| February 13, 2007 | - A gunman in Salt Lake City went on a shooting rampage in the Trolley Square mall, killing five before he was shot dead by police.
| Source:
NYT
|
| February 7, 2007 | - Austrian federal
police uncovered a child pornography ring involving 2,360 suspects in more than 77 countries.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| December 4, 2006 | - A police officer in Tempe, Arizona, was criticized for telling two black men that they could get out of their littering tickets if they rapped. “The dangers of littering,” rapped one of the men, “you will get a ticket. If you ain't wit' it, you better be experienced.” “It's important,” said Reverend Jarrett Maupin, “for police officers to realize that black people do not speak hip-hop.”
| Source:
Yahoo News
|
| November 28, 2006 | - A lawyer representing five policemen who shot and killed an unarmed black man in Queens, New York, said he was “confident” his clients would go unpunished.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 28, 2006 | - A “yearlong rash of nut robberies” ended when police recovered 136,000 pounds of stolen nuts with a street value of $400,000 from a warehouse in Sacramento.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 20, 2006 | - A professional dominatrix testified that an officer in the Greenburgh, New York, police department had extracted sexual favors from her. “He wanted to go to a motel in the Bronx where I would defecate on him,” she said, “but I told him I was uncomfortable going to the Bronx.”
| Source:
Journal News
|
| November 11, 2006 | - Despite the objections of the Vatican, a gay rights rally was held in Jerusalem under the guard of nearly 3,000 police. Rabbi Yehuda Levin flew from Brooklyn to denounce the rally. “They are not,” said Levin, “being tolerant of our feelings.”
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| October 28, 2006 | - The city of Madison, Wisconsin, announced that its Halloween festivities will be a success if the police are not compelled to pepper-spray angry mobs of drunken residents.
| Source:
CNN
|
| June 25, 2006 | - Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of Iraq unveiled a 24-point national reconciliation plan designed to end his nation's civil war, and in Baghdad nearly 100 people were abducted by gunmen dressed as police officers.
| Source:
Islam Online via Google News
|
| May 23, 2006 | - The Supreme Court voted unanimously that police may enter a house without a warrant in order to break up a fight.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| May 5, 2006 | -
Iraqi
police
shot a 14-year-old boy named Ahmed Khalil in the head for being a gay
prostitute.
| Source:
Gay.com
|
| May 5, 2006 | - In Valparaiso, Indiana, a deaf man got into a fight with a man with two prosthetic legs; police later arrested the deaf man via a note.
| Source:
Breitbart.com
|
| April 20, 2006 | - In Acapulco, Mexico, the heads of a police chief and a police officer were found in front of a government building. A sign next to the heads read: “So that you learn respect.”
| Source:
AZCentral.com
|
| April 17, 2006 | - In Purcell, Oklahoma, a man named Kevin Ray Underwood was arrested for killing a 10-year-old girl named Jamie Rose Bolin. “I chopped her up,” he told police. “Regarding a potential motive,” said a police chief, “this appears to have been part of a plan to kidnap a person, rape them, torture them, kill them, cut off their head, drain the body of blood, rape the corpse, eat the corpse, then dispose of the organs and bones.” The police also announced that they had removed skewers and a meat tenderizer from Underwood's apartment.
| Source:
Winston-Salem Journal
|
| March 7, 2006 | - In Arizona a 52-year-old Deputy Fire Chief named Leroy Johnson was seen dragging a lamb into a neighbor's barn. The lamb’s owner, Alan Goats, entered the barn to confront Johnson. "You caught me, Alan," said Johnson, zipping up his wet pants. "I tried to fuck your sheep." Police described the victim as small, gray, three feet tall, and four feet long.
| Source:
The Smoking Gun
|
| February 18, 2006 | - A woman in Minnesota was arrested for biting off part of another woman's nose. Police obtained a search warrant to recover the nose, which was then reattached.
| Source:
TwinCities.com
|
| February 14, 2006 | - Sheriffs from 10 different U.S. states visited Israel to learn more about homeland-security techniques.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| December 30, 2005 | - Twenty Sudanese migrants, protesting their treatment in Egypt, were killed by Egyptian police.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| December 14, 2005 | -
Police in New Windsor, New York, destroyed a snow penis.
