Police investigating liquor and grocery store burglary

Honolulu police are mulling over surveillance video from an early morning burglary of a Punchbowl area market.

Three men broke into the Huali Market at 1611 Lusitana Street at 1:54 a.m. Neighbors who saw the break-in called police who arrived shortly after, but not before the suspects took off with thousands of dollars in stolen cigarettes, beer, as well as the store’s cash register.

Owner James Han says it’s the first time his market has been burglarized in the four years he’s owned it.

The store’s inside surveillance equipment is clearly visible to patrons who may notice they’re being watched.

Witness told police the heavy-set suspects took off in a large white cargo van that only had front windows.

Police say the suspects were also wearing gloves. It also appears that the suspects knew exactly what they were going for.

Police are asking for the public’s help in identifying the getaway van and the suspects who may have been spotted around town prior to the theft.

Anyone with information is asked to call police.

Detectives from HPD‘s Criminal Investigation Division will take over the case.

Related articles

• Three arrested in Edmonds burglary spree (heraldnet.com)
• Masked men rob Cedar Rapids liquor store (thegazette.com)
• Officer shoots suspect in Pasco burglary (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

REALLY STUPID PEOPLE part 2

6) Swedish business consultant Ulf af Trolle labored 13 years on a book
about Swedish economic solutions. He took the 250-page manuscript to be
copied, only to have it reduced to 50,000 strips of paper in seconds when a
worker confused the copier with the shredder.
7) A convict broke out of jail in Washington D.C., then a few days later
accompanied his girlfriend to her trial for robbery. At lunch, he went out
for a sandwich. She needed to see him, and thus had him paged. Police
officers recognized his name and arrested him as he returned to the
courthouse in a car he had stolen over the lunch hour.
8) Police in Radnor, Pennsylvania, interrogated a suspect by placing a metal
colander on his head and connecting it with wires to a photocopy machine.
The message “He’s lying” was placed in the copier, and police pressed the
copy button each time they thought the suspect wasn’t telling the truth.
Believing the “lie detector” was working, the suspect confessed.
9) When two service station attendants in Ionia, Michigan, refused to hand
over the cash to an intoxicated robber, the man threatened to call the
police. They still refused, so the robber called the police and was
arrested.
10) A Los Angeles man who later said he was “tired of walking,” stole a
steamroller and led police on a 5 mph chase until an officer stepped aboard
and brought the vehicle to a stop.

Man Drops Wallet In Manhole, Gets Stuck

A Ceres man dropped his wallet inside a manhole and got stuck trying to fetch it, police said.

Jared Medeiros, 21, was in head first when Ceres police discovered two legs flailing in the air Friday. When police tried to pull him out, his waist wouldn’t budge from the tunnel.

The fire department had to assist to pull him out. When they did, about 40 minutes had passed. They assessed his medical condition and found some minor scrapes and contusions. Police said he was slightly intoxicated but not impaired.

Robert Morris Shipped Meth In Meow Mix Bag, According To Florida Police

 

♫ Meth-meth-meth-meth, meth-meth-meth-meth. Meth-meth-meth-meth. Meth-meth-meth-meth! ♫

It might sound like a botched version of the Meow Mix jingle sung by a cat with a lisp — but it’s actually what police in Florida say they found inside a bag of the popular cat food brand.

Officers from the Lake County Sheriff’s Office have arrested Robert Morris, 48, after he allegedly tried to pick up a FedEx package containing a bag of Meow Mix stuffed with $30,000 of crystal methamphetamine.

The strange case started when a title company in Leesburg received a parcel addressed to a client in Washington. Workers were suspicious because nobody was expecting the package, so they turned it over to police, according to a Sheriff’s Office press release.

When cops opened it up, they found a bag of feline food stuffed with about 260 grams of the dangerous amphetamine.

While police investigated the case, Morris allegedly called the title company and asked if the package had been delivered.

With that information, undercover detectives scheduled a meeting with the suspect in a restaurant parking lot to hand over the package.

 

After Morris allegedly accepted the drugs, police locked him up.

As the president-elect of the Realtor‘s Association of Lake and Sumter Counties, Morris was considered an esteemed member of the local real estate community, The Orlando Sentinel reports.

He has been charged with trafficking over 200 grams of methamphetamine and resisting arrest. His bond has been set at $500,500.

Police and Fire For Friday, July 22, 2011

Power strip takes blame in house blaze

 

A fire that killed two cats and destroyed a three-bedroom house occupied by a military couple at Pearl City Peninsula on Thursday is believed to have been accidental and to have originated in the living room.

The 7:30 a.m. fire caused about $50,000 in damage to the Lehua Avenue structure and its contents, said Capt. Terry Seelig, Honolulu Fire Department spokesman. The cause appeared to be have been electrical because the blaze began in the vicinity of a power strip in which various electrical appliances were plugged, Seelig said.

A woman who was asleep when the fire began escaped injury and ran back to retrieve several of her pets, including two dogs. Seelig said people should not run back into a building on fire at any time.

 

Find less than grisly than had been thought

 

Honolulu police and state law enforcement officials have determined that what was reported to be a severed human hand found at Goat Island off Malaekahana was actually a dried squid.

A woman reported that she saw the hand on the island over the weekend and again Thursday, a Department of Land and Natural Resources spokeswoman said. Officers with the Division of Conservation and Resources Enforcement then asked HPD homicide detectives for assistance. HPD spokeswoman Michelle Yu said Thursday afternoon, however, that the object was a dried squid.

 

NEIGHBOR ISLANDS

Police seek driver in hit-run accident involving mo-ped

 

Hawaii County police are asking for the public’s help in finding the driver of a vehicle that critically injured a mo-ped driver in Kona.

