The Sergeants Benevolent Association, fighting back in April against corruption charges (that its NYPD officers often “fix” traffic tickets for celebrities, high officials and selected “friends”) claimed in a recorded message reported in The New York Times that such fixes are merely “courtesy,” not corruption.
Quite a disease,
that Lyme
n Marilyn Michose, 46, was referred for medical evaluation in May after she was spotted roaming the lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City wearing neon pink panties on top of her street clothes, with a .25 caliber Beretta visible in her jacket pocket, and speaking gibberish. According to Michose’s mother, Marilyn had overmedicated for her Lyme disease.
n A restraining order, to keep away from Sarah Palin and her family, was extended in May against Shawn Christy, 19, of McAdoo, Pa., by a magistrate in Anchorage, Alaska. Christy has admitted to traveling to Alaska to meet Palin, to making numerous telephone calls to her, and to once threatening to sexually assault her. According to a 2009 psychiatric evaluation ordered by the Secret Service, Christy appeared to suffer from “latent onset” Lyme disease.
Ironies
n Erie County (N.Y.) jail officials suspended guards Lawrence Mule, a 26-year veteran, and James Conlin, a 29-year veteran, after they scuffled at the County Correctional Facility on April 21, reportedly over a bag of chips. An inmate had to break up the fight.
n An anti-terrorism drill scheduled for Pottawattamie County, Iowa, in March, which was to practice community co-ordination after an attack by a hypothetical white supremacist group angry about illegal immigration, had to be canceled. The sheriff said callers claiming to be white supremacists were angry at being picked on as “terrorists” and had threatened a school in Treynor, Iowa, with an attack that closely resembled the kind of imagined attack that would have preceded the simulated drill.
Putting fannies in the pews: Two strategies
n To hype attendance for Easter services this year, Lindenwald Baptist Church in Hamilton, Ohio, raffled $1,000 on Easter Sunday. As a result, attendance more than doubled, to 1,137 (including 1,135 raffle losers).
n A month earlier, Pastor John Goodman of the Houston Unity Baptist Church tried a different approach, calling on parishioners to cede their income-tax refunds to the church and warning that anyone who failed to come to the aid of the church is a “devil” and could be refused communion.
Chuck Shepherd