| Source:
Record Online
|
| December 8, 2005 | - A police officer in Hamtramck, Michigan, tasered his partner during an argument over whether to stop their car to buy a soda.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| December 8, 2005 | - In Miami an air marshal shot and killed an American Airlines passenger, Rigoberto Alpizar, who, according to the air marshal, claimed to have a bomb in his backpack. Before the shooting, Alpizar's wife attempted to explain that her husband was bipolar and off his medication. No bomb was found.
| Source:
Detroit News
|
| December 6, 2005 | - A Memphis, Tennessee, woman was arrested after she hired a hit man to kill four other men and take their cocaine; the hit man turned out to be an undercover police officer, and the cocaine turned out to be queso fresco cheese.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| December 2, 2005 | - A U.S. federal judge determined that it is constitutional for the New York City
Police to randomly search passengers' bags on the subway.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| November 17, 2005 | - A former student at Oxford University was in trouble for calling a policeman's
horse “gay.” “Sam was adamant,” said an eyewitness, “his equine gaydar was accurate.”
| Source:
The Oxford Student
|
| November 5, 2005 | - Rioters near and around Paris set thousands of cars and dozens of buildings on fire after two teenagers of African descent were electrocuted while trying to escape the police.
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| October 10, 2005 | - Two New Orleans
policemen were arrested for severely beating a 64-year-old man.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| August 16, 2005 | - Secret documents revealed that Jean Charles De Menezes, the Brazilian electrician shot and killed as a terrorist by police on a London train, was not carrying any bags, was not wearing a bulky winter coat, and did not jump any turnstiles. He was, however, still shot seven times in the head.
| Source:
ITN
|
| August 9, 2005 | - In the south of France, fire-fighting helicopters woke an eighty-one-year-old man from his nap; the man opened fire on the aircraft with a rifle and, when police came to arrest him, he beat them with saucepans.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| July 11, 2005 | - Iraqi police detained twelve suspected militants inside a metal box under the Iraqi sun; nine died from the heat, and one of the survivors complained that he had been given electric shocks by the police.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| July 6, 2005 | - Visiting Scotland for the G8 summit, President George W. Bush fell off his bicycle after running into a policeman. Bush was hurt, but not badly. The policeman hurt his ankle. “I should act my age,” said Bush.
| Source 1:
AP
Source 2:
IOL.co.za
|
| May 19, 2005 | - A California man was arrested because he lived in a tent for two weeks in order to buy tickets to the new Star Wars movie; his doing so violated a requirement that, as a sex offender, he let police know if he changed lodgings.
| Source:
NCTimes
|
| April 29, 2005 | - A Rhode Island man was arrested after he offered an undercover policewoman
T-bone steaks in exchange for sex.
| Source:
AP
|
| April 29, 2005 | - The Clovis, New Mexico, police locked down a middle school, closed off several streets, and placed officers on rooftops before discovering that what they thought was a weapon carried by a student was actually a thirty-inch burrito.
| Source:
AP
|
| April 18, 2005 | - The Mesa, Arizona, police department applied for funding to buy and train a tiny monkey that they can dress in a kevlar vest and send into dangerous situations.
| Source:
AP
|
| April 14, 2005 | - U.S. marshals arrested more than 10,000 people on outstanding warrants, nearly half of them for minor drug offenses.
| Source:
KRT Wire
|
| April 8, 2005 | - A Georgia man died after police shot him with nonlethal beanbags.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| April 1, 2005 | - A former policeman was arrested for flying to Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, in order to molest
boys.
| Source:
Sign On San Diego
|
| March 30, 2005 | - A Minnesota man threw a toddler at a policeman.
| Source:
WCCO
|
| March 22, 2005 | - In Minnesota, an overweight loner Chippewa neo-Nazi goth teenager shot and killed his grandfather and his grandfather's girlfriend, then went to his high school and shot and killed a security guard, five students, a teacher, and himself.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| March 8, 2005 | - The mayor of Nezahualcoyotl, Mexico, ordered the entire 1,100-member Nezahualcoyotl police force to read one book a month and to control its cholesterol.
