11-01-02

BAD BOYS, BAD BOYS
A Japanese businessman who was robbed and abducted in Peru didn't have a hard time identifying his captors to police. He fingered two officers in the police station where he was filing his complaint. The department expelled the bad cops in a public ceremony.

HOOFIN' IT
Paul Wilson of Pierre, South Dakota was pulled over by police on his way home from having a few too many at the local bar. He wasn't charged with drinking and driving, but rather drinking and riding. He was on his horse. In South Dakota, riding drunk carries the same penalty as driving drunk.

UP IN THE AIR
A plane carrying 55 passengers circled a western Scotland airport for over 30 minutes after the pilot was told by the tower that there was an emergency situation. When the plane finally landed, the nature of the situation was revealed... the lone air traffic controller was eating her lunch.

FREE RIDE
A man who signed up for a police ride-a-long program in Elgin, Illinois looked a bit familiar to one of the detectives. The detective ran a check on Jason L. Miller and found out he was wanted on a bench warrant for resisting arrest. He got his ride-a-long ... to the Kane County Jail.

RETOOLING
Police in Beckley, West Virginia planted tools in some vehicles hoping to snag a crook who'd been ripping off cars at local hotels. The suspect turned out to be a man who had been convicted of burglary two years prior. The planted tools - on loan from the police evidence room - were the same ones the suspect had stolen the first time he was busted.

HAS THERE BEEN A DEER IN HERE?
Some people might think that a deer that went on a brief rampage in Dublin, Georgia was making a statement. The deer crashed through a storefront window, destroyed most of the store, and then dashed out. It was a taxidermy shop.

ROBBING ONE'S SELF
A teller at a bank in Bordeaux, France told an armed robber his demand for 13 grand was ridiculously high. The crook lowered his demand to 68 hundred dollars, but the teller still refused. The suspect then asked for some money from his own savings account, revealing his identity to authorities.

MAKIN' COPIES!
A man who attempted to pass badly-Xeroxed counterfeit 20-dollar bills in Boulder, Colorado told arresting officers that he'd gotten the bills from a bank. Officers said they found the originals in his wallet.

Hurricane Lili Waterspouts

Sorry, severe weather fans, this photo has been doctored. The eerie phenomenon depicted above did not occur. We confirmed this with Bill Read, Meteorologist-in-Charge at the Houston/Galveston office of the National Weather Service, who says the image is "mostly fake."

Though it began circulating by email in early October 2002 just before Hurricane Lili bore down on the Louisiana coastline, in reality the image has no connection with that storm. The original, undoctored photo, which featured only one massive waterspout looming in the distance, was snapped in June 2001 by a crew member of the Edison Chouest Offshore supply boat "C-Rambler" in the Gulf of Mexico.

It (or an almost identical shot from the same roll of film) was first published in the Fall 2001 issue of “Supply Lines”, a corporate newsletter.

While it's not unheard of to spot multiple waterspouts or tornadoes in the same general vicinity, another meteorologist explained to us, the supposed "Hurricane Lili" photo struck some scientists as suspicious from the outset because it would be quite out of the ordinary to see three waterspouts this large emerging this close together under even the most extreme weather conditions. By the time we contacted them, National Weather Service employees had already determined it was a hoax.

Legal Issues - Arrest

FORCED ENTRY INTO HOME TO EXECUTE MISDEMEANOR WARRANTS HELD IMPROPER.

The maintenance man at an apartment complex discovered a hypodermic syringe beside the patio of one of the apartments, and the manager reported the discovery to the police. Officers sent to investigate were informed that the defendant leased the apartment, and that syringes had been found near his patio before.

A computer search on the defendant revealed that he was wanted on warrants for a traffic violation and failure to appear. The officers decided to go to the defendant’s apartment and execute the warrants.

A woman answered the knock on the apartment’s door, and said that the defendant was not at home. The officer didn’t see the defendant, but he was suspicious because the woman “repeatedly looked behind her and was hesitant to answer [the officer’s] questions.”

Eventually, the woman tried to shut the door on the officer, but he put his foot in the door and forcibly entered the apartment. The woman yelled for the defendant to wake up as the officer followed her through the apartment to a back bedroom where he found the defendant asleep.

In a search following the defendant’s arrest, the officer found a “little clear plastic baggie with [a] little white rock inside of it,” which was methamphetamine. Drug paraphernalia was also lying in plain view around the bedroom, all of which was seized.

The defendant moved to suppress the drugs and paraphernalia, arguing that misdemeanor arrest warrants for a traffic violation and failure to appear cannot form the basis for a forcible entry of a private residence. The State responded that such warrants authorize an entry if there is reason to believe the person to be arrested is present at the time.

In the alternative, the State contended that the woman’s behavior created an exigent circumstance that justified entry into the apartment. The trial judge overruled the defendant’s suppression motion and admitted the contraband into evidence. The defendant appealed his conviction.

Holding: The home always has enjoyed special protection from governmental intrusion. “The Fourth Amendment thus has drawn a firm line at the entrance to the house and, absent exigent circumstances, that threshold may not reasonably be crossed without a warrant.”

