Missing person found

Sunday evening, a 17 year old boy with Down syndrome turned up missing, after he parted ways with his Mom at Sunday night Mass. He didn’t want to go, and while she was turned the other way in a conversation at the Church, he skipped out.

By late night, he still hadn’t surfaced, so we spent the rest of the night looking for him: searching the Church, a nearby hospital, searching his home, checking open businesses, and so forth. Since he has a developmental disability, we treated this as a child at greater risk, even though he was clearly voluntarily absent, and followed our usual practice in such cases.

At daybreak, we were putting out a full-scale alert to the media, and making outbound phone calls using achildismissing.org. A command post was established to coordinate a door-to-door search by a group of officers. The Church was searched again, his home was searched again, the hospital across the street was searched again.

Late morning, a caller contacted us and let us know that James was at the Burger King. I happened to be mobile at the time, so I stopped by. He was blithely chatting with Officer Stacey Fitch about the Iowa v. Penn State game, among other topics. He told her he had spent the night sleeping in a parked car. “Car or truck?” she asked. “A Cadillac,” he replied.

He was a gregarious, talkative youngster, lightly-dressed in shorts and a t-shirt. I’ll bet he got a little chilly overnight. He told me that he had a sausage biscuit at Burger King and a hamburger.

We’re glad this had a happy ending. So far this year, James is missing person number 1,604 for the Lincoln Police Department. Yes, you read right: that’s one thousand six hundred and four, with over three months to go in 2009.

Getting tougher

The two stories of failed crimes in my post yesterday are examples of why getting away with crime has gotten quite a bit tougher in the past few years, in my opinion. These pages contain many other examples (just click on the “candid camera” or “crimes” tag in my label cloud.

Yesterday, Officer David Koso cleared up a relatively minor crime, but one that is also a good example. Back on July 21st, he investigated a shoplifting case at a convenience store. A copy of Hot Rod magazine was allegedly taken by a man who was accompanied by a woman (she drove.) Cameras at the store caught her at the check stand, and the two of them beside her car in the parking lot.

We posted these photos on our Crimestoppers blog, and pretty quickly got a tip identifying the woman. Reading incoming tips at home that morning, I checked the woman’s mug shot, and low and behold—although the surveillance photo is a little fuzzy, it looked like a match. Then I clicked the link to her registered motor vehicles: only one, a 1994 red Chrysler LeBaron convertible. Bingo. The parking lot camera wasn't the best, but the vehicle was unmistakeable.

Sgt. Grant Richards in our Crime Analysis Unit also received an email from an FBI agent in another state. He’s a former LPD officer, and a regular visitor to our websites and reader of our blogs in his personal time. He, too, recognized the woman in the photo.

It’s taken a couple months to locate and cite the suspect, because both he and the woman have been in and out of separate jails in different counties, and we really needed to find her for an interview first. That was accomplished earlier this week, and Officer Koso ran him down yesterday, though, and provided him with a fresh court date to take back to his cell block.

The proliferation of cameras is just one of the reasons it’s gotten tougher to get away with crime. In policing, we are also getting better and collecting the digital crumbs suspects are leaving behind. Immersed in the information stream of our databases and information resources, and tapped into a growing social network you have some tools and sources today that would amaze the detectives I envied in 1974.

Cripple Creek crime cleared

I blogged about these robberies on Monday, and later that same morning a reader of The Chief’s Corner sent me an off-blog email with some critical information. Detective Marty Fehringer and Officer Travis Amen followed up on that information, and yesterday morning Travis took the 14 year old alleged robber into custody for two counts. Law and order is restored along the banks of Cripple Creek.

Ah, the power of social media.

Speaking of the power of social media, a dastardly vandalism occurred at the Nebraska State Capitol overnight on Monday to Tuesday, when someone spray painted graffiti on the limestone blocks right beside the impressive front door.

Tuesday morning, several people were conversing (rather colorfully, be warned) about this crime in a local blogger’s message board: beerorkid. If you follow the thread, at 10:41 AM a participant with the screen name Fluxus notes that he saw a man carrying a sign downtown late last week with the same obscure message. A few minutes later at 11:22 AM, Fluxus (still online) sees the same guy entering the Bennett Martin Public Library downtown, posts his observation, and calls the State Patrol. This dispatch of Lincoln Police Officer Krissa Knopik results:

If you check out the times closely, you can see that either we are clairvoyant or beerorkid and the Emergency Communications Center need to get their clocks synchronized. Russell H. Lee was arrested on the spot. Note the inscription on the frieze above the Capitol’s front door, in beerorkid’s snapshot:

Nice catch, Fluxus. Applications will be open again in January!

Family found

A few months ago, I told the poignant story of Special Duty Patrolman Marion Francis Marshall here in the Chief's Corner. Unfortunately, we were unable to locate any family members to share this story with. Yesterday, I received an email from Marion Marshall's great grandson. He had found the post, and as you might imagine, was thrilled. He is the grandson of Marion Francis Marshall's youngest daughter, Marion Joyce Marshall.

He added a few interesting but tragic details to the story. Marion's wife, Eva Marshall, fell ill shortly after his death, and died in her 30's. She must be the Eva I. Marshall who is also buried in Wyuka Cemetery. The three children were placed in an orphanage. Both of the girls, Lynelle and Marion Joyce, are still living. They have stayed in touch, but have lost contact with their brother, Charles Clyde "Buddy" Marshall. He was born on July 16, 1925, so he would be 84 if he is still alive.