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| March 5, 2005 | - A pedophile marijuana grower shot and killed four Mounties, then himself, in Alberta, Canada.
| Source:
Globe and Mail
|
| March 2, 2005 | - A toddler was lost in the Alabama woods; police, firemen, and family friends searched for him in vain. Finally, he was rescued by a three-legged dog.
| Source:
NBC 13
|
| January 12, 2005 | - A police officer in the Philippines was accused of stealing a fellow officer's bomb-sniffing dog, then eating it.
| Source:
Sun Star Davao
|
| October 22, 2004 | - Boston police killed a woman with a non-lethal pepper spray projectile after the Red Sox defeated the New York Yankees to win the American League Championship Series.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| July 10, 2004 | - In Shreveport, Louisiana, police arrested a man in a wheelchair for shooting a man on crutches who apparently hit the accused over the head with a crutch.
| Source:
Shreveport Times
|
| June 25, 2004 | - Los Angeles police officers were videotaped beating a black man after he surrendered peacefully.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 15, 2004 | -
Chaos continued to rule Iraq; a suicide bomber killed at least 13 people when he attacked a convoy of civilian contractors in Baghdad, whereupon a mob descended on the wreckage and set it on fire under the watchful eyes of Iraqi policemen; on the same day other bombs killed eight people.
| Source:
International Herald Tribune
|
| April 13, 2004 | -
Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia apologized to two reporters whose recordings of a recent speech were erased by a federal marshal; Scalia had lamented in the speech that people just don't revere the Constitution the way they used to.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 12, 2004 | - Criminal investigations of Halliburton for its war profiteering in Iraq were ongoing; the company has acknowledged that mistakes were made.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| March 4, 2004 | - A self-described "pressure-group with a terrorist character" was threatening to bomb French
trains unless it receives a $5 million ransom; French investigators speculated that the group has anarchist or left-wing or right-wing tendencies.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 2, 2004 | -
Police in São Paolo, Brazil, began fingerprinting and photographing American tourists to comply with a judge's order that Americans be treated like Brazilians who enter the U.S.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| January 1, 2004 | - It was reported that the CIA is planning to set up a new secret police force in Iraq, modeled after the Phoenix program of the Vietnam War, that will ensure the United States retains control over the country after official sovereignty passes to a native government. The secret plan, of which Dick Cheney was the purported secret author, will cost $3 billion and will be funded from the CIA's secret budget.
| Source:
London Telegraph
|
| December 28, 2003 | -
Michael Jackson said that when he was a boy he slept with grown men many times, and he complained that the police had locked him in a room that had "doo doo" all over the walls.
| Source:
CBS News
|
| November 29, 2003 | - Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said that some U.S.-trained Iraqi
policemen had carried out attacks on occupation forces.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| October 30, 2003 | - Shropshire lads were warned by British police to stop throwing eggs or face prosecution; parents were asked to keep a close watch on the household egg supply, and police cautioned shopkeepers to be suspicious of egg-buying children.
| Source:
BBC
|
| September 13, 2003 | - Ten Iraqi
policemen and one Jordanian hospital worker were killed in a firefight with American soldiers; the policemen were chasing a stolen BMW when they ran into two American tanks on patrol, with unhappy results.
Guards at a nearby hospital fired shots, prompting the tanks to attack the hospital.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 11, 2003 | -
Chinese
police were told that they can no longer torture
crime suspects.
| Source:
Telegraph
|
| September 6, 2003 | - Gunmen fired on a Sunni mosque in Baghdad just after morning prayers and injured three people, a car bomb exploded near the headquarters of the Baghdad police department, a British bomb squad expert was killed, an American Humvee was blown up, and Lt.
Gen.
Ricardo Sanchez said that attacks on American forces were down to about 14 or 15 a day.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was touring Iraq and Afghanistan, complained that the news media was ignoring "the story of success and accomplishment" in Iraq.
| Source:
Austin American-Statesman
|
| September 2, 2003 | - An Israeli commission of inquiry concluded that police used excessive force in putting down a riot by Israeli Arabs three years ago in which 13 people were killed.
The commission suggested that the police stop using snipers armed with rubber-coated steel bullets to disperse Arab crowds.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 22, 2003 | - Tampa, Florida, shut down its face-recognition software that scanned crowds in the Ybor City neighborhood for criminals but led to no arrests after two years. "I wouldn't consider it a failure," said one policeman.
| |
| August 18, 2003 | - British police raided an artist's home after a burglar mistook a mask made out of bacon for a human head.
| Source:
BBC
|
| August 17, 2003 | - the police chief of Mosul was shot and two other officers died in an ambush; a Danish soldier was killed, some American soldiers were shot as they left a restaurant, and a sewage plant was set on fire.
