Police in Bellevue, Washington, a suburb of Seattle, had a pretty easy time catching a man to arrest him on suspicion of car prowling. He was found sound asleep in a special weapons and tactics van.

Officer Greg Grannis that a municipal worker reported someone burglarizing cars, including his own, just before midnight July 24.

Officers quickly found cars that had been broken into, but couldn’t figure out who might be the culprit until around 4:50 AM, when two members of the SWAT team came to the police vehicle maintenance yard to get their van and found a 25-year-old bum asleep in the back, according to Grannis.

The man, whose most recent known home address was in Louisiana, was booked into the King County Jail on suspicion of burglary.

No damage or loss estimate was disclosed, but Grannis said that none of the vehicles that had been broken into had any weapons inside.

If you’re going to send bomb and anthrax threats to the FBI and Secret Service, don’t include any personally-identifiable information, such as your full name and inmate number. A prison inmate in New York pled guilty July 25 to doing just that.

Thirty-year-old Donald Ray Bilby pled guilty in U.S. District Court in Trenton, New Jersey, to one count of false information and hoaxes after he sent five letters to authorities demanding that they deposit $20,000 into his county jail inmate account because he needed money to post bail, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

“I think it’s fair to say we were not dealing with a great criminal mind here,” U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie said in a statement.

Bilby signed every single letter using his full name and inserted his inmate number below his signature. One letter to the FBI included demands for money, a piece of paper marked “anthrax,” and a white powdery substance that turned out not to be harmful.

He faces up to five years in the slammer after he finishes serving a sentence for auto theft.

There are some people who just don’t seem to get that 911 is for emergencies only, as shown in this story out of Candor, New York. He called the emergency number because he wanted to see a “hot chick.” Now he’s cooling off in the county jail. Authorities claim that 21-year-old Tyler Engelhard told a 911 operator that “should be in jail” and that police would “find out why.”

A sheriff’s patrol rushed to Engelhard’s home, thinking that a crime may be about to happen.

When deputies showed up, the man claimed that he called the emergency line as a joke and “wanted to see a hot chick.”

The deputies, however, were unamused. Our brainless bachelor was charged with falsely reporting an incident and was sent to the Tioga County Jail.

He is required to appear in town court in August.

By Angela Caputo
Staff writer

Sleeping on the job would get most people in trouble, but it landed one Evergreen Park man behind bars.

Oak Lawn police said they found a burglar napping Monday morning when officers investigated a call about a series of cars being broken into near an apartment complex in the 10200 block of South Kenton Avenue.

David Michalski was curled up around a pile of loot on the passenger seat of a pickup about 5:30 a.m., police said.

The problem was neither the truck nor the stuff of the seat was his, police said.

After the pickup owner confirmed he didn’t know Michalski, of the 9118 block of South Spaulding Ave., police pulled him from the car and searched him.

They discovered the 30-year-old was carrying several items that had one thing in common: They were all reported missing from a series of cars parked in the lot, police said.

Stuffed in Michalski’s pockets were the wallets of two men whose cars were broken into, police said.

A screwdriver, a flashlight, a pair of scissors and a plastic baggy filled with $23 in loose change also were found on Michalski, according to a police report.

Michalski, who is on parole from previous burglary conviction, faces two new felony burglary charges, Cook County state’s attorney’s spokeswoman Marcy Jensen said.

His bail was set Tuesday at $35,000. He has a hearing Aug. 1 at the Bridgeview courthouse.

Angela Caputo may be reached at "> or (708) 633-5993.

Sent in by Norman Boyer

This is from today’s Daily Southtown online( Chicago–South and especially south and southwest suburbs).  Here’s the url:
http://www.dailysouthtown.com/southtown/dsnews/262abn2.htm

Perhaps there needs to be a side credit to the two men who left their wallets in their cars overnight!

Mickey the macaw is not the gentlest bird in the pet shop. A thief has pled guilty to stealing the bird from a pet shop in London, England. And Mickey provided the most important clue: a trail of blood for the cops to follow, left by bird-napper Tristand Maidment, who was bitten by Mickey.

But Angus Hart, who owns the pet shop, is not surprised at this occurrence. According to Hart, Mickey is about 50 years old and gets angry easily.

An England soccer shirt proved to be the downfall of a Senegalese man trying to enter Cyprus on a forged French passport, according to police on the Mediterranean island.

What got customs agents’ suspicions up was that the man appeared at a checkpoint supervising crossings from the Turkish Cypriot north to the Greek Cypriot south of the divided island, wearing the England shirt and presenting a French passport.

“Being a football fan, the officer found it highly unlikely that a Frenchman would want to wear an England football jersey,” a police source was quoted as saying.

“That was his first suspicion prior to the proper check on the passport, which turned out to be a fake,” said the source.

The unidentified 22-year-old man, who has not yet been charged, is being kept in custody for six days pending further investigation.

Shoplifters are not usually as unlucky as the one we will talk about in this story out of Rutland, Vermont, where an unidentified woman was seen leaving a K-mart there with a bag of merchandise that she reportedly didn’t pay for, while being chased by three employees of the store.

The woman hopped a guardrail and bolted into some woods where she got stuck in a swamp.

A sheriff’s deputy patrolling the mall joined in the chase. When the deputy caught up with the woman, he says she was pleading for help and cursing. According to the deputy, the woman told him that she stole the items to prevent a drug dealer from murdering her.

When she appeared in court, she pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor charges of retail theft, trespassing, and disorderly conduct. The judge released her for the time being, on conditions that she seek drug screening and counseling.