COP SHOP


     A man told Denton police  Wednesday night that two men pistol-whipped and robbed him but he did not want to press charges.
     The 24-year-old victim said one man had a handgun and the other had a shotgun. They forced their way when he opened the door about 8 p.m., he said. They stole property not specified in the police report and one of them hit him in the head with the pistol before they both left. He did not name the robbers and did not want police to look for them.

Other reports

2000 Parkside Street - Police arrested a 30-year-old man after responding to a disturbance report about 11 p.m. Wednesday.The man's shaken fiance reported that he fired bullets from a .45-caliber pistol into the tires of her car as she sat inside the car. Officers charged Jason Marshall with deadly conduct.

1000 block of Minor Circle - A woman reported Wednesday that she believes her brother stole her wallet. The two both live with their mother, and she said he was the only one who would have done such a thing.

2000 block of Camilla Street - A woman came to the police department to complain that someone used her credit card information to purchase $794 worth of discounted items online at Groupon.


                                                                     

                                                                         

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A man walked out of a business in the 1700 block of Wilshire Street April 3, he told police Tuesday, and saw the roofing company's fork lift dragging his car across the parking lot. By the time the fork lift released the car it had been dragged to the far side of the business. He took the car to a repair shop and learned that it will cost $1,888.19 to fix the car.

Other reports
1400 block of Bernard Street - Officers responded about 8:30 p.m. to an apartment complex to reports of loud yelling and screaming inside one of the apartments. They could hear the racket when they got out of their cars, they reported. They contacted a couple who lived in the apartment and soon realized they were highly intoxicated. Both people insisted they were not violent but only having an argument. The officers could see no sign of injury on either one, so they convinced the couple to sleep in separate bedrooms until they sobered up.

2500 block of Yellowstone Street - A woman reported to police Tuesday that her kindergarten student and his fourth-grade brother are being bullied, hit and called names by a fifth-grade boy.

800 block of North Interstate 35 - Police responded to a burglar alarm about 3:15 a.m. Tuesday and found the front door standing open to a business. They found no one inside, but files drawers were open and cabinets and a closet door had been forced open. A store representative arrived and could find nothing missing. The officers surmised the burglars had been looking for money and found none.

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Someone had a good time using a woman's debit card, she told Denton police Monday. The 28-year-old woman discovered that someone somehow gained access to her card information and used it to join dating sites and buy flowers and rent a hotel room.

Other reports

1100 block of Dallas Drive - A 50-year-old woman reported Monday that her former boyfriend has hacked into her computer from another location. He has been deleting her emails and removing resumes she sent out in pursuit of a job, she said. She doesn't know how he gained access to her computer.

3300 block of Evers Parkway - Suspects were caught on tape breaking into four portable buildings at Evers Elementary School, authorities reported Monday. They found the suspects had stolen three colors of paint from one building and squirted it all over the walls and walkways inside and outside the buildings. Police are studying the video, but no arrests have yet been made.

500 block of West University Drive - When a man was arrested Sunday carrying one of his parents' checks his father didn't want to press charges against the son. However, the father checked Monday, according to a report, and learned that his son has cashed seven of his checks for a total $2,500. Now he wants to press charges.

1200 block of Avenue A - Someone broke into a man's car in a parking Sunday and stole his wallet, he reported Monday. Then the burglar set the car on fire. His bank contacted him Monday with the news that someone was using his bank card.

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                                           COP SHOP                     

Good morning!
Welcome to the blotter addition to my blog.
First, you must realize that I am unsupervised. I don't have to go by any special format, and I don't have to write dry, uninteresting crime reports. But I promise you that I always will write the truth as I believe it to be.
You may write to me on this site, and I will answer. I will include tidbits picked up around the cop shop and the city, but only those I have verified as truth. Hot tips are always appreciated but I will not use your names.

I am not picking on anybody, but don't you just love it that the sheriff took back $115,500 in drug seizure money that the former sheriff had allocated to constables for equipment and the commissioners court had approved? He bought himself and one of his staff new cars. He still has half a million dollars in that seizure fund fund that he could have used. Kinda greedy, don't you think?

Crime reports were a little dry today, and that's going to happen sometimes. I will do my best to entertain you as well as inform you.
So let's see what happened in Denton over the weekend:

Officers responded to a call in the 1300 block of Boyd Street Saturday and smelled the strong odor of gasoline. A man there reported that his 22-year-old son got into an argument with him about a car. The son left mad and later returned with a can of gasoline, a lighter and a tire iron. He poured gasoline over one side of the house, the man reported, and then tried to set the house on fire. The father confronted him. The son threatened him with the tire iron, he said, and they struggled over it. He called 911 and the son left. Officers found the son nearby and charged him with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and attempted arson.

Other reports

1100 block of North Bell Avenue - A man reported Saturday that his girlfriend moved out of his house while he was out of town. She took several bottles of his prescription medicine with her when she left, he said.

7800 block of Oak Creek Lane - A woman told police Friday that her boyfriend poured tequila into the gas tank of her car. The boyfriend protested that he was only pretending to pour the liquor into the tank but she jumped on him and hit and scratched him. The officer made no arrests.