| Source:
BBC
|
| August 6, 2003 | - It was reported that Florida
police are building an "antiterrorism" database called Matrix that will be used to detect patterns of suspicious activity among the citizenry; the system, which will be partially financed with federal funds, is remarkably similar to the Pentagon's Terrorist Information Awareness program. Mayor Anthony Williams of Washington, D.C., said that District police are working with police in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York to build a similar data-mining system.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| July 30, 2003 | - The Saudis were continuing to capture suspected Al Qaeda militants in police raids; the government insisted that most of those captured had been trained in Afghanistan, but admitted that a few "perhaps were trained on farms and the like inside the country."
| Source:
Los Angeles Times
|
| July 27, 2003 | - The NAACP called for an inquiry into the death of a black man who was found hanging from a tree with his hands tied behind his back; local police had concluded that the man, who had been dating the daughter of a white police officer, had committed suicide.
| Source:
AP
|
| July 25, 2003 | -
French
police evacuated an airport in Toulouse and blew up a bag of puff pastry.
| Source:
Ananova
|
| July 18, 2003 | -
Japanese
police replaced their sirens with the recorded sound of church bells, in hopes of soothing agitated criminals.
| Source:
Ananova
|
| July 7, 2003 | - Seven Iraqi
policemen who had just completed an American training course were killed and 50 were injured by a bomb as they marched down the street as part of their graduation ceremony.
| Source:
Independent
|
| July 3, 2003 | - An Oklahoma man was sentenced to life in prison for spitting on a policeman.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| June 18, 2003 | - There were riots in Benton Harbor, Michigan, where black residents have long complained of police harassment, after a motorcyclist died during a police chase.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| June 15, 2003 | -
Police in Saudi Arabia said they had prevented a terrorist attack when they raided a booby-trapped apartment in Mecca; five militants and two police officers died in the shootout.
| Source:
Newsday
|
| May 30, 2003 | - The Supreme Court ruled that police can question suspects who are in great pain without reading them their rights; Justice John Paul Stevens called the interrogation at issue in the case "the functional equivalent of an attempt to obtain an involuntary confession from a prisoner by torturous methods."
| Source:
Undernews
|
| April 22, 2003 | -
Police in Berlin confiscated an air-raid siren from a 73-year-old man who had been using it to stun his talkative wife into submission.
| |
| April 15, 2003 | -
Mexican authorities arrested 42 police officers for selling drugs to school children.
| |
| April 8, 2003 | -
Los Angeles announced that it will hire 675 new police officers.
| |
| March 25, 2003 | -
Many hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated against the war in cities all over the world. Protests in San Francisco were particularly lively. One group of protesters vomited on the sidewalk in front of a federal building after drinking large quantities of red, white, and blue milk; others pulled out mats and practiced yoga in front of the police. A federal park ranger tried to run over protesters in his truck and then attempted to run down a reporter. One protester apparently committed suicide by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge.
| |
| March 25, 2003 | -
Police were repeatedly videotaped attacking demonstrators with clubs and pepper spray. Protesters were also observed beating police officers.
| |
| March 25, 2003 | -
Czech officials published a list of 75,000 former agents of the Communist secret police.
| |
| March 25, 2003 | -
The Irish were closely following a trial concerning police corruption in County Donegal; prosecutors say that police manufactured and planted explosives so that they could discover the bombs and claim a victory over the IRA.
| |
| February 25, 2003 | - Two French tourists were run over by a police SUV as they sunbathed on Miami Beach; the officer drove over the tourists, who were sisters, then backed up and ran over them again. One of the women died.
| |
| February 18, 2003 | -
In New York, where the authorities refused to permit a peace march, at least half a million people attempted to assemble at a park near the United Nations; police blocked streets and prevented many of the demonstrators from reaching the rallying point.
| |
| February 18, 2003 | -
In Colorado Springs, police fired tear gas into a crowd of protesters, even though children were in the adjacent playground.
| |
| February 18, 2003 | -
A federal judge in Manhattan agreed to relax the rules governing the ability of New York City police to spy on political groups; previously the police required evidence of a crime to open an investigation.
| |
| February 18, 2003 | -
Hindu activists looted and burned card shops in India to protest Valentine's Day, and British police charged five men with conspiracy to kidnap a former Spice Girl.
| |
| February 4, 2003 | -
Chicago police discovered a three-year-old boy chained by the neck to a bed; the boy's foster parents attached the chain to prevent him from taking food from the refrigerator.
| |
| February 4, 2003 | -
Two boys in California were arrested for murdering their mother, cutting off her head and hands, and dumping the body in a ravine; the boys told police that they had learned their technique from The Sopranos.
| |
| January 28, 2003 | -
Important people from all over the world descended on Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum.
