In most major cities, fire trucks are replaced after about ten years or so of service. This is not the case in our fair city. Ryan Kowalski, Union of Professional Firefighters Local 47 president and city fireman at Ladder Company 70, revealed in a press conference yesterday that some of our fire engines are over twenty years old.

“Take my firehouse,” Kowalski told reporters. “The ladder truck that I ride on was built in 1987, she is the oldest in the fleet. She is old enough to drink. Our housemates on Engine 20 have it a bit better, their rig was built in 1991, but it was purchased used. These trucks are old and the city won’t maintain them properly. How can my firehouse serve the good people of Fort Ridge with substandard equipment? Mayor Wilders seems to care about his legacy instead of not only the safety of the men and women who voted for him, but also those who come to help them.”

Kowalski’s statistics revealed that out of the fleet of 350 fire trucks, there are 42 fire trucks over ten years old, with 20 being older than fifteen years. A map distributed by the union displayed fire truck age distribution by firehouse location, revealing that the downtown and more affluent residential areas have newer equipment than more industrial and less affluent areas of the city.

Mayor Wilders was in meetings yesterday with the governor and could not be reached for comment. Deputy press secretary Nadine Johnson issued an e-mail statement to channel 6, saying only, “The mayor is serious about safety.”

Fire Commissioner Gordon “Chick” Hall told channel 8, “I don’t have a vendetta against Kowalski and it is just a coincidence that he is in the oldest truck in the fleet.” He also noted, “Some of these are reserve units and our fleet operations division is top notch.” When asked about the idea of selling ad space on the trucks again he responded, “We aren’t that desperate.”

City Council President Otis Stevenson promised, “The city council will hold hearings and form a special committee to look into the matter.”
- Hoyt Schermerhorn

Related: Friday Facts: Leftover Cod, Pauline, Selleck-san [final item]

President George W. Bush’s scheduled departure from office next year has many of our citizens preparing for a street fight of sorts. On February 1st, the upscale President Heights neighborhood is scheduled to add a second Bush St. to its ever-growing borders, and seven city organizations, including the Falmouth Hill Preservation Association, the Norbeck St. Residents’ Group, and Community Board 6 are urging the city to halt the proceedings.

To succeed they will have to convince the city council to repeal a 139-year-old amendment to the city’s charter that ranks as one of the most short-sighted and destructive bits of legislation in city history. If the council refuses, as seems likely, a 12-block section of Norbeck St. in historic Falmouth Hill would be re-christened after our 43rd president. Several landmarks on that stretch - including one of the city’s oldest churches and the Teal Estate, the original mayoral mansion - could be torn down or renamed at the whim of the President Heights Community Association, notorious for its draconian covenants that regulate the height, appearance, name and function of buildings within its ever-expanding borders.

The reason our city is almost powerless to stop this possible desecration of its own landmarks is believed to be rooted in an 1865 proclamation that commemorated the Union victory in the Civil War and memorialized the late President Lincoln. At Mayor Brown’s direction, a ridge-top neighborhood of mansions overlooking the eastern bank of the Ostahanoc River, then known as Mob Hill, was reorganized as Presidential Heights, and each of its streets was renamed after one of the country’s first sixteen presidents.

Most of the city’s foremost citizens and captains of industry already lived in the neighborhood, and were granted what were intended to be ceremonial positions in a concern called the Presidential Heights Coalition. Their numbers included former two-term Mayor Stanton Winthrop (ret. 1864, great uncle to Mayor Orson Winthrop), Admiral Archibald Tripp (grandfather of society figure Mabel Tripp), smelting magnate Barnaby Wonsley and other luminaries of the city’s first industrial boom.

It was only at Winthrop’s urging that Mayor Brown ceded to the Coalition any say as to the layout of Presidential Heights. It was declared that the 8 streets running east and west should be named for presidents deemed to have been “assets to the advancement of national interests,” and those streets running north and south named for those presidents held “responsible for tearing the union asunder.” By secret ballot, the so-called beneficial presidents were named Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Van Buren, Polk and Lincoln. The detrimental presidents: both Adamses, Harrison, Tyler, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce and Buchanan.

That was thought to be that. There was the somewhat quirky matter of two Adams Streets running parallel to each other with only one block between them, but that was viewed as a problem only for a select few wealthy persons (and their postman). The real trouble started in 1869, as the term of President Andrew Johnson expired.

Enraged and disgusted by their president’s disgraceful impeachment, Winthrop and his cohorts bullied Mayor Brown into allowing Presidential Heights to add a Johnson Street running on the “tearing the union asunder” axis. Finding Brown to be pliable on that matter, the reformed Coalition and its allies on the City Council forced an emergency session of closed-door legislation to cement their legacies as arbiters of presidential achievement.

On February 14, 1869, the third amendment was added to the city charter, “Regarding the jurisdiction of the Presidential Heights.” Briefly, it stated that the Presidential Heights Coalition would have full say over all matters related to the government of their neighborhood; few at the time bothered to read the fine print, which granted to the Coalition the right add a new street as each president left office - a right that would be retained “in perpetuity.”

