Let’s start today in Florida, where the pickings are pretty easy when you’re looking for idiots.
Our first contestant is one Mrs. Traci Batcher. Like many fine, upstanding, Americans Mrs. Batcher went to a bar to have a few drinks. In this case the fine establishment was, probably still is, called the Thirsty Turtle and you can find it in Sarasota Florida. After consuming a few adult libations Mrs. Batcher decided to use the restroom. This is where things went wrong. She strode into the men’s room, removed all her clothes and returned to the bar. After several failed attempts to get her to dress herself police arrived. When asked why she was naked in a public bar, the 34 year old native Floridian replied, “You don’t understand, I have been married since I was 13 years old and have been married for 16 years.”
Yes, there are five years unaccounted for and, yes, even by Florida’s standards, 13 is a touch young to get married but …. wait, what the hell is she talking about? I guess it doesn’t matter. When you gotta go commando you gotta go commando.
Speaking of beer, police in Fort Pierce were called to a trailer park – this day just keeps getting better doesn’t it? – to break up a fight over warm beer.
The way Perry Hegedus told it, things went south after his son’s 18-year-old friend gave him a “(urine) warm beer.”
Hegedus, 53, apparently was drinking Jan. 11 with his son and son’s friends at Bentonwood mobile home park in Fort Pierce. Hegedus, who ultimately was arrested, told a St. Lucie County Sheriff’s deputy it was “disrespectful” to receive “(urine) warm beer,” according to recently released sheriff’s records.
So, Hegedus said, he started telling that to his son’s 18-year-old friend. Hegedus said his 23-year-old son grabbed and choked him and pushed him over.
“I don’t want him arrested so I’m not saying anything, but he can’t stay here tonight,” Hegedus is quoted as saying.
Beer typically is served “cold,” with many establishments advertising beer as being “ice cold.” Water freezes at 32 degrees, and the typical body temperature is 98.6 degrees. Thus, beer the temperature of urine would not be considered “cold” — much less “ice cold.”
Hegedus’ son said his 18-year-old friend filled a beer bottle with warm water and gave it to Hegedus as a joke. The son said Hegedus started approaching the son’s friend “yelling and screaming.” The son said he stepped in to prevent a fight, saying his dad was “very intoxicated.”
The son said Hegedus grabbed him by the neck and that he pushed Hegedus.
A witness said the son in self defense pushed Hegedus, who fell over an air conditioning unit.
Hegedus, of the 6100 block of South U.S. 1 in Fort Pierce, was arrested on a misdemeanor battery charge.
The records didn’t specify the brand of beer being imbibed, nor did they indicate how many beers had been consumed by any of those involved.
Wait, they have one of those really expensive ground mounted air conditioners for a double wide? God I love that state.
Oh, okay, let’s move on. In a well documented, as in there’s plenty of video tape, incident police and regular people alike are trying to figure out why a guy walked into a Tampa Laundromat, emptied his gun into a change machine and then went home. No, he didn’t steal anything. Nor was he reported to have said anything. He just dropped by to kill the coin machine and then left. Somewhere, somehow, that may make sense, but not here or now.
The one nice thing about being a cop in Florida is that there are sometimes you don’t have to work very hard to catch a criminal. An excellent example would be the story coming out of Fort Walton Beach where police arrested a woman calling herself “Snow Bunny” for prostitution. How did they catch her? It was kind of easy. She took an ad out on Backpage.com offering her services for $220 a pop. Why $220 and not just $200 or $250? I have no idea. Anyway the cops sent her an email, she sent them an address and they arrived to find her wearing nothing but a bra, panties and heels. Which, if you exclude the cocaine they found as well, is not a bad outfit.
I know some women who could rock that look.
Yeah, I paused for a moment to imagine that too. It’s all right,it’s only natural. What’s not natural is our next story. Police in Osceola County took a fake ad out on a web site that basically read like this; “Who wants to have sex with my pre-teen child?”
Did they nab a single Floridian with an ad that was so obviously a fake? Of course not. They nabbed forty.
The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office today released new video of arrests in an undercover sting operation that culminated with the arrests of 40 people, including a former professional golfer.
The golfer, Steve Thomas, is seen in the video pleading with arresting deputies that he hasn’t “done anything wrong.” Other suspects arrested included a teacher, a retired beekeeper and several students.
The arrests were the result of a weeklong, undercover operation led by the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office, dubbed “Operation Red Cheeks.” The operation ran from Jan. 8 through Monday.
Undercover detectives posed as children, or as parents or guardians, to chat online with the suspects, who traveled to an arranged meeting location in Osceola County for sex with a child, deputies said.
The Sheriff’s Office said some of the suspects sent pornographic images to undercover detectives during the online sting, and some brought alcohol or drugs and other items to the meetings.
Among those arrested:
*Professional Golfer Stephen Wesley Thomas, 55. The PGA’s website says the Tupelo, Miss. resident has played in 44 PGA Tour events and 34 on the Champions Tour. He has three career top-10 finishes.
His arrest affidavit states Thomas thought he was chatting with a woman about sex with her 13-year-old daughter. He agreed to meet the teen for sex, deputies say, and sent photos of himself golfing.