Protesters threw snowballs at police; police fired tear gas at the protesters.
| |
| January 28, 2003 | -
British police sent polite letters to habitual criminals asking them to behave themselves.
| |
| January 14, 2003 | -
Governor George Ryan of Illinois commuted the sentences of the state's 156 death-row inmates and pardoned four men who were tortured by police into confessing to murders they did not commit.
| |
| January 14, 2003 | -
Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon was slipping in the polls after being accused of corruption and lying to the police in the matter of an illegal $1.5 million loan.
| |
| January 7, 2003 | -
Imran Abu Hamdiya, a 17-year-old boy from Hebron, was found beaten to death in a local industrial park shortly after he was seen being taken away by Israeli border police. “Every day they take men,” said one mourner at the boy's funeral. “They hit them and they break their bones. What kind of life is this?”
| |
| December 24, 2002 | -
Iran's morality police arrested a barber for giving short haircuts to girls seeking to pass as boys.
| |
| December 17, 2002 | -
Russia's Interior Ministry announced new rules requiring police officers to go door-to-door as part of a “getting to know you” campaign; the officers will do so every three months, and they will collect “social, economic, and demographic” data on residents, whose participation will be voluntary.
| |
| December 17, 2002 | -
A police
dog in St. Petersburg, Florida, bit off a robbery suspect's penis.
| |
| November 26, 2002 | -
An American evangelist was shot dead in Lebanon, and two American soldiers were shot by a Kuwaiti policeman.
| |
| November 19, 2002 | -
The United Nations and Human Rights Watch condemned the police in Kabul, Afghanistan, for shooting into a crowd of unarmed student protesters; at least two students were killed.
| |
| November 12, 2002 | -
Police in Racine, Wisconsin, cracked down on fans of. techno music and issued 445 tickets.
“Rave parties,” said a cop, “are not going to be part of our community and are not going to be tolerated.” The White House was thinking about abandoning its prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui, which was not going so well, and trying him instead before a military tribunal, where victory would be assured.
| |
| November 5, 2002 | -
London police arrested five people in connection with a plot to kidnap Posh Spice.
| |
| October 29, 2002 | -
Power plants, refineries, and transportation infrastructure are still unprotected; local police, firefighters, and other emergency personnel are almost as unprepared for attacks now as they were in September 2001; almost none of the cargo containers entering the country are inspected; and the federal government has authorized only $92 million of the $2 billion needed to secure the nation's ports.
| |
| October 29, 2002 | -
Police arrested a Gulf War veteran and his teenage Jamaican sidekick in the Washington sniper case, ending a media frenzy that included a request by CNN to interview actors from the CBS series “Crime Scene Investigation.” Lengthy footage was broadcast of a tree stump being dug up and hauled away.
Experts and profilers who had spent untold hours on television speculating about the killer were forced to admit that their prophecies had been worthless.
“My predictions were not that close,” one expert said.
| |
| October 22, 2002 | -
Police in Wales cracked down on the practice of fueling automobiles with cooking oil to avoid paying taxes.
| |
| October 15, 2002 | -
The Washington sniper continued to shoot people and broadened his targets to include children, and he left a tarot “death card” at the scene of one shooting on which he wrote: “Dear Policeman, I am God.” The American Tarot Association posted a list of “fast facts” on its website about the death card and said that the killer obviously knows nothing at all about tarot.
| |
| October 8, 2002 | - A four-year-old boy in Austria called the police to complain about his grandmother's cooking.
| |
| September 17, 2002 | -
Police shut down a large section of Interstate 75 after a woman named Eunice Stone thought she heard four young Arab men “laughing about 9/11” in a Shoney's restaurant in Calhoun, Georgia.
| |
| September 17, 2002 | -
New York City police stopped subways and roped off Battery Park for several hours after someone saw a man wearing a turban climb out of a subway maintenance hatch; calm was restored after it was determined that the man was a Sikh transit worker.
| |
| September 17, 2002 | -
A federal judge ruled that the Chicago police have been routinely violating the rights of witnesses by locking them up in small rooms without a lawyer for up to 24 hours.
| |
| September 17, 2002 | -
Nigerian police arrested a mortuary worker who tried to sell a pair of human breasts to undercover officers; the man also had bottles of blood and pubic hair for sale.
| |
| September 3, 2002 | -
An 81-year-old man wearing nothing but a T-shirt, sneakers, and sunglasses was filmed by Virginia police fornicating with one cow after another.
| |
| August 27, 2002 | -
More than a dozen people were killed during rioting and lynchings following attacks in Lucknow, India, by a mysterious “muhnochwa,” or “face-clawing monster” that flashes blue, red, or green and strikes only at night.