His grand-nephew was seeking any help I might be able to provide, as he would love to reconnect him with his sisters. I did what I could with local records here in Lincoln at the time I originally stumbled upon the story, but I'm no geneologist.

Cripple Creek crime

I live in a quiet subdivision named Cripple Creek. The typical local crime involves the egging of a car, or a bag set aflame on a porch. When the occasional residential burglary occurs through an open garage door, I sit up and take notice.

The inbox was brimming this morning with three Crime Alerts over the weekend. In the early hours on Saturday morning, $1,000 damage was done by keying the finish of a Mustang parked on the street a block away from my home. More serious, though, were two alerts concerning robberies three blocks away at Cripple Creek Park.

The park is adjacent to Humann Elementary School. On Saturday, the parents of an 11 year old reported an incident the happened on the prior Monday, September 14. The victim and his 9 year old sister were riding their bike on the school playground at around 7:30 to 8:00 PM when the suspect rode up on a bike. He is white, and about 13-15 years old. His face was covered with a red bandanna, and he was wearing torn jeans, a black shirt, a black ball cap. He demanded money (they had none), then started chasing the 11 year old. The children were both scared by this.

While investigating this case, Officer Travis Amen learned of a second incident, nearly identical, which occurred at the park on Thursday evening at about the same time of day. In this robbery, two 11 year old victims were riding their bikes on the soccer field in the park when a suspect with the same description approached, and made the same demand as on Monday. The victims tried to ride away, but the suspect kicked one of the bike wheels, and then said, "You have ten %&$#@* seconds to get out your money or I'll pull out my pistol on you." The total take was one dollar. The description was basically the same, except for the hat: a red one with a white S. The bike is a BMX with pegs, predominantly black with some kind of "little green globs."

When my daughter-in-law took the grandkids down to Cripple Creek Park in the afternoon, I had her keep her eye peeled for our suspect. I'll be checking it out from time to time this week. I'm sure Officer Amen will be looking over the bike rack at the Middle School. I would really like to nab this potty-mouthed suspect.

Sun and fun

Even though it's still summer for a few days, some gorgeous fall weather has settled over Lincoln this week. Fall is one of the best things about Nebraska. We may have to endure a little Houston summer and a bit of Minnesota winter, the extremes don't last long, and in between there will be a lot of perfect sun-drenched days--like yesterday.

About 9:00 AM, most of the management staff of the police department was standing on the rim of Nine Mile Prairie, an expanse of native tall grass prairie Northwest of the city. We were up on a tall hill, on the adjacent parcel where the University of Nebraska Campus Recreation Department operates it's Challenge Course. We slathered on the sun screen, then two young course leaders from UNL took us through a morning-long series of outdoor problem-solving and team building tasks.

It was a great time. We learned a little about one another; mainly about teamwork, planning, and situational leadership. My chief take away: get all the alternatives and ideas out on the table, reach a consensus about which course of action is the most likely to succeed, commit to that, take advantage of the individual skills of team members, and work together to get it done. If it doesn't succeed, regroup and try a new strategy.

Sounds a lot like certain aspects of police work.

On camera again

It got pretty exciting around LPD yesterday morning. Things started warming up at 1:41 AM, when a robbery took place at Roc’s Stop & Shop, a convenience store at 27th and South Streets. By about 9:30 AM, the Community Services group had obtained some frame shots from the video, and had those posted on our Crimestoppers blog. The images weren’t bad, and showed the unusual pockets on the suspect’s trousers.

At 10:13 AM, another holdup was reported at the Roc’s Stop & Shop at 56th and Holdrege: same description, same pants. Just 14 minutes later, at 10:27 AM, a third convenience store robbery was reported at the Kwik Shop at 40th and A Streets. Once again, the description matched and this time we got a license plate number from the getaway vehicle.

All over the city, available officers were checking the convenience stores on their beat. At 10:55 AM, Officer Rob Brenner spotted the suspects at the Git-n-Split at 345 W. O Street. He effected the gunpoint arrests.

The alleged wheel man was just reported as an escapee from the State Department of Corrections on Monday—he absconded on his first day of work release. He is serving 10 to 20 for four counts of Robbery and one count of burglary from Douglas County. The alleged gunman hasn’t had a good month: he was just identified a couple of weeks ago in a theft at a grocery store where he grabbed cash from an open register door and dashed. A citizen spotted him on our Crimestoppers blog from that case and gave us the tip.

It was a bad morning for our violent Part 1 crime rate, but a good one for our clearance rate. This is the kind of arrest you dream about: great police work by Officer Brenner, supported by his colleagues who arrived to assist, Mike Muff and Ben Kopsa.

Location of knife assaults

I was doing some impromptu research this morning on the number of knife assaults in Lincoln when I noticed an ususual phenomenon. This map shows the location of the 91 assaults with cutting instruments this year.


The yellow line is the approximate location of Van Dorn Street. There are two knife assaults south of Van Dorn. This area has a population of around 70,000: about 28% of the population, but only 2.2% of this type of assault. Although this part of Lincoln is generally low crime, it had 11% of the assaults overall.