In Payton vs. U.S., 445 U.S. 573, the U. S. Supreme court held unconstitutional a statute that authorized police officers to enter a private residence without a warrant in order to make arrests. An entry may be made though, the Court held, if police have a felony arrest warrant because it “implicitly carries with it the limited authority to enter a dwelling in which the suspect lives when there is reason to believe the suspect is within.”

The warrants in this case were not for felony offenses as in Payton, but were for minor misdemeanors. The issue therefore is whether the same rule applies to misdemeanors and felonies.

For purposes of deciding this issue, the officer’s motivation in entering the residence is unimportant. If a valid felony warrant is outstanding, it implies authority to enter without regard for whether the officer has some purpose other than arrest for wanting to enter the home.

While the Supreme Court has not decided that the rule of Payton applies to misdemeanor arrest warrants as well as felony warrants, federal and state courts considering the matter have consistently held that there is no difference in the way the two kinds of warrants are treated.

In both cases, probable cause must be established in order to obtain an arrest warrant. That determination by a neutral magistrate, while not the same as a finding of probable cause to search the premises, carries with it some protection of the Fourth Amendment rights of the person to be arrested.

The defendant did not challenge the validity of the misdemeanor warrants in this case. Consequently, they were presumably valid findings of probable cause. “The limited police authority recognized in Payton to enter a suspect’s residence to execute an arrest warrant when police reasonably believe the suspect to be home applies to the execution of both felony and misdemeanor warrants.”

The rule in Payton, however, requires both a reasonable belief that the location is the suspect’s dwelling, and “reason to believe” that the suspect is within the dwelling.

The officers in this case clearly had a reasonable belief that the defendant resided in the apartment. The manager showed the officers information confirming that the defendant leased the apartment.

On the other hand, the officers had no sufficient “reason to believe” that the defendant was home when they forcibly entered. The likely presence of a suspect may be inferred from circumstances, like a suspect’s car being parked in the drive or visitors being present in the residence. Officers are not required to accept a statement that the suspect is not home.

Even the time of day might support a belief that a suspect is home, as can lights or appliances being on. A person’s employment, or lack of employment, might reasonably lead to a conclusion that the suspect is home.

In this case, the officer at the door of the apartment had no reason to think the defendant was present inside. He knew nothing about the suspect’s employment status or habits; he knew nothing about whether the defendant owned a car, or what kind of car it might be; and he saw no activity in the apartment that would indicate anyone was home.

The woman’s presence did not add to the officer’s knowledge. It was not unusual for two people to live in the apartments, and the officer did not ask the woman to identify herself. Her mere presence told the officer nothing.

Other than the woman’s demeanor, there was no reason for the officer to conclude that the suspect was not at work, as she said. Some fact or circumstance other than the woman’s denial that the defendant was home was required to justify entry into a private residence to execute an arrest warrant.

“The Fourth Amendment requires some sounder basis for believing the suspect is in the dwelling than merely a nervous demeanor by the person answering the door.” The officers in this case had insufficient reason to believe the defendant was home, and they were not justified in entering forcibly on the basis of the misdemeanor warrants.

Because the entry was unlawful, the trial court should have suppressed the evidence found as a result of that entry. Green v. State, No. 2-01-304 (Tex App. – Fort Worth, 5-16-02).

A Few to Cheer You Up

Let's go for stupid: A lady was picking through the frozen turkeys at the grocery store, but couldn't find one big enough for her family. She asked a stock boy, "Do these turkeys get any bigger?" The stock boy replied, "No ma'am, they're dead."

Caught for speeding: The cop got out of his car and the kid, that was stopped for speeding, rolled down his window. "I've been waiting for you all day," the cop said. The kid replied, "Yeah, well I got here as fast as I could." When the cop finally stopped laughing, he sent the kid on his way without a ticket.

Stuck under a bridge: A truck driver was driving along on the freeway. A sign comes up that reads "low bridge ahead." Before he knows it the bridge is right ahead of him and he gets stuck under the bridge. Cars are backed up for miles. Finally, a police car comes up. The cop gets out of his car and walks around to the truck driver, puts his hands on his hips and says, "Got stuck, huh?" The truck driver says, "No, I was delivering this bridge and ran out of gas."

Too Late: The man was in no shape to drive, so he wisely left his car parked and walked home. As he was walking unsteadily along, he was stopped by a policeman. "What are you doing out here at 2 in the morning?" asked the officer. "I'm going to a lecture." The man said. "And who is going to give a lecture at this hour?" the cop asked. "My wife," said the man.

*Henry Ford forgot to put a reverse gear in his first car.

*In 1905, the University of Bern turned down a PH.D. dissertation as being irrelevant and fanciful. Its author was Albert Einstein.

*Thomas Edison once spent $2,000,000 on an invention that proved to be a flop.

*A teacher at Harrow School in England wrote this on sixteen-year-old Winston Churchill’s report card: “A conspicuous lack of success.”

Sneaky Shark