Several administrations later, President Heights (renamed so in 1892) was becoming a problem. It had once been an out-of-the-way, upriver enclave, but as the city grid expanded northward, President Heights marched out to meet it. Streets named after Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison and Cleveland again, all built running north-south, crept off the ridge and down into Galveston Row, an area known in the 1880s for its German and Irish tenement dwellings. Instead of paving new streets, President Heights now began swallowing up existing city roads. Hundreds of families were systematically evicted every four-to-eight years, their slums torn down and replaced with large, handsome houses that were occupied by the city’s most exclusively rich and influential. Patrols of stick-bearing men kept riff-raff from re-entering the newly-annexed areas, and no one of consequence spoke up for the unfortunate victims.

By 1952, the neighborhood was an unwieldy mess, 24 blocks long and only nine blocks wide, as nearly every outgoing president had been ranked a failure. It had become a confusing jumble, featuring 2 streets each named Adams, Harrison and Cleveland, all running parallel, and 2 Roosevelt streets intersecting, with no compass designation or any other indication as to how one street differed from its twin. The neighborhood paid no heed to the map-wise geography of other city streets; visitors, especially, were confounded by the unexplained 9 block interruptions of such major thoroughfares as Grume Ave., Main Ave., Brodway and State Road 86 by McKinley, Wilson, Taft and Coolidge Streets, respectively. To make matters worse, the homes within the district were so similar-looking as to be indistinguishable - a consequence of homeowner’s covenants introduced in the 1930’s.

Concerned citizens and legislators from areas bordering the rampaging neighborhood began making annual attempts to rein in the outsized powers wielded by the Presidential Heights Coalition (known since 1926 as “Community Board 8″). Closed-door sessions with the Mayors and Council heads proved fruitless, as Eisenhower, Kennedy and a second Johnson Street replaced roads at the northern and eastern ends of old Galveston Row, shuttering long-time businesses and displacing hundreds more low- and middle-income workers to distant suburbs.

Citizens from all walks of life, newspapers and state legislators decried Community Board 8’s merciless, bullying attitude and were exasperated by City Hall’s total inaction. Mayors regularly refused comment on the subject of President Heights’ expansion, even as it marched toward the equally exclusive (and arguably more historic) Falmouth Hill neighborhood.

In June 1969, Bill Schlammaker, a reporter at the Clarion-Standard, received a large packet of documents and a hand-wringing cover letter signed only, “Concerned in CB8.” In it were purported to be copies of the minutes from over two-dozen meetings of the Coalition/Community Board 8 between 1880 and 1968. The Clarion-Standard ran a four-day series featuring excerpts from the documents, even though no additional source could be found to assure their veracity. Among the highlights:

• In 1945, after the second Roosevelt St. was installed running north-south (and intersecting the first Roosevelt St. on the neighborhood’s northeastern border), Mayor Dell reached a gentleman’s agreement with CB 8 that any future streets would run east-west until such time as the neighborhood achieved more reasonable dimensions; the hideously unpopular Truman administration led to a cancellation of this deal.
• Reasons for deeming so many presidents to be detrimental ranged from the reasonable (Andrew Johnson’s impeachment, Grant’s corruption), to the absurd (Hayes’ beard, Arthur’s “incomparable stench”), to the ridiculously unfair (Garfield’s “insufficient constitution” in succumbing to his assassin’s bullet, FDR’s failure to secure “total victory” in WWII prior to his death).
• All buildings, regardless of size or purpose, were to be painted “virginal white” beginning in 1937.
• Under no circumstances would houses of worship other than protestant churches be allowed to congregate, and no business licenses be granted to “haberdashers, tavern-keepers, blacksmiths, or book binders” (later, “internet cafes” were banned as well).
• The President Heights Community Association allegedly maintained a secret fund consisting of “voluntary” contributions by its wealthy residents. In dire economic emergencies - 9 times in all over a period of 63 years- considerable amounts of money were transferred to city coffers. Schlammaker believed that this gave President Heights incredible levarage against any of the city’s attempts to curb its expansion.

The public outcry wasn’t enough to save what little remained of Galveston Row, but outraged citizenry began demanding action, even as members of CB8 and city hall all described the documents as “preposterous forgeries.” In 1972, Mayor Wilhelm Shapiro was ousted from office with a record-low 8 percent of the vote and it seemed that frightened city council members were ready to bring the third amendment up for referendum, above the objections of CB8. However, public opinion on the matter of President Heights shifted mightily in the wake of Watergate, and the additions of Nixon and Ford streets on the north-south axis were greeted with approving op-ed pieces and general satisfaction (although notably not in Falmouth Hill).

