Authorities in Winter Haven, Fla., arrested James Garfield, 28, when he was in a Ford Crown Victoria with police lights, a video camera and a Taser. He was wearing a uniform and carrying business cards with the term “law enforcement” printed on them. Explained Garfield, the “law enforcement” was just a “printing mistake.”
Priorities
A New York University Center for Justice study released in September warned that unless major upgrades are made quickly, 43 states will conduct 2016 elections on electronic voting machines at least 10 years old and woefully suspect. Those states use machines no longer made or poorly supported. Machines in 14 states are more than 15 years old. There are apprehensions over antiquated security, the risk of miscounts and potential for hacking. There is also fear of election-day breakdowns causing long lines at the polls, depressing turnout and dampening confidence in the overall fairness of the process. The NYU center estimated the costs of upgrading at greater than $1 billion.
Wait, What?
— According to a July New York Times report, some women are now dyeing their armpit hair. At the Free Your Pits website, and events like “pit-ins” in Seattle and Pensacola, Fla., women offer explanations ranging from political resistance to, according to one, “wanting to freak out [her] in-laws.” Preferred colors are turquoise, hot pink, purple and neon yellow.
— A former star of TV’s Little House on the Prairie, Melissa Gilbert, 51, announced in August that she would run for Congress for Michigan’s 8th Congressional District. She is doing this even though she is on the hook to the IRS and California for back taxes totaling $470,000. Gilbert, a former president of the Screen Actors Guild and member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council, promised that she and her actor husband would pay off her tax bill by the year 2024.
Buddhists Acting Out
— Police in Scotland’s Highlands were called in September when a Buddhist retreat participant, Raymond Storrie, became riled up that another participant, Robert Jenner, had boiled water for his tea, but not Storrie’s. After Storrie vengefully snatched Jenner’s hot water, Jenner punched him twice in the head, leading Storrie to threaten to kill Jenner.
— A Buddhist monk from Louisiana, Khang Nguyen Le, was arrested in New York City in September and accused of embezzling nearly $400,000 from his temple to fuel his gambling habit. He plays blackjack, mostly at a Lake Charles, La., casino.
Men Are Simple
— Five years after News of the Weird first mentioned it, Japan’s Love Plus virtual-girlfriend app is more popular than ever, serving a growing segment of the country’s lonely males — those who are beyond peak marital years and resigned to artificial “relationships.” Love Plus models (Rinko, Manaka and Nene) are chosen mostly not for physical attributes, but for flirting and companionship. One user described his “girlfriend” as “someone to say good morning to in the morning and goodnight to at night.” Said a Swedish observer, “You wouldn’t see this phenomenon in Europe or America.”
— Odette Delacroix, 25, of North Hollywood, is an 86-pound model who runs an adult fetish website in which men pay to watch her tumble around with up to five plus-size models who squash her in “pigpiles.” Odette told London’s edition of Cosmopolitan that her PetiteVsPlump website has so far earned her $100,000.
Police Report
In nearby Frostproof, Fla., Thomas Hook, 48, was also arrested in a Crown Vic with a prisoner cage, scanner and spotlight. He carried “private investigator” and “fugitive recovery” badges, and a bogus card identifying him as a retired Marine Corps major. Hook’s only connection to law enforcement is that he is a registered sex offender.
Oops!
During a break in a murder trial in Lima, Ohio, a jailer absentmindedly locked inmate and witness Steven Upham in the same cell with the accused murderer he was about to testify against (Markelus Carter, 46). Upham was set to testify that Carter had confessed the murder to him. When deputies figured out what had happened, they rushed to the cell to break up Carter’s attempt to use his fists to change Upham’s mind. At press time, the jury was still deliberating.
Least Competent Criminals
Police in South Union Township, Penn., say David Lee, 46, swiped a Straight Talk cellphone from a Wal-mart shelf on Sept. 15. After snatching the phone, Lee went to a different section of the store and tried to open the packaging with a knife. But he slashed his arm so severely he had to be medevaced to UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh. A hazmat crew had to be summoned to clean up the blood Lee had left in the store.
