Crime of the Century (Waste Case Division)

GREELEY, Colo., Sept. 15, 2010 - "If you're trying to escape from police, you might want to take a hint from Adam Segura, who learned an important lesson Thursday: Don't steal a police car, especially if you're drunk."
   This eminently reasonable advice appears in the lede of an non-bylined Sept. 11 story posted on the Web site of the Greeley Tribune, the newspaper of record in Greeley, Colo., a township of 98,596 people located forty-nine miles north-northeast of Denver. (This according to Wikipedia, the site containing the scribblings both of fact-loving obsessives and of, well, liars. The population figure comes from 2006 Census Bureau estimates, so we can assume it is correct. Then again, it appears on Wikipedia, so who knows?)
   It all began last Thursday at one in the afternoon, as so many things do. A Greeley police officer with the likably anonymous name of Craig Miller stopped Mr. Segura, who is thirty-two, for allegedly driving 62 mph in a 55 mph zone. In chatting with Mr. Segura, Officer Miller, as the mysterious Tribune reporter puts it, "noticed signs of drinking including glassy eyes, an odor of alcohol on [Mr.] Segura's breath and slurred speech."
   While these symptoms may indicate drinking to excess, they also could be the result of a love-partner conversation gone wrong. After one of those, any sane man would want to hit the road for a bit and might presently find himself driving as fast as he is thinking. So it's difficult to say whether Mr. Segura was, in fact, drunk, because... oh, wait.
   "'The defendant [Mr. Segura] also admitted to officer Miller that he'd drank alcochol,' according to [an] affadavit," according to the Tribune. Is it nitpicky to point out that the affadavit should read, "admitted to officer Miller that he'd drunk alcohol"? (Emphasis mine.) Perhaps so; often, officers of the law are simply too busy, what with catching criminals and so forth, to toy with the niceties of correct grammar.
   Officer Miller quite sensibly handcuffed Mr. Segura's hands behind his back, and then placed him in the back seat of an unmarked police car. He then buckled Mr. Segura's seat belt. (Safety first, even for miscreants.)

   Mr. Segura, showing the ingenuity that often, oddly, is the hallmark of those in the grip of an alcoholic blackout, managed to maneuver his hands, still locked in the handcuffs, around in front of him. He unbuckled the seat belt and climbed into the front seat of the car, unobserved by Officer Miller, who was busy chatting with (or, in police parlance, "questioning") a woman in Mr. Segura's car.
   To the no doubt great surprise of Officer Miller, a backup officer, and possibly the woman in Mr. Segura's vehicle and Mr. Segura himself, Mr. Segura zoomed off in the cop car. Officers chased him down U.S. 34 for roughly a mile, at which point Mr. Segura inexplicably stopped.
   The Tribune neglects to say whether Mr. Segura activated the car's siren, which would have been, like, totally awesome. The Trib does report that Mr. Segura was stopped near the entrance to the Greeley Mall, so it is possible that Mr. Segura had more important things on his pickled brain than blasting sirens, such as stopping at Hot Topic and buying his girlfriend a Tartan skirt and a skull-embossed black t-shirt.
   Mr. Segura is now in the Weld County jail and faces no fewer than twelve charges, which really kind of puts him in the drunken-police-car-stealing hall of fame. Charges include aggravated motor vehicle theft, escape, vehicular eluding (a lovely locution), speeding, no proof of insurance, resisting arrest, obstruction of a police officer, two counts of driving under the influence (he blew a .26, three times the legal limit), and three counts of being a habitual traffic offender.
   This last suggests that this is not the first time Mr. Segura has engaged in vehicular shenanigans (including eluding?). Some people simply aren't meant to drink; others aren't meant to drive; still others aren't meant to drink and drive, lest they wind up in the clink with the book t'rown at 'em.

