Chapter 9

Suspects from the East

While most of the criminals we encounter were local, not all were.  Two particular cases were interesting, in not only the crimes, but how the young men acted when caught.

The first one was from Chicago, Illinois.

I was training a new officer.  He had just started with the department the previous day and was assigned to me to train, on Graveyard.

It was an uneventful night, thus far, and I was able to show him the security aspects of our shift.  It was about the middle of the shift when we started checking businesses out on the west 2^nd area of town.

As we went around the buildings I saw a pickup coming from behind a service station; the head lights were not on.

We pulled the pickup over and made contact with the driver.  We found he was from the Chicago area and he said the owner of the pickup, his uncle, had left the pickup behind the station for him to take.

He clearly hadn’t thought this all the way through.

I asked him his uncle’s name, he gave me a name different than the registered owner of the pickup.

While we had him out of the pickup and talking to him, dispatch ran the plate and it came back to a person living in Maupin.  They tried calling them, but there was no answer.

I had them call the owner of the service station, he said he had let the owner, a customer, leave it there.  He had caught the bus – the bus station was across the street – and would be coming back in a day or two to get it.

We arrested the young man for stealing the pickup and took him to the station for interrogation.

He said he had been in Seattle, trying to get a job, but nothing panned out so he had caught the bus to go back home to Chicago.

He had been dropped off at The Dalles to catch another bus heading east.  However, it would be another four or five hours before that bus came into town.  He and his luggage were left at the bus depot, outside since it was closed.

He was bored, so he started walking around and went across the street to the gas station.  He went behind and found the pickup sitting there; he started checking it out and found the keys over the visor.

He got to thinking, why should he wait around to ride a bus when he could take the pickup and head east?

The pickup was older, basically a farm pickup.  One of the reasons the owner left it in The Dalles and caught the bus was he didn’t trust it going to the Portland area, it was a long drive on a freeway at higher speeds.

There was a good chance the pickup would have broken down long before the suspect got to Chicago, but he figured he would go as far as it would take him and then find another ride.

The suspect told us how he was connected with one of the crime bosses, supposedly his uncle, in Chicago – not a threat it just came as one of his answers to a question about who he was.

The young man was intellectually disabled, he was polite, obviously honest, but his IQ was low.  However, he knew he wasn’t supposed to be stealing pickups.

As he talked he asked us what it would take for the charges to be dropped and to just let him go.  We told him that it wasn’t going to happen, we already had given him his Miranda rights, and told him he would have to talk to whatever attorney was appointed about getting out of jail.

He then looked at us, first me, then my Rookie and then back to me and he said, I have $300, all the money I have, and will give that to you, if you will just let me go.

I debated with myself on this – I knew that his IQ was not very high, but he was able to make decisions and he was obviously serious about trying to bribe us.  If the DA didn’t want to pursue the charge of bribery, it was up to him, but I decided to charge him with the crime.

I told him that might or might not work in Chicago, but here, in The Dalles it will not, we will be charging you with bribery in addition to the theft of the pickup.

We lodged him the County Jail.

The next day I got a call from the DA’s office, the judge wanted to talk to me.  I took the Rookie with me; we talked to the judge, he asked if we really thought the suspect was trying to bribe us.

He had pled guilty to both charges.  The judge just wanted to know what we really thought when he offered the money.

There was no doubt his intent, and we told him so.

He was sentenced to time in the county jail.  Not sure how he got home afterwards.

A couple years later the Rookie, now a regular officer, and I were on day shift.

We were both in the west end of the city.  As he drove out West 6^th he noted a young man walking out of town. 

At that time there was nothing out where he was walking, just open fields.  The officer asked me if I knew the person walking out west 6^th.

I was just a few blocks away, so I headed over there, he was now walking back towards town. 

When someone changes direction after a police car drives by it is suspicious. 

So, I stopped him, got his identification, he was from Albany, New York; and asked him what he was doing out here.

He said he had caught a bus from Los Angeles to The Dalles.  He was out here to see an uncle in Mosier.

I had no reason to hold him, so ran a check on him and then released him.

A few minutes later I received a call that there was a felony warrant, for “purse snatching” on the man from the Police Department in Albany.  I had them call the department to find out what they wanted to do.

I caught back up with the man, now a suspect, and told him there was a warrant for his arrest.  He would have to stand with me until we found out what Albany wanted to do.

It isn’t unusual for a department to put a warrant in the National Crime Information Center, but they will limit where they will go to extradite a prisoner.  A crime of purse snatching would normally be considered an offense that many departments would say they didn’t want to come this far, clear across country, to pick up a prisoner.

I told him that they may not want me to arrest him, but we needed to wait. 

The dispatcher then said, there was $5000 in the purse and they want him.  For anytime that is a lot of money, but this was back in the 1970’s and that was an incredible amount.

I arrested him, gave him his Miranda Warning and took him back to the station to interrogate him.  The other officer met me there.

I had him sign the form that listed his rights and that he understood them and still wanted to talk.  He signed it.

He said that he and the person whose purse he stole worked in the same office.  On Wednesday she had come back from lunch and told everyone that she had withdrawn some money from the bank and was already to go on her vacation to Hawaii.

She placed her purse under her desk.  He was having problems with his girl-friend and had recently found out she was pregnant and he didn’t want to marry her.

When he heard that there was money in the purse, he thought that might be his way out of town so he waited until the woman left her desk and then snatched up the purse and took off.

He took the money out and left the purse in a garbage can in the men’s room.

He went by his apartment grabbed a couple of changes of clothing then went to the airport, buying a ticket to Los Angeles the first flight to the west coast.

He figured that once he hit the west coast he would be fine.  He didn’t know that warrants could follow him wherever he went.

After he landed in Los Angeles, he went to the bus depot to come up to Mosier to see that uncle – who did exist but they had never met.

It was Saturday and he had just arrived in The Dalles a couple hours before and got a motel room at the Hamilton Motel, about a block from the bus depot.  He had looked up the address and phone number of the uncle, called the house, but there was no answer.

I asked him what he did with the money.

He said he bought the plane and bus ticket; bought a used Gibson guitar – because he always wanted to play the guitar, some new clothes, some meals and the motel.

Of the $5000 he had just under $2000 left, the guitar being the most expensive item he had bought; and he had no idea how to play it.

Except for a few dollars in his pocket the rest of the money was in the motel room.

I asked him if we could go and get it and he said, yes.  I then filled out the form that gave me permission to search the motel room for the money, guitar and anything else purchased with the money.

He read it and said, I can’t sign this, it is like signing a confession, I am sorry, I don’t want to put you to any problems, but I just can’t sign it.

I told him that was okay, we would get a warrant.  We then lodged him in Jail.

The District Attorney insisted that any search warrants be run through his office, so we called him and met him at his office.

As I was leaving his office to go to the judge’s house, in jest he told me to tell the suspect to plead not guilty – the case would probably go to trial in September or October and it was beautiful in that area that time of year.

The suspect waived extradition.  When the officers from Albany picked him up he said he didn’t understand why he had been arrested he hadn’t done anything.

NO, I did not tell him to say that.

Copyright November 12, 2017 Art Labrousse

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Titus 2:1-2    KJV  “But speak thou the things which become sound doctrine:

² That the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience.

I read verses like this one, verses that tell me to be patient.  Especially the older I get the more patient I should be.

And, I am not.  It is just one of many areas that I have yet to live up to the expectations that God has of all Christians, and I have so far to go.

Later, Art (-: