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What is this officer doing?
He is responding to, um, a domestic matter.
Yesterday a woman in Wisconsin aired the [former] couple’s dirty laundry in the front yard, placing two plywood signs on the lawn, one reading "X-HUSBAND SALE" and the other reading "FREE." Surrounding the signs was a large scattering of objects, presumably belonging to the ex- or soon-to-be-ex husband.
The sight caught the attention of passers by, and in this age of cell phone cameras it wasn’t long before the images were appearing on Facebook. Just as quickly, TV and radio news teams began to arrive.
Also arriving were the police. Since the scene included a GMC Yukon with slashed tires and covered in graffiti with vulgar language, the police intervened. We’ve chosen not to post a photo of the Yukon. By later that afternoon the vehicle, with its graphic messages reinforcing the views of a woman scorned, had been removed from the property.
We’ve said this before and we’ll say it again: In police work, you never know what the next call will bring.
Whether or not you are in law enforcement, you have likely seen this famous painting by American illustrator Norman Rockwell.
What we did not know – and we’ll bet you didn’t, either – is that Rockwell used an actual police officer to pose for the painting. We learned this today when our friends at POLICE magazine passed along the news that the Massachusetts trooper depicted had died this past Sunday at the age of 83.
According to a report in the Boston Globe, Richard Clemens was a 29-year-old trooper when Rockwell, his neighbor in Stockbridge, asked him to pose for the painting. The illustration appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in 1958.
The Massachusetts trooper is depicted sitting at a diner with a young boy in Rockwell's iconic painting, "The Runaway."
From the Boston Globe we learn that the boy, too, is an actual person, named Ed Locke, and that he and Trooper Clemens because friends as a result of their association with Rockwell.
All these years, and we thought it was simply an illustration.
Below is a photo of Trooper Clemens and the painting taken in 2001.
From our friends at Hemmings Motor News comes this photo of a vintage NYPD "riot bike," from the archives of the American Police Motorcycle Museum in Meredith, New Hampshire.
At the museum, police bikes from as early as 1917 are on display, along with a few select police cars. The collection is dominated by Indian and Harley-Davidson models, but there are others as well. Several military vehicles round out the collection.
The museum has a large collection of period police uniforms on display, many of which are placed on mannequins straddled across the bikes. A movie theater loops vintage police training reels as well as clips from early Movietone newsreels and film.
The American Police Motorcycle Museum will be opening for the season in May; you can visit their website for hours and entrance fees. Group tours are available and active military service people are admitted free with a paid accompanying guest.
The museum is located on U.S. Route 3 (194 Daniel Webster Highway) just south of the intersection with New Hampshire Route 104, the museum is only a few miles north of Weirs Beach and a few blocks south of the Meredith Harley-Davidson dealership.
The photo below, also from the museum’s archives, shows a women’s motorcycle unit in San Francisco during World War II.
One of the better-known badge manufacturers in our region was the Buchlein Badge Company of Newark, New Jersey. Also known as H. Buchlein, the company was founded in the 1800s and many agencies used Buchlein badges. Many agencies still have Buchlein badges in service today. But Buchlein went out of business in 2003.
The photo shows a nearly 100-year-old Buchlein badge for the Essex County Sheriff’s Office.
So what to do if you still have Buchlein badges? Well, the good news is that when Buchlein closed up it was acquired by Smith & Warren and merged with Smith & Warren’s operation. Today virtually all of the Buchlein styles remain available under the Smith & Warren name.
Since the Badge Company of New Jersey is a distributor for Smith & Warren products, a call to us will get you the badge you need.
And what if you need repairs made to an older Buchlein badge? There’s good news there, too. Buchlein badges do not carry the lifetime warranty like the new badges, but many basic repairs can be performed for a reasonable price.
Better yet, the Badge Company of New Jersey accepts old Buchlein badges under our exclusive badge "trade-in" program, so that you can get a discounted price on a new badge.
As we say, "We’ve Got Your Badge."
Here is a story of a clueless and luckless crook not far from our offices.
Drunk from a St. Patrick Day party, for reasons that have not been explained this guy was reportedly "tossed out of a car" in the early hours of this past Sunday.
For reasons also not explained, he then decided tried to break in to the nearest house. He tried the credit card trick to jimmy the door lock, albeit it with a gift card rather than a credit card. This failed, however, due to the presence of a deadbolt lock.
Coincidentally, the homeowner soon arrived, returning home from his overnight shift on the local police force!
Among the things the homeowner discovered was the gift card still in the door. He called his colleagues, and while he and a fellow officer were searching the area, a cell phone rang.
The sound of the cell phone was coming from under a table on the deck, which had a winter cover over it. The officers found the would-be burglar under the table.
The drunken fool now has a somewhat more comfortable place to sober up: The county jail, with bail set at $25,000.
What are these two Jersey City police officers doing?
It may appear that they are simply standing by idly, but they are in fact doing their jobs. Under a contract between the police and the producers of the lowbrow television series Jersey Shore, these officers are standing watch over the house of Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi and Jenni "JWoww" Farley.
The contract requires the police to watch not only the house but also the cars of the Jersey Shore duo. This is true even when the two women of dubious virtue are not even there. Given all the attention being paid to the show and to its pseudo-celebrities, the potential for vandalism is real.
If this house were across the street from ours we would not give it a second glance, but it appears that there are plenty of people for willing to trek there for an experience related to so-called reality TV.
This is not a "golden age of television."
Photo courtesy of The Jersey Journal
We have blogged previously about Carbon Motors, the Indiana-based company that has been planning to build its own unique diesel-powered police car.
This week, the company was denied a Department of Energy loan under the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing program, a program created under President George W. Bush and continued with President Barack Obama. It is intended to provide capital to the automotive industry for backing vehicles that meet higher mileage requirements and lessen the country's dependence on foreign oil.
Carbon Motors’ plans have been ambitious. Production of the E7 police vehicle was supposed to begin this year, and the company claims to have interest in the car from more than 500 law-enforcement agencies. But the denial of this loan will be damaging if not crippling to those plans.
