Just Hold Those Doughnut Jokes, Okay?

The bond between cops and donuts is a sacred one, it seems, and irrepressible. We think Frank Alvarado, 46, of Moline, Ill., didn’t consider that when he hijacked a Donut Delite truck he found idling unoccupied outside Rock Island Hospital. The driver was inside, stocking the cafeteria. So, Frankie got a good head start, but the instant an area-wide dispatch went out about a jacked donut-mobile with precious powdered-sugar contents aboard, the streets seemed to fill with speeding, wailing black-and-whites.

Residents of two counties and several towns were treated to a long-running, jurisdiction-crisscrossing, high-speed pursuit of a donut truck by a minimum of nine officers from four agencies in a half-dozen cruisers! The siren-wailing, tire-screeching chase picked up additional cops and cruisers here and there as frantic supervisors tried to cut down the sheer number of cars involved.

The saga finally ended when Frankie tried to cut through a Hardee’s parking lot, where he was rammed and blocked by a Tama County deputy. Observers noted that within a few minutes, four more officers from three other agencies joined the mob, one of them showing up in his own vehicle.

“What strikes me as a bit out of the ordinary in this case is the number of officers who were able to respond,” said the assistant Tama County Attorney, Rich Vander Mey. “I don’t know whether the fact that the stolen vehicle contained donuts has anything to do with that.”
Well, duh. And yes, Donut Delite donated the truck’s contents to the arresting officers. Justice — and jelly-filled donuts — were both served.

Devil Dancin’

It hurts just to think about it. But we can laugh between the twinges, ’cause this guy got what he deserved.

Just before dawn on a cold January morning, a dispatcher at Kokomo, Ind., PD took a call from a convenience store clerk reporting an armed robbery and gunshot wound. The reporting female clerk sounded pretty calm considering the situation, and she quickly explained, “Oh, it wasn’t me who got shot. It was the robber.” But then, the clerk didn’t shoot him. No, the suspect shot himself — and it was caught on videotape.

Derrick Kosch, 25, waltzed in swaggering, waving a big black pistol and demanding cash. The clerk dutifully piled wads of bills on the counter and even pulled out a white cloth bag for Kosch to stuff his loot into. Apparently emboldened by the clerk’s cooperative demeanor, Kosch told her to get him some Newport cigarettes, too.

With the loot-bag in one hand and the pistol in the other, how was he gonna grab those smokes? Yup — while the clerk was still turned away from Kosch getting his Newports, he shoved his pistol down the front of his pants. The clerk heard a loud explosion and a scream, and turned to find Kosch doin’ a devil-dance of agony. She watched in shock as Kosch sorta crab-limped out the door, still squealin’ and squeakin’.

Responding officers barely had time to choke back their chuckles at the surveillance videotape when they were called to a nearby residence — something about a gunshot wound. They found Kosch there with what would be described as a wound to the left leg and right testicle — if he had still possessed a right testicle, that is. He didn’t.

One Punt

Even if you weren’t a Marine, you’ve gotta love this one. Just visualize an 84-year-old guy ambling down a sidewalk in Santa Rosa, Calif., with his arms loaded with grocery bags. Maybe he seems a bit more spry than your average octogenarian, and perhaps there’s a hard glint in his aging eyes, but to a teenaged punk with a knife, he must have looked like easy prey. The kid made his move.

Waving the knife from several feet away, the kid sneered and said, “Old man, give me your wallet or I’ll cut you.” Our seasoned senior citizen, a retired Marine, was not impressed. In fact, he laughed, and told the lad that he had fought in three wars and been threatened with knives and bayonets by real men. The kid may have been a bit confused, but he stepped closer and waved that blade more aggressively.

“If you step any closer, you’re going to be sorry,” his “victim” warned. The kid stepped closer. He should have realized he was in trouble when the old gent carefully put his shopping bags down on the ground.

It was a one-shot fight. The old leatherneck punted the punk in the groin, just once, very hard. He went down and assumed a semi-permanent fetal position, pukin’ and moaning. Our hero picked up his bags, went home, calmly stowed his perishables in the fridge, and then called the police. Apparently, that little incident did not compare with Iwo Jima or the Chosin Reservoir, and didn’t rate any excitement.

This Might Be A Clue

If you’re wondering whether or not a Mexican border town is a little bit too dangerous to visit, this might be an easy test: If the police chief flees to a U.S. checkpoint and begs for asylum and protective custody, this is what we call an “indicator.”

That’s what happened in Palomas, Mexico, where bandit gangs and competing drug cartels have grown so brazen and violent that it’s rapidly becoming a ghost town — and a lot of those ghosts are “fresh.”

Emilio Perez, the former chief of police in Palomas, sought asylum at the international port of entry in Columbus, N.M., where he told U.S. authorities that his last two deputies had run for their lives and he was a “dead man walkin’” in his own hometown. Officers at the checkpoint had recently witnessed two men shot down in the street nearby, and bodies rolled in blankets dumped in the road. The mayor of Columbus had also recently visited a dentist in Palomas, and his root canal procedure was interrupted by two gunmen who burst into the clinic demanding money and drugs.

Perez was taken to a secure facility pending processing of his asylum request. Yeah, we think when your top cop runs away, you got some “public safety problems.”

How Festive!

It’s a simple rule of the marketplace: when you’ve got a hot product plus competition and everybody else’s offerings are in the same drab, dingy colors, you’ve gotta go bright to create eye-catching appeal. We’re sure that’s why cops across Ohio were seizing and impounding bright green rocks of crack cocaine back in March — right around St. Patrick’s Day.

Washington County Sheriff Larry Mincks supervised one such seizure resulting from a raid in Marietta. When asked by reporters if he had ever seen anything like that before, he said several years ago some local dealers dyed their crack red during the Christmas season.

Just wait — red, white and blue crack for the Fourth of July, whattaya bet?