1400 block of South Loop 288 - A store clerk called police Saturday after noticing a man inhaling from a spray can he picked up  from one of the store shelves. An arriving officer spotted the 20-year-old  man and detained him. He searched the man's clothing and turned up a bag of marijuana in his clothing. He charged the man of abuse of a volatile chemical and possession of marijuana.

Golden Crime Oldie -

A couple reported Tuesday that they lost more than $6,000 in an Internet scam.

They put up for sale a 1959 Volkswagen Beetle on an Internet site and accepted an offer from a London man for $2,900.

He mailed them a cashier’s check for $6,200, requesting that they keep their part and send the rest back to him for shipping charges. They deposited the cashier’s check and took $3,300 from their account and wired it to the man.

Then their bank notified them the cashier’s check was forged, according to the report. The bank took the cash from their account and they have a negative balance.

Recently, they received another message from the man explaining he no longer wants the car and requesting they send the $2,900 back to him, minus $400 for their trouble. They did not send the man any more money, according to the police report

                                        Jeepers Peepers

Now where did I put them this time?
I hate the dang things but I can't do without them. I own dozens of them, but they elude me. If you're over 40, then you know what I'm talking about.
Where the heck are my reading glasses?
No way am I going to get one of those little colored cords that dangle them around your neck. And I don't have the right build for latching one earpiece into a breast pocket. I refuse to push a pair up on top of my head. And everyone knows you can't leave magnifiers in front of your eyes when you get up for a glass of water. Makes it dizzier than a stomped ant, that's what it does.
Why the heck do I have to wear reading glasses?
All my life I've had a hate-hate relationship with glasses. In first grade my teacher noticed that I couldn't seem to see the writing on the blackboard. Actually, I couldn't see the blackboard. So at the tender age of 6, I wound up with pink plastic spectacles, and the four-eyes jokes began.
When I reached my teens I rebelled. I hid my black plastic cat-eye glasses in a drawer and started feeling my way through a world without distinguishing details like automobiles and large statuary. But in my twenties I realized that I had to see in order to work, so I opted for the John Lennon look.
And in my gold wire rims I resembled John a lot. Too bad my singing was worse than my eyesight.
Next it was contact lens. Hard plastic ones that felt like the Rose Window at Westminster Abby in my eyes. Soft contacts worked better but I lost more down the bathroom sink than I ever managed to wedge between my eyelids.
I tried laser surgery, and I was free at last. Not only did the miracle surgery fix my far-sightedness but it corrected my reading vision as well. It was a miracle!
Then came middle age and the miracle faded, sort of like one of those Jesus images on a grilled cheese sandwich. As time wore on, my eyesight got all sort of soggy and vague.
So I started picking up reading glasses here and there. And there. And over there. I became obsessed with them. It didn't matter whether it was a funky pair in a dollar store or a wildly expensive set of peepers in a specialty shop. I bought them all. I was searching for a pair that didn't remind me of first grade and little-boy taunts of "four-eyes, four-eyes!"
I tried those little slitty ones that come in cases no wider than a pencil. I couldn't see through the frames. Some people think it makes you look intelligent to perch a pair on your nose. I'd rather have a parrot on my nose or maybe even a wart.
I carry a fancy pair in my purse with blue rhinestones on the rims for reading menus in restaurants. I have a pair of sparkly faux diamond ones as backup and a pair of throw-down, wire-framed ones in the glove compartment of my car.
There are a pair of pink sparkly ones on my desk at home that look a lot like my first-grade peepers. I put them there to keep me humble. And for a reason I can't explain, I still have the black cat-eye glasses from ninth grade.
I never throw a pair away until they get all whomper-jawed on my nose - usually after I have sat on them. My favorite ones reside in a place of honor on the arm of my easy chair next to my Kindle. They're red with a gold design. They're the bomb. I wish I could remember where I bought them and I'd see whether they come in other colors. Unfortunately, along with poor reading vision and a host of other age-related issues, my short-term memory is going too. Want to know about me painting my hands red with Mom's fingernail polish when I was three? I remember it perfectly and the spanking I got after that. Wondering what I had for breakfast this morning? I haven't a clue.
And that's why, I think, I'm in this fix. At every one of my eyesight stations I fumble for something that isn't there. You know how it is. You carry them off with you and then you put them somewhere and you don't remember where you put them. It's maddening.
Somewhere in this house there is a huge pile of reading glasses - shiny ones, plain ones, sparkly ones, wire ones - they're all in a jumble together. And they're snickering at me. I can hear the little giggles but I can't find them.
My kids used to laugh too. But my daughter bought her first pair of readers recently and now hers are mixed with mine somewhere - oh somewhere in this house! Her first pair are almost identical to the ones I wore in first grade. No way am I calling her four-eyes.
And if I could find them right now, I'd steal them.

