Secrets of the City

Last year’s Mr. Basketball has and will have no season at all. After a dubious start, entailing theft, disorderly conduct, and immediate suspension, freshman forward Royce White is withdrawing from the University of Minnesota and leaving the team without ever even playing a game.

On Monday, he was charged with trespassing in connection to an alleged theft of a laptop computer from a university dorm.

So much promise down the drain.

Forty-three-year-old Victor Daniel Berrios, of New Prague, Minn., walked into an Eagan grocery store on Sunday, filled a bag with produce and lobster tail, and walked right out the door without paying. It’s like a dream come true — only without the store personnel noticing him and chasing him out of the store.

Berrios turned on them, pulled out a three-inch Smith and Wesson lock blade knife and said, “You want to do this?”

So they backed off a bit, continued to follow him from further away, and finally nabbed him at an elementary school hockey rink. As police arrested him, Berrios had but one things to say: “Wow, all this for a couple of lobster tails? C’mon, woman!”

He was charged with felony counts of second-degree assault and robbery.

Phillip Eugene Elphage, 19, clearly wasn’t all too happy about his ex-girlfriend and baby-momma taking on a new lover. “I don’t know who this guy is,” he said in a voicemail message earlier that evening, “but when I find out, it’s going to be something vicious.” Vicious indeed. Elphage broke into her home on Saturday evening — despite the Order of Protection she had already had the smarts to acquire — and repeatedly stabbed Darius Derrick Maxwell, 17, with a steak knife while yelling, “You’re her boyfriend. You’re her boyfriend.”

Maxwell managed to get away, running out into the street; and Elphage went after his ex-girlfriend, punching her in the face five or six times and causing her to fall backwards into a bathtub.

Responding to a call around midnight, police found Maxwell on a nearby street and took him to Regions Hospital, where he died soon after.

Elphage asked police what happened to Maxwell and was told he died. Elphage responded, “I’m going to jail for murder. Wow. Boy I (expletive) up my life … bad! That’s crazy. That’s my fault, and I’m going to take responsibility,” the complaint said. He started crying and said he was going to have to do 27 years to life in prison, and stated, “Do the crime, do the time,” the complaint said.

How does a woman of 70 defend herself against an arresting police officer? She bites him, of course.

Apparently, Bonita Zimmerman, 70, and Kevin Duea, 51, were engaged in a verbal dispute that led to two visits from police officers on Saturday morning. Who has that kind of energy at 8:45 am on a Saturday? Perhaps it had something to do with the 46-year-old woman hanging around. Who knows?

Police were standing by as Zimmerman removed her property from the home, but things didn’t go so smoothly. Both she and Duea were arrested for disorderly conduct and obstructing legal process, and Zimmerman got an additional fourth degree felony assault charge when she bit the arresting officer on the hand.

I wonder if they were her own teeth at least.

(via PiPress)

In 1998, at the age of 16, Tijuan Donte Johnson was incarcerated for first-degree criminal sexual conduct, assault, kidnapping, and burglary. “According to a criminal complaint, he forced his way into a St. Cloud apartment and threatened a couple with a handgun. He tied up the man and then, at gunpoint, ’sexually assaulted (the girlfriend) repeatedly,’” hence making him a Level 3 sex offender.

After serving 10 years, Johnson was released in 2008, but where was he to go?

He cannot leave the county. He has no family ties there. Halfway houses and transitional centers do not accept Level 3 offenders. And he cannot live anywhere near a school or playground. There was simply nowhere for him to go… except back into the slammer.

Johnson was transferred to Stillwater prison, where he has spent the last year and half — past his sentence served — and where he remains today.

Granted, his crime was severe, but this hardly seems fair considering he has served his time.

Finally, Johnson filed a civil suit against the Commissioner of Corrections in May, “saying he was being held in violation of his rights,” and on January 15th Judge Gary Schurrer finally ruled that the Department of Corrections must help him find suitable housing within the next 60 days.

Robbinsdale resident Thongsay Prommachai, 28, has pleaded guity on charges of distributing 4000 ecstasy pills in mid October at a Cub Foods parking lot in Crystal, MN. Huh? Really? In a Cub Foods Parking lot?! How do you unload 4,000 pills at a suburban Cub Foods?

The poor guy faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for his crime. If I did the math correctly, that’s about 1.8 days per pill. Ouch. Too pad he can’t take the pills with him; it’s going to be a long ride.

Federal officials have charged four men with plotting to tamper with the telephone system in the New Orleans office of Senator Mary Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana. The connection between the four men? They shared a common experience as young ideologues writing for conservative publications.

Joseph Basel, of Minnesota, and Robert Flanagan, son of the acting U.S. Attorney for northern Louisiana, dressed up as telephone repairman (yeah, just like in the movies) with hardhats and toolbelts, entered the Hale Boggs building, went to Senator Landrieu’s 10th floor office (where they met up with their associate James O’Keefe, the filmmaker who dressed up as a pimp for a video expose of ACORN), and allegedly tried to wire-tap the phone.

But who is this Basel guy anyway? Basel was one of three founders (and editor) of The Counterweight, a monthly conservative publication at University of Minnesota-Morris.

Unfortunately for him and the other three young men involved, it seems they’re not getting much support from the conservative sector. A crime, after all, is a crime. According to Lake Minnetonka Liberty, “O’Keefe and his associates deserve every day in jail that they get.  After all, they must stand for the ‘Law and Order’ that the conservative movement champions.  Well, they broke the law and now must face up to the order of doing prison time.”

What now? They’re deploying wireless surveillance cams.

Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher has created a network of wireless remote control surveillance cameras,  the first of it’s kind in the nation. And the public will eventually have opportunities to monitor the new electronic snooping devices.

In February two of the cameras, equipped with powerful zoom lenses, will stream video onto the county’s public website. Volunteer citizens are being trained to control the cameras, monitor the action, and tip off dispatchers to any suspicious activity. But any citizen with Internet access can become what Fletcher calls a “web cop” and take part in the surveillance effort.

Creepy?

This was not the first time that teenagers were taken in by a harmless and innocent looking internet buddy! Yesterday a Wisconsin man was charged with having boozed and coerced two Minnesota girls, ages 13 and 14. “Gabriel V. Matthias, of Madison, was charged with traveling with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct and one count of coercion and enticement,” reports the Star Tribune. Matthias exploited social networking sites to seduce the girls and harm them. But how should we protect our young people from perverts? I’m sure this is not the first time we read about this type of crime…

According to the Strib, someone glued a seven-month-old cat to the side of a southern Minnesota highway. The cat was discovered on Dec. 18 by a woman traveling down Hwy 60 to Sioux Falls. Five days later, the cat died at Second Chance Rescue Center.

A childhood prank? An evil cat hater? WTF?!