Although police surmised that the attacker was an extraterrestrial being, scientists suspect that the victims were assaulted by lightning balls, which are sometimes created during droughts.
| |
| August 13, 2002 | -
Police in Lagos, Nigeria, fired tear gas and beat women who were blocking the gates of Chevron Texaco and Shell offices, according to local newspapers; one woman was reportedly shot dead.
| |
| July 30, 2002 | -
Brazilian police announced that they will begin patrolling from a 130-foot-long airship that will hover over the crime-ridden streets of Rio; companies have been invited to advertise on the sides of the ship.
| |
| July 30, 2002 | -
A group of 30 monkeys laid siege to an Indian police station to rescue an orphaned member of their tribe.
| |
| June 25, 2002 | -
President Vicente Fox declassified many of the files of Mexico's secret police, and scholars and families began trying to discover the fate of hundreds of dissidents who had disappeared over the years.
| |
| May 28, 2002 | -
Police in Turin, Italy, arrested a 24-year-old prostitute for engaging in unfair competition by charging too little for her services.
| |
| May 21, 2002 | -
French police were searching the Rhône-Rhine Canal for stolen artworks.
After Stéphane Breitwieser was arrested for trying to steal a bugle from a museum in Switzerland, his mother threw much of his collection of stolen art into the canal and chopped up drawings and oil paintings by Watteau, Lucas Cranach the Elder, and Pieter Brueghel the Younger.
Police estimated the value of the art at $1.4 billion.
| |
| May 14, 2002 | -
Pim Fortuyn, a gay, right-wing, anti-immigrant politician, was assassinated in the Netherlands; police arrested an animal-rights activist in connection with the murder.
| |
| May 14, 2002 | -
Lucas Helder, a 21-year-old art student who was arrested for planting pipe bombs in mailboxes across five states, told a police officer that he was trying to make a smiley-face pattern with his attacks.
| |
| May 14, 2002 | -
A man in Malacky, Slovakia, tried unsuccessfully to decapitate himself with a homemade guillotine in front of the local tax office because he was unable to pay the taxes on his house. “It did not cut his head off completely,” said a policeman, “but he wounded himself so badly that he died afterwards.”
| |
| May 14, 2002 | -
The shrunken head of an Indian woman that was stolen from the Frontier Times Museum in Bandera, Texas, was found in a bag on the side of a road. “She looks all right,” said the local police chief. “They're just tickled to death that nobody tore her up. We're still going to investigate it, and hopefully we can get somebody in jail.”
| |
| May 7, 2002 | -
Police arrested the Rev. Paul R. Shanley, an open advocate of “man-boy love” who has been accused of molesting many children during his 30-year ministry in Boston, for child rape.
| |
| April 30, 2002 | -
Robert Blake, the television actor who played Baretta, a tough police detective with a pet cockatoo, was charged with murdering his wife.
| |
| April 30, 2002 | -
Atlanta policemen were riding around town on $9,000 Segway scooters.
| |
| April 16, 2002 | -
President Gloria Arroyo of the Philippines called on female police officers to be more like Charlie's Angels.
| |
| April 2, 2002 | -
As part of an anti-corruption campaign, Chinese prosecutors distributed playing cards illustrated with cartoon depictions of crimes, such as sexual bribery, to thousands of local officials and police officers who are notorious for spending much of their time playing poker.
| |
| March 19, 2002 | -
Police in Osaka, Japan, shut down an illegal sex ring popular among middle-aged men seeking sex and sympathy from prostitutes ranging in age from 40 to 70.
| |
| February 19, 2002 | -
Belgian police forgot about a vagrant they had arrested and left him in a cell for three days without food or water.
| |
| February 19, 2002 | -
Police in Bogotá, Colombia, said that as many as 50 gangs of human vampires were terrorizing residents.
| |
| February 12, 2002 | -
A man was decapitated with a machete in St.