Crime of the Century (Wrong Address Division)

PORT CLINTON, Ohio - It is likely that we here in the United States of America will soon see the suspension of Saturday mail delivery by the U.S. Post Office. Indeed, in the not-too-distant future we may see the suspension of all mail service, because with the advance of global warming there may soon be no "snow nor rain" to challenge these couriers in effecting "swift completion of their rounds," so, really, what's the point? 
   Until that moment, the Post Office remains stickler-ish about details such as Zip codes, and well it should be; there are a lot of items to shove around the country, and Post Office employees have their hands full with all that on-the-job sorting, shelving and sleeping.
   This fact was learned the hard way by a man named Donald Dudrow III, of Toledo, Ohio. That Mr. Dudrow is a "III" suggests that Toledo quite possibly has been chock-a-block with Donald Dudrows for generations, an exceedingly pleasant thought. 
   This particular Donald Dudrow is a guest of the state of Ohio; he has taken up residence at the jail in Port Clinton (a town that, as of July, 2008, boasted 6,135 persons, presumably none of them Dudrows, "III" or otherwise). He is there on a probation violation, according to an Associated Press report published April 2. (Yes, April 2. Today is April 18. First of All is terribly, terribly behind in its reporting, for which it is terribly, terribly sorry). 
   Mr. Dudrow III had the not altogether bright idea to write a letter to his mother offering her meticulous instructions for how to sneak drugs to him in jail. 
   Alas, in addressing the envelope Mr. Dudrow included an incorrect Zip code. The detail-stickler-ish U. S. Post Office returned the letter to the jail, where corrections officers read it, as they do all incoming mail. 

   Mr. Dudrow III has been indicted on charges of attempted drug trafficking and trying to bring drugs into a correctional facility, according to the AP. 
   There is a moral to this story, and it is this: if you go to a U.S. Post Office branch, chances are there will be a sixty-person line and only one of the nine customer service windows open. This is enough to make anyone want to numb themselves with drugs, in or out of jail, correct Zip code or no. 
   

The Joys of Holy Matrimony (Sharpest Blade in the Drawer Division)

LAS CRUCEZ, New Mexico, March 11 - A woman from Las Crucez, N.M. (pop. roughly 95,000) has been charged with three counts of aggravated battery against a household member, and a separate battery count, for allegedly stabbing her ex-husband after she looked through the call history of his cellular telephone.
   A March 7 Associated Press story declined to say what she discovered in in the phone. A cursory Google search - one never clicks past the first page, because one has better things to do, such as napping - shows that other news outlets, including Las Crucez television stations, are as lazy as this reporter: all ran the AP story, so details about the telephone's contents remain sketchy all across the World Wide Web (www.).
   The story is full of suggestive details, however, each of which seems a perfect springboard for a novel (or, these days, a Twitter posting).
   "According to police," the AP writes,"[the woman] and her 29-year-old ex-husband were at her home late Thursday when she became upset after looking through his cell phone's history."
   (This information appeared in the second graf - that's newspeak for paragraph - of the AP story. The AP did not write "[the woman]." They wrote "Shaw," indicating that this was the woman's Christian name. But the first graf does not give her full name. This is an oversight of monumental proportions, and points to the appalling state of American journalism. If you can't trust the AP, whom can you trust?)
   Why, one wonders, were they at her home? They are, for goodness sake, ex-husband and -wife. One would think it prudent, not to say preferable, to maintain a good deal of distance between oneself and a second party under those circumstances. Alas, those enjoying, or who have enjoyed, "a union between a man and a woman" have their own ways, some of which are mysterious in the extreme. 
   The AP quotes detectives as saying that the mysteriously one-named Shaw, who was mysteriously enjoying (enduring?) the company of her ex-husband, became enraged at the mysteriously un-reported, and deeply mysterious, contents of her husband's portable telephone. Not altogether mysteriously, she drew a knife "and started swinging at her husband, striking him at least three times."
   His injuries were, according to the AP, "not life-threatening." Perhaps if the couple had still been married, the woman would have tried harder to do serious damage to the man she had taken for better or worse, in sickness and health, till death did them part. After all, if death did them part, the contents of his carry-around telephone would be moot, now wouldn't they?
   Plainly, heterosexuals take seriously the institution of marriage. Even after disrespecting the sacred institution by bailing on it, they are so drawn to the one to whom they pledged their troth that, when the loved one disobeys, they feel compelled to stab the shit out of them. 
   Gays and lesbians waiting for the blessed day when same-gender marriage rights become available should take note.