Investigators searched Thomas’ sport utility vehicle after his arrest, the affidavit states, finding three condoms, two packages of chocolate pudding and a bottle of honey. Deputies say he confessed.
*Gainesville swim coach Bryan Woodward, 29. The Gainesville Sun reported last week Woodward coached youths for the Gator Swim Club, a private club unaffiliated with the University of Florida.
According to his arrest affidavit, Woodward told an undercover posing as a child online that “younger girls turn me on,” discussed graphic sex acts and brought candy with him to meet the “child.”
*Students Marvin Bell, 20, Lucas Clarke, 18, Josean Javier Gaston, 22, Justin Joseph Hall, 30, Cornellus Hunt, 29, Kegan Ritchie, 22, Frederick Adams, 18, Samer Al-Hubaydi, 26, and Winston Stephens, 20.
According to the Sheriff’s Office, Clarke attends the Golf Academy of America, Al-Hubaydi attends Embry-Riddle and Stephens attends Full Sail. Adams, deputies say, is still in high school.
An Embry-Riddle spokesman confirmed Al-Hubaydi’s name and birth date match a first-year student. The university will review his student status “taking into account the facts of the case or the outcome.”
*Eighth grade teacher Alexander Roy, 32. According to the St. Lucie County School Board, Roy works as a math teacher at Manatee Academy on Heatherwood Boulevard in Port St. Lucie.
“As per school board policy, this employee will be placed on administrative leave away from students until the completion of any potential adjudication,” said school board spokeswoman Janice Karst.
*Soldier Shane Daniel Cousins, 26. The Sheriff’s Office said Cousins is a member of the U.S. ArmyReserves who lives in Kissimmee. His Facebook page says he attended Santa Fe College.
*Retired beekeeper Dell Rio Highsmith, 70. Deputies said Highsmith, a resident of Fargo, Ga., arrived at the sting with white wine, a heart-shaped box of chocolates and Viagra pills.
Authorities also arrested an IT professional and a construction worker, among others.
Agencies involved in the sting included the Citrus, Lake, Orange, Sumter, Polk, Hardee and Manatee sheriff’s offices and Ocoee, Kissimmee, Sanford, Orlando, Longwood and Casselberry police.
The suspects face a variety of charges, including traveling to seduce a child to commit sex acts, using a computer to solicit a child or parent and, for some, attempted lewd and lascivious battery of a child.
“These predators stalk the cyber community looking for children,” said Osceola Sheriff Bob Hansell, adding that because of the sting, “at a minimum, 40 children did not fall prey to a sexual deviant.”
White wine, chocolates and Viagra are good call when you’re 70 and your date is an adult. Not so much so in these circumstances.
Sheriff Hansell can arrest these idiots all he wants as far as I’m concerned. Anyone who would harm a child doesn’t deserve to share my atmosphere.
On a lighter note, police in Orlando, the happiest place on Earth, are reporting that a park worker found a bomb and then did something completely insane. The worker picked it up, tossed it on his cart and toddled over to the police station where it was quickly discovered to be a live bomb.
Kids, this is why 911 exists. If you find a bomb you just dial those three digits and people with much more padding than even hockey players wear will show up and handle things. Of course, if you call 911 in Florida there’s a good chance that everyone you talk to will be stoned drunk.
Facing the possibility of losing its key weapon against drunk drivers, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement decided it would pay some of its employees to — what else? — get drunk.
So, one day in October, the state’s version of the FBI shelled out $330 on Jim Beam whiskey and other booze, along with mixers and some Doritos, and invited 15 employees to headquarters to imbibe on work time.
With a video camera recording, the FDLE crime analysts, staff assistants and Capitol Police officers drank up, and then blew into three Intoxilyzer 8000s at their Tallahassee headquarters. Their blood was then drawn and sent to a lab.
The $8,000 study, put together in three days, was part of a broader push to save the reputation of the embattled Intoxilyzer 8000, FDLE records show. And in December, FDLE’s alcohol testing guru Laura Barfield came to a Sarasota County courtroom for a hearing and presented results of the drunken employee experiment to a panel of judges, saying it proved the machines were accurate.
But the study might not even be worth the $330 bar bill.
At the hearing, judges deciding the fate of the machine in Sarasota and Manatee counties seemed skeptical of even considering the study, in part because bloodwork was still at the lab and the examination was not yet finalized.
Beyond that, statistics experts say there are concerns about how the study was conducted, whether it has any scientific validity, or whether it proves what it intended to.
The Intoxilyzer 8000 has been widely hailed as the worst piece of crap ever assembled. It has shown perfectly sober people to be legally dead from alcohol and has shown people who’ve had more to drink than a frat party to be safe to drive. It is the subject of so many law suits it isn’t even funny. It is banned in Iowa and most other states don’t even keep one around just for fun. Nope, you only get high quality gear like that in Florida.
And who cares if they can’t spell Cheerleader? They know how to get naked and drop a solid groove. What more do you really want?
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0t7vbCINr4&w=560&h=315]
Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Friday morning around 9:10!