Petersburg, Florida, by his girlfriend's ex-boyfriend; when police arrived at the scene, neighbors were watching the killer put the victim's head on the hood of a car. “He was adjusting the mirror,” said a police spokesman, “so the head, if it were alive, could see itself.”
| |
| February 5, 2002 | -
The World Economic Forum was held in New York instead of
Davos, Switzerland, and many
celebrities were feeling left out when they weren't invited to
swanky parties populated with economists, businessmen, and
sundry apologists of globalization. Panelists included Bono,
the pop star, who told the press that “the great thing about
hanging out with Republicans is that it's very unhip for both of
us. There's a parity of pain here.” About 1,000 people
demonstrated in front of a Gap store in Manhattan to protest the
company's use of overseas sweatshops. Media hopes for
Seattle-style violence were disappointed.
“Starbucks can rest easy for
another day,” one policeman
told a reporter.
| |
| January 29, 2002 | -
“Unknown miscreants” on motorcycles fired at the American Center in New Delhi, India, killing three police officers.
| |
| January 29, 2002 | -
A gangster later called and claimed responsibility for the shooting, saying it was revenge against the police: “You take one of my men, I take 20 of yours.
| |
| January 29, 2002 | -
Singapore uncovered an Al Qaeda “sleeper cell” there and arrested 13 people; the terrorists had apparently developed an extensive and highly disciplined network throughout southeast Asia.
Officials were surprised that the terrorists were able to operate for years without being detected in a police state where civil liberties are largely nonexistent.
| |
| January 29, 2002 | -
A woman from Jacksonville, Florida, was taken in for psychiatric evaluation by police in northern California after she made some “unusual statements” at a hotel, thus interrupting her 10,000-mile taxi ride to Alaska.
| |
| January 22, 2002 | -
Police in Dallas discovered that about half the cocaine and one fourth of the methamphetamine they confiscated last year was fake, which led to the dismissal of 24 criminal cases, all of which involve a single informer who was paid $200,000 by the police department for his efforts.
| |
| January 15, 2002 | -
Police in Bayview, Texas, were investigating the theft of a ten-foot giraffe.
| |
| January 8, 2002 | -
Police in Thailand caught a woman trying to board a flight with 6,000 hits of speed in her platform soles.
| |
| January 8, 2002 | -
Historian Stephen E.
Ambrose admitted to plagiarizing several passages in his best-selling book The Wild Blue. Parents of a boy killed in the 1999 Columbine massacre charged that their son was shot accidentally by a police officer.
| |
| January 1, 2002 | -
French police insisted that they had made no mistakes when they allowed Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber,” to board his flight to America.
“We made no error at any stage,” a police official said.
| |
| December 25, 2001 | -
Santa Claus shot a woman in the face in São Paulo, Brazil, and two car bombs exploded outside police headquarters in Santa Cruz, Bolivia.
| |
| December 25, 2001 | -
A police officer in Lima, Peru, accidentally shot off his partner's penis.
| |
| December 11, 2001 | -
Moscow
police
arrested seven men trying to sell more than two pounds of weapons-grade enriched uranium.
| |
| December 4, 2001 | - Greek policemen, believing them to be spies, arrested a group of British plane-spotters who traveled to Greece to practice their hobby, which is unknown in most of the world.
| |
| November 27, 2001 | - Some American police chiefs were refusing to go along with the federal government's order to round up and question 5,000 legal Muslim immigrants, saying it smacked of racial profiling, which is illegal.
| |
| November 6, 2001 | -
Police in Milan, Italy, arrested seven homosexuals who were found sexually linked together next to a highway.
| |
| October 30, 2001 | -
German
police
arrested a man who was holding his girlfriend hostage in exchange for a crate of lager and two packs of cigarettes.
| |
| October 23, 2001 | - Dutch police
arrested Bert and Ernie in front of a hundred children at a fair in Bergen op Zoom because the actors wearing the costumes were violating Sesame Street's intellectual property rights.
| |
| October 16, 2001 | - Two cops in Albuquerque, New Mexico, were in trouble for using a police helicopter to make a doughnut run.
| |
| October 9, 2001 | -
Police in Togo raided a church whose pastor was suspected of Satanism, and found a panther's pelt, hyena paws, vulture eggs, and a hunchback's hump.
| |
| October 2, 2001 | -
Police in New Zealand
arrested a naked man pushing a baby carriage that contained a stolen shrub in a terra-cotta pot.
| |
| September 18, 2001 | - In Turkey, the Revolutionary People'
|
