As a former Sergeant with the Uhrichsville Ohio Police Department, I remember a call that I received shortly after starting my tour of duty on the 10PM-6AM shift. The female caller stated that she had been receiving prank phone calls all day long and that the caller was now making threatening calls.

As I arrived at her home to take the information, the complainant’s son met me in the drive. He stated that the prank caller was on the phone with his mother at that moment. I hurried inside to find that the caller had hung up. As I was obtaining the information for the report, the phone rang.

I asked the lady if she had another phone, to which she replied, “yes in the bedroom.” I advised her to go to the bedroom, count out loud to three and that we would pick up the phones together on the count of “3.” Sure enough, it was the prank caller. As I listened to him threaten the complainant, I recognized the caller’s voice.

I spoke to the caller loudly and distinctly saying only his name. He responded with “What ?”

I told him who I was and that I would be coming to his home shortly……click….he hung up. I continued to get the information from the complainant when the phone rang again. Once again we both picked up the phone. It was the same caller asking the female complainant to speak with this officer.

“What do you want Tom?”

“This isn’t Tom,” he replied. He continued to try to convince me that it was not him. When I assured the caller that I knew that it was him and that I would be coming to his residence shortly, he informed me that he wasn’t at home and that he was at “Bills house” on Main Street.

Knowing Bill and having prior problems with him, I knew right where to go. I ended up arresting both the caller and Bill prior to the end of my shift.

While working as a deputy sheriff in Lake County, which is a small rural county in the northern part of Michigan’s lower peninsula, I went on a call of a breaking and entering of a mobile home.

I arrived to find the owners outside the home, and quickly discovered the home had been broken into. The damage to the doorway was obvious. It was winter time, and all footprint evidence was being covered with a snowfall. My department did not have a tracking dog, so I made a request for a tracking dog from the nearby State Police Post.

The trooper arrived with his tracking dog, and the dog quickly picked up the track. The dog followed the track across an open field toward an area where I knew there were other mobile homes. The track led right up to one of these homes. I had dealt with the owner of this home many times. I knew he was a likely candidate for the break-in at the nearby home.

The dog was unrelenting. He got on the track, and followed it steadily to this residential door. His reaction at the door was very strong - he was excited, scratching at the door, and whining. The handler and I tried the door and it was unlocked. Once open we could see fresh snow tracked toward the back of the home.

The handler allowed the dog to enter the residence. The dog quickly ran to the back of the home and stuck his head under a bed in the bedroom furthest back in the home. The dog would not come out from under the bed.

I stuck the barrel of my shotgun under the bed and said, “Come on out Woody.”

The reply, from under the bed was, “Woody ain’t here.”

Woody spent another year in the County Jail upon his conviction for breaking and entering.

Salt Lake City police learned about a house of prostitution because the owner decided to advertise. She printed up some fliers in Spanish that described the nature of her business and the location of the house, complete with a map. Apparently, she didn’t realize that there are police officers who can read Spanish, too.

I was working for a temporary labor agency in Virginia. One of the employees there stole a check from our check printer. He hung around the office for over two hours to make sure we didn’t suspect him. After he left we noticed the missing check and immediatly called the Police and the local grocery store where most of our employees cashed their checks.

He had hand written the check to himself and signed it with two signatures, in his own handwriting. Then he wrote his social security number on the back of the check for ID purposes when he cashed the check. The best part, in my opinion, was that the check was made out for the exact amount he owed his parole officer.

Needless to say, this was the end of his parole and he won’t be seeing the light of day for the next 17 years.

I had a room-mate back in the mid 1960’s who worked for the LAPD and I remember him coming home one night laughing so hard that he could hardly tell the story of what had happened on his watch.

A man walked into a bank on Pico Blvd in West Los Angeles and when he came up to the teller, he showed her an army .45 and demanded money. He started to fill his jacket pockets with his left hand while holding the gun in his right.

The man directly behind him looked over his shoulder and saw that the hammer was down. He drew a .38 revolver and placed it in his back saying, “You cock that gun and you’re a dead man. Put the gun down and get your hands up.”

It turned out that the man behind him was an FBI agent waiting to cash his pay-check. Just wasn’t the robbers day.

GASTONIA, N.C. - A census worker has been charged with breaking and entering after a woman complained that the man entered her home without permission while her daughter was there alone.

Hubert Lambert, 61, of Lincolnton, was charged Tuesday.

Jane Crump said her 14-year-old daughter was at home when a man knocked persistently on the front door.

The girl, reluctant to open the door for a stranger, locked herself in a bedroom and phoned her mother, who called police from work.

Her daughter heard someone enter the house and walk around, Crump said. The man returned to the house twice more. The third time, Crump said she was home.

“He kept saying, `I work for the federal government and I’ll do what I have to do to do my job,”‘ she said.

Lambert was released on bond, said Jerry Stahl, regional spokesman for the Census Bureau in Charlotte. Stahl said Lambert has told census officials that he never entered the home.

HOLYOKE, Mass. - When her car was stolen a Springfield woman dialed the number of her cell phone, which was still in the car, police said. When a man answered she told him that she really needed her car and offered to give him $1,000 if he would return it. He agreed.

Her next call was to police.

Holyoke Police Capt. Frederick Seklecki said Thursday that when the woman, who he did not identify, described the ransom deal, he figured no one would show, but the stolen car pulled up to the curb at nearly the appointed time last weekend.

‘’We were shocked,'’ Seklecki said. ‘’He was only about four minutes late.'’

The driver, Christian Blandino, 19, of Springfield, was arrested on charges of receiving stolen property and driving without a license, Seklecki said.