No Longer Weird
Stories that were formerly weird, but which now occur with such frequency that they must be permanently retired from circulation: (1) Despite being handcuffed by a King County, Wash., sheriff’s deputy and placed in the back seat of a squad car, a prisoner managed to drive off alone. Teddy Bell, 26, was apprehended a short while later with the help of K-9 officers. (2) In Bergen, Norway, the accused was convicted of murder based on a telltale Internet-search history. Police discovered 250 computer queries along the lines of “How do you poison someone without getting caught?” Ultimately, the woman in question confessed that she killed her husband by lighting a charcoal grill in his bedroom while he slept.
Weird News Classic
In January, 2009, inmates Regan Reti, 20, and Tiranara White, 21, who had been booked separately for different crimes on New Zealand’s North Island and were handcuffed together for security at Hastings District Court, dashed out of the building and ran for their freedom. However, when they encountered a street lamp in front of the courthouse, one man went to the right of it and the other to the left. They slammed into each other, giving jailers a chance to catch up and re-arrest them. A courthouse surveillance camera captured the moment; the grainy video was a worldwide sensation.
Protecting Our Freedoms
David Zaitzeff filed a civil complaint against Seattle challenging its anti-voyeurism law on the grounds that it has a “chilling effect” on his photography of immodestly dressed women in public in Seattle parks. Though he has never been charged with a crime, Zaitzeff is known for roaming joyously around short-skirted and swimsuit-clad “gals” while he wears only a thong and carries a “Free Hugs and Kisses” sign. Zaitzeff’s websites extol public nudity, said the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Democracy Blues
Randy Richardson, 42, ran unopposed for the Riceville, Iowa, school board. He failed to get any votes at all. He said he was too busy on election day to make it to the poll. To resolve the 0-0 result, the other board members simply appointed Richardson to the office. Riceville, near the Minnesota border, is a big-time farming community. Registered voters queried by The Des Moines Register said they just had too much fieldwork to do on polling day.
Economic Indicators
The serpentine queue extended for blocks in Lucknow, India, after the state government of Uttar Pradesh announced 368 job openings — almost all for menial work. Eventually, there were 2.3 million applications — 200,000 from people with advanced degrees. The $240-a-month positions required only a fifth-grade education. At present, 13 million young people enter India’s job market each year.
Fine Points Of The Law
Jose Banks filed a $10 million lawsuit in 2014 against the federal government because of jailers at Chicago’s high-rise Metropolitan Correctional Center, alleging that staff failed to guard him closely enough in 2012 and thus led him to think he could escape. He and a cellmate rappelled 17 floors with bed sheets. But Banks was arrested a few days later. He claimed in his lawsuit that the escape caused him great trauma, in addition to “humiliation and embarrassment” and “damage to his reputation.” In September, the U.S. Court of Appeals turned him down. Wrote the judges, “No one has a personal right to be better guarded [than any other person].”
Recurring Themes
Many in conservative Jewish communities still practice the tradition of Kaporos on the day of atonement. But the critics were out in force in New York City’s Borough Park neighborhood in September to protest the ritual slaughter of 50,000 chickens. A synagogue raises money by selling chickens to members, who then have butchers swing the chickens overhead three times, thus transferring the owners’ sins to the chickens. Ultimately, the chickens are beheaded — a process that supposedly erases the owners’ sins. Protesters ask, why not just donate money? A judge refused to block the ritual, but ordered police to enforce the sanitation laws governing the beheadings.
Reader’s Choice
— Che Hearn, 25, who police said had just shoplifted electronics items from the Wal-Mart in Round Lake Beach, Ill., was picked up while on foot near the store. Police found that Hearn had actually driven his car to the Wal-Mart but that while he was inside shoplifting, a repo agent who had followed him to the store had confiscated it.
— Astronaut Edgar Mitchell (the sixth man to walk on the moon) told a reporter in August that his “experience talking to people” has made it clear to him that extraterrestrials are trying “to keep us from going to war” with Russia and that U.S. military officers have told him that their test missiles are “frequently” shot down “by alien spacecraft.”
Another Classic
New Zealand’s 2009 Waikato National Contemporary Art Award went to Dane Mitchell, whose installation consisted of the discarded packaging materials he had gathered from all the other exhibits vying for the prize. Mitchell named his pile “Collateral.” The announcement of the winner was poorly received by the other contestants.
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