A witness told police a southbound vehicle on Queen Kaahumanu Highway was turning left onto Kealakehe Parkway when it hit the mo-ped about 8:05 p.m. Sunday and drove off.

The mo-ped driver sustained severe head injuries and was taken to the Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu, where he is listed in critical condition, police said.

Police described the vehicle as possibly a dark-colored pickup truck or SUV. It probably has front-end damage and may have a broken or cracked windshield, police said.

Police ask that anyone with information about the incident to call officer Josiah Coe at 326-4646, ext. 254.

Cops Bust Lemonade Stand: Appleton, Wisconsin Police Apologize For Mistaken Shutdown

Appleton, Wisconsin police officers are apologizing to two sisters, ages nine and 10, for busting their lemonade stand on a new city ordinance regulating vendors.

It turns out, they read the law wrong.

According to FOX-11 in Appleton, Vivian and Linda Coenen were partaking in a 15-year-old neighborhood tradition: selling lemonade in their driveway during the city’s Old Car Show. “The kids have been setting it up for six or seven years now,” said Margi Mann, the girls’ mother.

But then, Mann got a knock on the door. It was the Appleton P.D.

Apparently, as WTAQ reports, an ordinance was passed in the city on June 1 that banned vendors from selling food and drink within a two-block radius of any city event, in order to protect non-profit groups selling at the events.

The girls took the news hard at first, although they were able to drum up some sympathy by adorning their homemade signs with “The City Shut Us Down” and giving their wares out for free — with a tip jar.

Still, neighbors were upset about the long arm of the law fiddling with a lemonade stand. So aldermen took a closer look at the ordinance to see if they could fix it.

As a matter of fact, it was already fixed. As the Post-Crescent of Appleton reports, the law actually only pertains to “licensed” vendors. Lemonade stands don’t need licenses to operate in Wisconsin, so they are exempt from the two-block radius law.

“Not our finest hour,” Police Chief David Walsh told the P-C, “but I believe the officer was acting in the spirit of inter-departmental cooperation rather than malice toward childhood lemonade stands.” He apologized to the girls, and said the department would see to it that it doesn’t happen again, according to an Associated Press report.

And Mayor Tim Hanna is telling kids to rev up the lemon-juicing apparatus in advance of Art in the Park on July 31.

“Get out there. Stock up some lemonade because it’s supposed to be pretty nice out. And good luck,” the mayor said, according to the Post-Crescent.

3 girls busted for illegal lemonade stand

‘We were not aware of how the lemonade was made, who made the lemonade, of what the lemonade was made with,’ says police chief in Midway, Ga.

Three girls trying to raise money to go to a waterpark thought that a lemonade stand would do the trick. But then they met the long arm of the law — their local police chief

The girls had started up their stand in Midway, Ga., when Police Chief Kelly Morningstar and a deputy drove by.

“They told us to shut it down,” 10-year-old Skylar Roberts was quoted as saying by The Coastal Source news website.

“It’s kind of crazy that we couldn’t sell lemonade,” added 14-year-old Casity Dixon. “It was fun, but we had to listen to the cops and shut it down.”

Morningstar defended his action and received the support of Midway’s mayor. “We had told them, ‘We understand you guys are young, but still, you’re breaking the law, and we can’t let you do it anymore,'” Morningstar said. “The law is the law, and we have to be consistent with how we enforce the laws.”

That city law requires a business and food permits ($50 a day), even if the stand was at the home of one of the girls.

Health issues were also a concern, Morningstar said. “We were not aware of how the lemonade was made, who made the lemonade, of what the lemonade was made with, so we acted accordingly by city ordinance,” he said.

News of the bust caused an outpouring of local support for the trio — and The Coastal Source said it had given the girls tickets to the waterpark.

Tell Christian Sheriff to Stop Persecuting Atheist

Religious freedom is under attack in this country. Nowhere is this attack more defined than the malicious persecution of EllenBeth Wachs by Polk County, Florida, Sheriff Grady Judd.

EllenBeth, an activist for the separation of church and state, had, earlier this year, challenged Sheriff Judd, an outspoken evangelical Christian, over the illegal transfer of taxpayer property to local churches, which he had orchestrated in a politically motivated public relations stunt.

Additionally, she discovered, through her Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to Sheriff Judd, that Judd had illegally used his sheriff department’s credit card and other taxpayer resources for this purpose.

In retaliation over a dozen of Sheriff Judd’s deputies, in SWAT tactical gear, descended on EllenBeth’s home in March. She was arrested on felony charges, jailed, her home searched and personal items and documents seized. Why? Because EllenBeth, a retired attorney, had used the letters “Esq.” (an honorific used by both practicing and retired attorneys) after her name on those FOIA requests to the sheriff.

Among the items that deputies took in the search were incriminating documents sent by a sheriff’s department employee in response to EllenBeth’s FOIA requests. Moreover, the search included rummaging through areas that had nothing to do with the practice of law: searching her underwear drawer, her medical supplies, turning over her bed mattress, looking under chair cushions, probing into her cars as well as into her employees’ cars and purses, while holding them at gunpoint.

Then again in May, she was dragged from her home, arrested and jailed, including a week of solitary confinement, on another trumped up felony charge based on a neighbor’s alleged report that he had heard a sexual sound coming from the privacy of her home 48 days prior.

EllenBeth currently faces the possibility of years in prison.  Most incredulously, no one has ever been arrested, charged, let alone convicted on the allegations that have been leveled at her in these charges.

Clearly, EllenBeth has been maliciously persecuted for standing up against the sheriff in her campaign to secure her — and our — religious freedoms.

But she is fighting back and you can help her by signing this petition and passing it on to everyone you know. And if you can, please help EllenBeth by donating whatever you can to her Legal Defense Fund: information at … http://atheistsofflorida.org/