Bill Bickel’s Crimeweek

An Arkansas couple is suing McDonald’s for $3 million after the husband left his cell phone – containing nude photos of his wife – in one of their restaurants. He called the restaurant manager and was assured the phone would be held for him until he could come and get it, later to discover that the photos had been posted (along with the couple’s names, address and phone number) on the Internet.

The wife began receiving offensive phone calls and text messages, and the couple eventually had to move. The lawsuit claims they suffered emotional distress, embarrassment and damage to their reputations, and they also contend that McDonald’s should pay for their moving expenses.

Every newspaper account I’ve seen includes the couple’s full names and town. I’m of two minds about this: On one hand, this moves their embarrassment to a national level. On the other hand, they made the decision to sue McDonald’s over a situation for which they were primarily at fault, and that’s what made teh story newsworthy.

The photos were removed from the web site but, because of the nature of the Internet, they have already spread to countless other sites and will likely remain available forever.

“I don’t know which way to go, so I’m holding a poll,” the British juror posted on her Facebook page, adding the details of the child abduction and sexual assault case she had been sworn in to help adjudicate. There was also the “do not discuss this case with anybody” rule she’d agreed to adhere to, of course…

She was dropped from the jury (the trial continued with 11 jurors) after the judge was informed of her Internet indiscretion. She was, remarkably enough, not cited for contempt of court.

Okay, so it’s your wedding day and you suddenly realize you just can’t go through with it. The fact that you already have a wife is a big factor here. so what to do…?

If you’re Tatsuhiko Kawata, about to be married last weekend at a resort hotel just outside of Tokyo, the solution’s obvious: burn down the hotel.

(All the guests were safely evacuated and, well, there wasn’t any wedding)

• Michigan Man Arrested for “Receiving Sexual Favors from Car Wash Vacuum”

A Nebraska judge has throw out State Senator Ernie Chambers’s lawsuit against God. Chambers had sought a permanent injunction against Him, charging that God had made terroristic threats against his constituents, as well a causing “widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants.”

The judge’s grounds for throwing out the suit: God wasn’t properly served because of His unlisted address.

Chambers sees ground for appeal, though: “The court itself acknowledges the existence of God. A consequence of that acknowledgment is a recognition of God’s omniscience.” Therefore, “God knows everything. God has notice of this lawsuit.”

How’s this for an alternate idea – the rest of us file a lawsuit against Senator Chambers an everybody else who wastes the court’s time and taxpayers’ money filing ridiculous lawsuits?

Last week, according to a headline carried in newspapers around the world, a Wiconsin man was sentenced to six years in prison for taking $20 from a little girl’s piggy bank.

This was less a miscarriage of justice, though, than a misleading headline: He’d broken into the home before being caught in the girl’s room stealing her money, so the sentence was actually for the felony crime of breaking and entering.

Okay, starting today I’m putting a moratorium on “robbing a store right after filling out an employment application there” stories: It just seems to be happening way too often lately. Same way I stopped mentioning all the people who rob banks writing their demands on the backs of their own checks, or electric bills, or parole cards.

Sometimes it seems as though nobody’s handing tellers notes written on anything that doesn’t have their own name printed on it.

Maybe it’s not so much a “stupid criminal” thing as a compulsion, the same way the Riddler is psychologically incapable of committing a crime without giving Batman a clue first.

In this morning’s case, it was a Dunkin’ Donuts in downtown Philadelphia robbed (allegedly) by three men, one of whom had just filled out an employment application (another of the three was wearing a Dunkin’ Donuts t-shirt, which could mean he is or was already an employee).

Police expect to make an arrest shortly.

In response to last week’s decision by a Florida judge that a law against wearing pants low enough to show underwear was unconstitutional, David Dicks, the police chief in Flint, Michigan, where a similar law is in effect, promised that his officers will continue to arrest offenders (since a Florida judge’s opinion that a law is unconstitutional has no standing in another state).

A spokesperson for the Flint chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union promised that the organization would file a lawsuit challenging the law, saying “You can’t arrest people because of their style of dress” – which of course is not true, or else you’d have naked people walking down Main Street.

“Wearing of pants below waist” charges against a 17-year-old Riviera Beach, Florida boy were dropped this week after a judge ruled that the town’s “baggy pants law,” which calls for a $150 fine or community service (and up to 30 days in prison for repeat offenders) for the offense of wearing pants low enough to expose underwear, is unconstitutional.

I agree that this is a ridiculous law, but I’m really curious about how it’s “unconstitutional”: Is this a First Amendment free speech issue? A Second Amendment right to bare butts?

More specifically, what fell out of his black tube top as he headed back to his car (where two cross-dressed accomplices were waiting), after he snatched a 74-year-old woman’s purse in Port St. Lucie, Florida last week, was a water-filled condom he was using to give himself that full-figured look.

Police are examining it for fingerprints and DNA traces.

An Iowa City man is in prison, mostly because he didn’t quite understand the concept of credit card fraud: First, he made purchases using a stolen card (he claims he simply found it), and signed his own name on the receipt. Then, when he attempted to use the card in another store, and it was turned down as having been stolen, he tried to prove it wasn’t by… showing the clerk his own identification.

If you were dropping off your business’s money at the bank, and when you got there two men dressed as bank guards were standing by the night deposit slot and they told you the slot was broken but you could give the money to them and they’d deposit it for you when the bank re-opened in the morning, would you do it?

