Community ClicksCan’t possibly be true
In January, the Justice Department’s Inspector General released a long-anticipated report detailing the FBI’s post-9/11 corner-cutting in obtaining individual Americans’ phone records.
Federal law permits such acquisition only with a “terrorism” subpoena (“National Security Letter”) unless the FBI documents emergency (“exigent”) circumstances to a telecom company.
The Inspector General found that, from 2002-2006, the FBI had representatives of three telecom companies set up in the FBI unit so that agents could request phone records orally, without documentation, and in some cases merely by writing the requested phone numbers on Post-it Notes and sticking them on the telecom employees’ workstations.
Some of the acquired records were uploaded to the FBI’s database.
Inexplicable
Police are still baffled by how Gregory Denny, 37, was able to “deport” Cherrie Belle Hibbard from her home in Hemet, Calif., in January back to her native Philippines.
According to Hemet police, Denny, with a gun and fake U.S. Marshal’s badge and shirt, knocked on Hibbard’s door and convinced her that he was there to escort her to the airport and out of the country and that Hibbard’s husband had to buy her the ticket.
Denny then accompanied Hibbard through airport security and put her onto a flight.
Upon questioning by police later, Denny apparently remained in character, continuing to insist that he is a Marshal. Denny was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping, impersonating an officer and several other charges.
>>> Buffalo, N.Y., television meteorologist Mike Cejka was arrested in December after a brief police chase and charged with trespassing after he was spotted at 4 a.m. tinkering with the covering of a motorcycle in a stranger’s yard.
Cejka told police he was on his way to work at the station and had merely stopped to admire the motorcycle he had remembered seeing in that yard over the summer.
He was wearing a dress shirt and shoes and leather chaps topped by a pair of sweat shorts.
The continuing crisis
In February, the Board of Trustees of Saugatuck Township, Mich., scheduled a May referendum asking voters for an increase in the property tax in order to cover unanticipated new expenses.
The budget overrun was because of the mounting costs of defending lawsuits by people and companies complaining that the Township’s property taxes are too high.
Unclear on the concept
In December, British Columbia’s District of Sechelt Council approved a bylaw making it illegal for licensed dogs to chase squirrels, seagulls and other wild animals.
The councillors added a defense of “provocation” but left it undefined, which might be especially problematic in instances in which the dog is the only witness to the alleged provocation.
Least competent criminals
Travis Copeland, 19, bolting from a courtroom in Waukegan, Ill., in January, ran down a hallway and then lowered his shoulder and thrust himself at a window, intending to crash through it to freedom.
Courthouse windows are bulletproof, and Copeland merely bounced off, staggered away and fell to the floor in pain.
>>> Chamil Guadarrama, 30, was arrested in Springfield, Mass., in February after a store security guard spotted him with 75 bottles of lotion stuffed down his pant legs (which were tied off at the ankles), making him look like a nearly immobile Michelin Man.
Said a cop: “(We) could not fit Mr. Guadarrama into the cruiser because . . . he could not bend over.”
A News of the Weird classic
News of the Weird reported twice on staffing problems of British circus knife-thrower Jayde Hanson.
One assistant walked off the job in 2001 after being nearly hit in the foot, which would have been her third wound that season (equaling the number of injuries a previous girlfriend had suffered as Hanson’s assistant before she quit the year before).
In April 2003, Hanson was performing with his new girlfriend, Yana Rodianova, 22, live on Britain’s “This Morning” television show, displaying his world-record form as a speed knife-thrower, when one knife hit Rodianova in the head, drawing blood.
