Another Nice Mess

The following story from western Pennsylvania made the news recently:

Carlos Laurel, 31, and Andre "Sug" Hardy, 39, of Lincoln Street, face eight charges related to cocaine trafficking. Police arrested Laurel and Hardy after they showed up at a Kingston residence and allegedly delivered 50 bags of cocaine to the unidentified occupant Tuesday at about 5:53 p.m. Police estimate street value of the cocaine was $2,500.

Laurel and Hardy were taken to Luzerne County Correctional Facility for overnight arraignment.

Here's a trivia quiz: Who is the actor dressed as a cop in the photo?

Dumbth

"Dumbth" is a word coined by the late humorist Steve Allen.

In a northern New Jersey town recently, police responded around 1:00 AM to a residence on a request for medical assistance for a man who had been injured in a fall. A subsequent investigation revealed that the involved party had in fact been injured in a motor vehicle crash that had occurred shortly before the call. This resulted in the arrest of the 22 year-old subject on charges of driving while intoxicated, careless driving, leaving the scene and failing to report a motor vehicle accident.

When you do a stupid thing – driving while drunk – there is no way you are going to "get away with it" when you crash your car. To attempt to do so is to exhibit dumbth.

Prison

The photos below are just some of those taken by California photographer Sarah Regnier at the San Benito County Jail in Hollister, California.

They are among the many compelling photos on her site, http://cameratakesphotos.blogspot.com. They’re not all about prison, they cover an eclectic range of subjects.

You may recall our earlier blog entry about the wedding photos taken in a closed prison, but a prison setting is the only common thread between that post and this.

What's That White Stuff?

As we write, it is snowing heavily in New Jersey. Schools, highways, and offices have been closed throughout the day. We have more than a foot of newly-fallen snow outside our window, and it is still snowing.

It snows more often in New Jersey than it does in South Carolina, which may explain this "dumb criminal" item from last Monday:
A man accused of breaking into or attempting to break into more than a dozen vehicles Saturday remained in the Spartanburg County jail Sunday in lieu of $45,000 bond.

The man was charged with eight counts of carbreaking and five counts of tampering with a vehicle after 18 vehicles in and around the Rogers Mill Subdivision were reported entered or tampered with between 7 and 9 p.m. Saturday.

According to an incident report, authorities were able to track the man's steps in the freshly fallen snow to his home, where he was arrested.

From the Spartanburg Herald Journal.

Best Bridge by a Dam Site

In the immediate post-World War II period, massive construction projects were almost the norm in the United States, the most widely evident of which was the Interstate Highway system. But the Interstates have now been around for so long that they have become a part of what is referred to as "our crumbling infrastructure," and projects of that scale and scope seem much fewer and much less frequent.

Which is why we are fascinated by the Hoover Dam Bypass Project, a huge undertaking to re-route and modernize Highway 93 where it crosses the Colorado River at the border between Nevada and Arizona.

The main route between Las Vegas and Phoenix, Highway 93 has long been a winding two-lane road through the region, limited by the fact that it passes literally atop the Hoover Dam, built in the 1930s. Highway 93 is exceptionally scenic, and as a result it is also a popular tourist road in addition to being the main thoroughfare that it is.

We have driven across the top of the Hoover Dam several times through the years, but the next time we are in the area we will likely drive over the new bypass, a spectacular 1900-foot long concrete arch bridge nearing completion some 900 feet above the river, and 1500 feet south of the dam. A modern, multilane highway 93 will follow much straighter approaches to this new bridge, unclogging the Hoover Dam bottleneck.

In the photo above you can see the bridge taking shape while the old Highway 93 winds below. You can also see the cable-strung gondola cranes used in the construction and get a sense of the sheer size of this project.

There is a web site devoted solely to this project, http://www.hooverdambypass.org/ , and it includes web cam shots of the project as it progresses.

Don’t worry, you will still be able to drive across the Hoover Dam if you wish, the old road will remain open for this popular tourist attraction. But through traffic and truck traffic will soon travel via the new bypass.

The total construction budget is $240 million dollars, and remarkably, that budget was developed in 2001 and the project is on track to be completed later this year without exceeding that original budget.

Potty Mouth

Generally, people outside of law enforcement have no idea what sort of hazards an officer may face while on the job... Such as:

New Brunswick -- A city man arrested for fighting was taken to police headquarters, where he took a mouthful of water from a toilet and spit at an officer, police said.

In this case, we think the criminal got the more unpleasant portion of this, but still...