At the Wells Fargo Bank in Tigard, Oregon last Friday night, two people did..

In Pennsylvania Monday afternoon, a 17-year-old phoned 9-1-1 to report he was being held at gunpoint by an 85-year-old woman. Seems she’d ordered him to make the call after she caught him breaking into her home.

Yeah, there’s an amusing anecdote he probably won’t be sharing with his cellmate…

Imagine Stephanie Martinez’s surprise last month when the Denton, Texas pizzeria where she worked was robbed by a man disguised in a wig an sunglasses.. who slapped a co-worker… only to have the co-worker start beating on the robber, and his wig and sunglasses fall off… “Don’t hit him again! That’s my dad!”

Her father, Benjamin Ramirez, got away from the co-worker and made it to his getaway van, but he was soon captured along with his accomplices… Martinez’s husband and her mother

Police are satisfied that Martinez had no knowledge of or involvement in the theft. Why her family members decided to rob that particular pizzeria remains unclear.

In Pittsburgh yesterday, a federal judge rejected a woman’s defense that she embezzled almost $758,000 from her company (by using a company American Express Card for such purchases as vacations and a Mercedes Benz and creating some 1700 phony invoices) because she suffered from a disorder she couldn’t control: She’s a shopaholic.

The judge sentenced her to 33 months in prison, noting that she only seemed to be unable to control her spending on the company charge card, but had no such problems controlling the use of her own charge card.

While I don’t even remotely believe this woman’s defense, I also have a problem with the judge’s logic: If the woman did have an uncontrollable compulsion to spend, there’s no reason to believe the compulsion would also make her stupid: If you have access to a company card on which you can spend three quarters of a million dollars, you’re going to be able to feed your compulsion a lot longer using that than by maxing out your Discover Card.

Three St. Paul, Minnesota teens have been arrested after breaking into a vending machine at a local recreation center and stealing bags of Cheetos and other snack items. They were easy to catch: They began eating the stolen goods immediately, and left a trail of debris leading to one of their homes.

German policewomen are being issued “bulletproof bras,” which are actually the opposite of what you’d expect: Seems that if you’re shot at while wearing a bulletproof vest, and you’re wearing a bra containing metal, there’s a chance that the metal can be driven into your body, causing injury; so the bras being issued to female members of the German federal police are essentially all-cotton sports bras (which, yes, begs the question of why they aren’t simply told to buy sports bras on their own and wear them when the situation warrants; if this were the United States, I might cynically suppose that they were being procured through a large government contract, at upwards of $100 per unit).

Saturday, a 33-year-old California man called the police after escaping from a carjacker who’d stolen his Chevy Silverado pickup at gunpoint.

This might not have been the smartest thing he could have done, since he himself had stolen the pickup earlier in the day.

In a July 18 decision made public yesterday, a Greek court threw out a lawsuit by three residents of the Greek Island of Lesbos, seeking to ban the Gay and Lesbian Union of Greece from using the term “Lesbian.”

(”Lesbian” in its “Gay and –” context comes from the fact that Sappho, the ancient Greek writer of love poetry, is thought to have been on Lesbos)

The Lesbian plaintiffs were ordered to pay court costs of 230 euros ($366.20).

This is something two New York restaurant workers learned last month: If you decide to “help yourself” to a digital camera accidentally left behind by a customer, and it’s loaded with an “Eye-Fi” memory card that automatically uploads photos to the owner’s online mailbox whenever the camera is near a compatible wi-fi hotspot, don’t take photos of yourselves.

(And if any of that sounds like gibberish to you, don’t steal digital cameras in the first place)

Orlando, Florida radio hosts Richard Dixon and J. Willoughby offered a $100 gasoline card to the listener who offered the most interesting item in trade. The winner was David Partin, who offered naming rights to his soon-to-be-born son. Partin will receive the gasoline card as soon as the birth certificate is issued to “Dixon and Willoughby Partin” (yes, the “and” will be part of the boy’s name).

Now, the question is… Is this a form of child abuse, or not?

Follow-up: Dixon and Willoughby have agreed to allow Partin to omit the “and” from his son’s name.

Friday, a New Mexico appeals court ruled against a man who wanted to change his name to F*** Censorship (without the asterisks), ruling that his free speech rights had not been violated when a state district judge had turned down his request, and noting that the proposed name was “obscene, offensive and would not comport with common decency.”

The man, whose legal name is currently Variable, had changed it in 2004 from Snaphappy Fishsuit Mokilgon, and it’s a safe bet that this wasn’t his birthname either.

Here’s a seemingly-obvious lesson a 42-year-old Colorado man learned last month: If you’re going to rob a Starbucks coffee shop while wearing yellow gloves and carrying a red backpack, don’t return there two days later for some coffee, still wearing those yellow gloves and carrying the red backpack – especially if police happen to be there at the time taking a robbery report from the manager.

In other bad-timing news, Dover, New Hampshire’s Fandi Pradipta filled out a job application at an Urban Behavior clothing store – just minutes after he’d bought a belt there and paid for it with a stolen credit card.

Raymundo Flores was arrested Sunday for allegedly stealing several frozen lobster tails — by stuffing them down his pants — from the Brooklyn, New York restaurant where he worked as a cook.

I’m not impressed. Try to smuggle out live lobsters by stuffing them down your pants… that would get my attention.