HAIR

                                                                         HAIR


     The judge looked sternly over his bench at the woman standing before him.
     "You are charged with four counts of aggravated assault, three cases of disturbing the peace and it says here you tried to blow up a building. These are serious charges," he said. "What do you have to say for yourself?"
     "I was having a bad hair day."
     The judge sat back in his padded chair and ran his fingers through his own well-manicured mane.
     "Oh no. Well. A bad hair day. What are we going to do about this?"
     "Don't you just hate it when that happens?" asked the defense attorney."Some days you get up and look in the mirror and you know you may as well blow up a building."
     The judge looked down at the defendant.
     "Have you tried that new mousse made of cherry pits and milkweed? Does wonders for split ends. One of the prosecutors told me about it a couple of weeks ago and I can already tell the difference."
     The prosecutor held up his hands.
     "Your honor, I had no idea about the circumstances surrounding this offense. The arresting officer didn't say a word to me about the frizzies. I suggest probation on this case, on the condition that the defendant condition."
     A bad hair day. It can happen to anyone. And in this time of acute hair fashion awareness, it has replaced PMS an excuse for any wrongdoing.
     When I was a kid back in Callisburg nobody had a bad hair day. Certainly not men, who either relied on a combover or flat top wax. Girls and women rolled their hair on pink brush rollers and pinned each one directly to their heads with pink plastic pins. Then they went to bed. The brushes in the rollers embedded themselves in your scalp. The pins pierced your skull and entered your brain. The next morning when you pried the things out of your cranial cavity, and you had industrial strength curl. And if the hair threatened to go flat, you simply reinstated the curlers and wore them to school.
     Some of the girls with long hair wore round cardboard frozen orange juice containers on their heads. With the little round metal ends punched out they became maxi-rollers. Some girls never took these out of their hair and I can only assume they thought the empty-orange-juice-container look was better than mini-hair.
     A few years later good hair became big hair, especially in Texas. It meant back-combing your tresses high into the air and emptying a can of something called "Spray Net" over it. Then you let it dry and gently combed the top layer into a helmet shape. A tornado couldn't move that hairdo. Older women of a certain religious leaning often put things called rats into their long hair, making a series of fascinating bumps that gave the appearance of several small animals burrowed in there.
     My mother got her hair "fixed" once a week. As though it were broken. She came home from "The Hair Box" or "Leona's Kut N Kurl" complaining that the hair was too short, too long, too full or too flat. Obviously, it was not fixed at all. But that didn't stop her from preserving the do. Every night before she went to bed she would wrap a pink stretchy thing around her head to protect the curl she didn't like in the first place.
     Back then you had your Spray Net. You had your Dippity Do. But you didn't have hair products called "Bed Head." And you couldn't have made a down payment on a house with your toiletries bill either. Or resorted to plastique on a bad hair day.

 

 

 

THE RECIPE

 

 

 

 

                                              

     And so, at last, in response to numerous requests, I am going to release the secret of The Recipe.
You've all heard about it numerous times and lusted after that sublime mixture I'm sure. And now it will be yours.
     You may remember the name from a long-defunct TV show called The Waltons. You know, John Boy and the family, and most relevent to this missive, the aunts who made a similarly-sublime concoction they called by the same name.
     This is not that.
     They distilled that recipe from corn out in a shed in the woods. Mine is much more elegant but just as potent.
     I first learned the necessity of a subtle brew when I married and my mother-in-law came to visit. When she rose in the mornings like the sun in the east, my day would head south. So I fortified myself with a good hearty slug of Kaluha in my breakfast coffee. Then certain other guests began showing up for dinner, and I had to find something else because all that black coffee was bouncing me off the walls.
     Richard loved company and he had an ecclectic taste in friends. His longtime buddy Frank was a mountain-man type with a long bushy beard, wild eyes and a dog named Satan. If other guests didn't decline when they heard he would be stopping by for dinner, they left shortly after he arrived. Frank caught big fish with his bare hands and threw big rocks for Satin to catch (which he did), and Richard thought he was da bomb. I thought it was time to have a little taste of my special orange juice.
     One day Richard brought a new friend home. His name was Cecil Ilignac, and he was an Eskimo. He was in Texas looking for his grandmother, who had been kidnapped by a man who wanted her for her abiltiy to make those cute Eskimo booties. Richard and Cecil plotted to rescue her, and one day they snatched her out of captivity. She departed on a bus for Vancouver. They came home with the dramatic details, and I made up a pitcher of The Recipe.
     I started drinking it after a few hours of teaching our teenagers to drive. Then I learned it worked a lot better if I had it before crawling into the passenger seat.
     Finally I discovered that The Recipe was a good social blender. It didn't matter whether Richard invited his friend the district judge along with the mountain man, the Eskimo and the Englishman he met in an antique shop. If I served The Recipe, they all got along fine.
    Over the years it has become a party favorite and has enjoyed renown in my column. After I served it at a large book-signing party at my house the clamor for its ingredients began in earnest. And so, my friends, here it is: The Recipe - sort of.

One fifth of vodka
One large bottle of peach schnaps
One carton of orange juice
Garnish with cherries and orange slices

No you may not make this stuff in smaller quantities. If any is left over after a party your guests, who will almost always spend the night, will finish it off for breakfast.
Cheers!