York last October.

"I would assume that he found out that [Haley] was locked up and probably wanted to know if he told the cops about the robbery," Snell said. "Instead [Ruppert] got a ticket to the house also."

"We received a tip that, 'Oh by the way, he's down at your county prison making a visit to Robert Haley,'" said Snell. Police knew Ruppert was a suspect because they found his fingerprint on the getaway vehicle, and Haley had admitted that Ruppert was involved in the heist, Snell said.

Detectives notified police at the jail that their visitor was wanted for armed robbery, and they held him until investigators arrived.

"He was pretty surprised," Snell said. Both men have been charged with robbery.

Copyright © 2002 Dumb Crooks
Www.dumbcrooks.com
Used with permission

Riddle Me This?

Len always has it before. Paul has it behind. Bryan has never had it at all. Girls can have it only once. Boys don't need it. Mrs. Mulligan, the widow, has it twice in succession. Dr. Lowell of Harvard has it twice as bad at the end as at the beginning. Do you know what it is?

Security Alerts - Officer Safety

Lighter Knife

A commercially manufactured cigarette lighter containing a concealed knife blade was recovered by the FBI at the United Airlines Flight 93 crash scene in Stoney Creek Township, PA. Although the item was badly damaged, preliminary FBI laboratory forensic examination revealed the lighter was approximately 0.65” in diameter and the butane cylinder was approximately 2 ¾” in length with a knife blade approximately 2 ½” in length. The apparent intended mode of operation for extension of the knife blade was a slide switch near the top of the lighter. Similar commercially available models have spring-loaded blades which extend directly out of the top of the lighter.

FBI laboratory research indicates a number of similar knives are commercially available concealed in other common objects such as pens, keys, belts, belt buckles and lipstick containers. Small items which produce a positive response upon magnometer inspection should be required to undergo radiographic examination.

Hidden Compartments in Water Bottle

The bottle is actually three compartments. The top and bottom contain water; the middle section (behind the label) is where the secret compartment is located.

Legal Issues

An officer who had been assigned to watch an apartment complex where drug activity was suspected, was given the names of persons at the complex who might be involved. One of these persons was a maintenance man at the apartments.

Over a period of about a month, the officer watched the suspect’s apartment from a field across the street. He saw people coming and going in a manner consistent with drug trafficking, but the officer did not have enough evidence to obtain a search warrant.

Eventually, the officer went to the defendant’s apartment and knocked on the door. When the defendant opened his door, the officer saw what looked like three half-smoked joints of marijuana on the coffee table, and smelled a faint odor of marijuana.

After telling the defendant that he was investigating drug activity in the area, the officer asked if he could come in and talk. The defendant agreed and he let the officer in.

Once inside, the officer asked the defendant if he had any drugs in the apartment. The defendant reluctantly reached under the coffee table and retrieved a small amount of marijuana, along with some drug paraphernalia.

The defendant was arrested, and a subsequent search uncovered other contraband. A suppression motion was filed in the trial court, but was denied. The defendant appealed.

Holding: Consensual encounters between police officers and citizens are not restricted by the Constitution.

A law enforcement officer, like any other citizen, may approach a person’s front door unless the person in charge of the premises has expressly forbidden entry on the property.

There is nothing in law that makes it illegal for anyone “openly and peaceably” to “walk up the steps and knock on the front door” of a home, even if he does so with the “intent of asking questions of the occupant.”

The officer in this case admitted at the suppression hearing that he knew he did not have enough information to obtain a search warrant for the defendant’s apartment. Because he could not procure a warrant, he decided to go to the apartment to determine whether a crime was being committed.

The U.S. Supreme Court held in Horton v. California, 496 U.S. 128, that the subjective intent of an officer does not invalidate a warrantless detention or search; it is only the objective standards that control. Therefore, the officer’s purpose in knocking on the door was constitutionally irrelevant.

The trial court was correct in overruling the suppression motion. An officer may approach the front door of a residence and knock, and if an occupant opens the door and reveals contraband or criminal evidence, no unlawful search has occurred.

Comment: The legal point in this case is relatively narrow, but important for law enforcement officers. The court does not treat the officer’s approach to the apartment door, or knocking on it, as a trespass on private property. Rather, the court concludes that the Fourth Amendment is not implicated in the absence of some clear sign that the homeowner wants to keep people off his property. Of course, this case involved an apartment in which the area immediately outside the front door presumably was a common area from which the officer could not be excluded by the defendant. It would have been a harder case for the court if the officer had opened a gate on a fenced lot, walked up the private sidewalk, and knocked on the door. The result might have been the same, but the privacy interest would have been somewhat different. Baker v. State, No. 11-00-00246-CR (Tex. App.-Eastland, 7-26-01).

Into the Minds of Sixth Graders

The following were answers provide by 6th graders during a history test. Note the spelling! Some of the best humor is in the misspelling.

Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies and they all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah Dessert. The climate of the Sarah is such that all the inhabitants have to live elsewhere.

Solomon had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines.

Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline.

In the Olympic games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled biscuits, and threw the java.

Writing at the same time as Shakespeare was Miguel Cervantes. He
wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton
wrote paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.

Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats backward and declared, "A horse divided against itself cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.

Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's
mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. They believe the assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposingly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.

Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.

From the Chaplain

WHAT AMERICA NEEDS TODAY

In 1863, Abraham Lincoln said, “ We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious Hand, which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”

Just as in Lincoln’s day, America stands at a major crossroads. We are in dire need of God’s help and guidance. Make a choice to do your part to make us a nation again who looks to Him.

We've Always Wondered...

Teflon, known to science as polytetrafluoroethylene, is a pain to work with because it's nonsticky in all directions, the pan side (the bottom) as well as the food side (the top). Fluorine, due to certain electrochemical properties you'll thank me for not explaining now, bonds so tightly with the carbon in Teflon that it's virtually impossible for other substances, e.g., scrambled egg crud, to get a chemical-type grip or, for that matter, for Teflon to get a grip on anything else. In addition, the finished Teflon surface is extremely smooth, giving said egg crud little chance to get a mechanical-type grip.

So how do they get Teflon to stick to the pan? First they sandblast the pan to create a lot of microscratches on its surface. Then they spray on a coat of Teflon primer. This primer, like most primers, is thin, enabling it to flow into the micro-scratches. The primed surface is then baked at high heat, causing the Teflon to solidify and get a reasonably secure mechanical grip. Next you spray on a finish coat and bake that (the Teflon finish coat will stick to the Teflon primer coat just fine). Works a lot better than the early Teflon pans, but you can still ruin Teflon cookware by subjecting it to extremely high heat.

Just Chilling