Now, however, with the 110 year-old St. Christopher’s Church facing demolition on the second soon-to-be-called Bush Street, and the handsome Teal Estate - home to the city’s mayors from 1874 to 1978 - looking forward to a coat of virginal white paint, Mayor Wilders and the Council are working to solve the peculiar problem of President Heights. But, as councilwoman Meredith Radison (Community Board 8) has darkly pointed out, “We will do our best, but we are in a recession, here…isn’t that too bad?”
- Shek Baker

An occasional survey of jobs both unusual and extraordinary, and the people who make them happen.

“What I do,” describes Jeremiah Zjensen, “In a lot of companies, is just a part of the overall picture. Advertising agencies mostly, but also marketing firms, communications directors, public relations. Everyone does it a little bit, it’s just another small cog in their machine.”

“But when you have the focus I do,” he continues, eyes blazing, “You take it to a whole other level.”

Jeremiah Zjensen is a self-described maverick, making a livelihood out of a facet of modern living most of us take for granted. He describes his role as Assertive Communications Expert – that’s A.C.E., according to his business card – but he explains his job to the man on the street as “Acronymizing.”

From the Bleeker Street office which houses the headquarters of the one-man operation (A Single Operator Leveraged Opportunity), Jensen has masterminded some of the most memorable acronyms to hit the city in the last eighteen months. He brainstormed the Humane Society’s P.O.O.C.H. (Pledge Our Obligation to Canine Health) Program, the Jingo Foods V.E.G. (Value, Economy, Good food) pledge, and the mayor’s own C.O.M.B. (Consolidate Our Municipal Bylaws) initiative.

Did he also dream up the imaginative tagline for the mayor’s program; “Let’s C.O.M.B. these silly laws out of our hair”?

“No, that came from the mayor’s marketing director,” replies Jensen “My focus is laser-tight on the acronyms themselves.”

“It requires utter dedication. It’s an artform,” says Jensen, “If I distracted myself with catchphrases, taglines and mottos, I’d lose my E.D.G.E.”

“That’s Exceptional Drive Generating Energy” he adds, beaming.
- Jon Morris

A gathering of slapstick aficionados turned violent Saturday, requiring dozens of city police bearing shields and batons to quell the riot. It was the first conflict in the 13-year history of the Three Stooges Enthusiasts and Impersonators Annual Convention, held every year at the Westport Heights Sheraton & Conference Center.

The yearly event is part reunion, part workshop for the small but intense group of people from across the country who “want to live the Stooge way the right way,” as the convention’s mission statement says. “This is the worst thing to happen since the 2005 protests,” said convention founder Howard Dewey, referring to a handful disruptive picketers that year, angry over the exclusion of devotees to Stooge replacements Shemp and Curly Joe.

The fracas broke out during a class on how to successfully block an attempted double eye poke. Instructor Bob Silver demonstrated the proper technique — it entails holding your hand at a perfect 90 degree angle from your face — and then paired off participants to practice the move. A fight started between attendee Lewis Oster, a member of the Moe group, and Curly group member Morris Heinz, who claimed later that Oster poked too hard and actually gouged both his eyes.

According to convention tradition, an attendee is supposed to utter the safety phrase “Woo-woo-woo-woo,” if he is uncomfortable with how his practice partner is attempting a bit of slapstick. Instead, multiple witnesses say, Heinz shouted, “Oh, a f****** wise guy, eh?” and punched Oster in the face, sending him tumbling into a group of fellow Moes.

The 36 seminar participants in conference room 9-W quickly ganged up into their assigned Stooge character groups, with several of the Moes making threatening backhanded slapping gestures, and the Curlys responding by smacking and pulling down on their faces, dancing on their tiptoes and uttering high-pitched, guttural squeals. The Larrys, meanwhile, tried to make peace between the two groups, which just resulted in many of the Moes yanking their hair almost out of their roots.

Chaos broke out when one of the Moes threw a cream pie filled with quarter rolls at Curly impersonator Howard Klein, shattering his nose and left orbital. As a group of Larrys carried away the injured Klein, the Curlys, many of them making doglike “woof” cries, attacked the Moes. But witnesses say the Moes quickly routed the Curlys, employing many of the techniques they’d learned at the convention: mesmerizing the Curlys by fluttering their hands in front of their faces before smacking them; tricking the Curlys into slapping the tops of their outstretched fists, sending their arms into a windmill spin that ended with them bashing the tops of the Curlys’ heads; and ducking at precisely the right moment, inevitably resulting in one Curly punching another.

Hotel employees called police, who arrived in riot gear to break up the confrontation. But the extra armament proved largely unnecessary: Once police entered and formed a cordon around the room, the Stooges momentarily froze and then tried to escape, in different directions, sending them crashing into one another. The officers quickly cuffed the writhing mass of arms and legs and loaded them into police vans for processing.

Police spokesman Sherman Larris said most of the Stooges would be charged with assault and destruction of property. The only other possible charge — threatening a law-enforcement officer — would be against Moe group member Richard Weinman, who allegedly said, “Why I oughta …” to the policeman who was handcuffing him.

“We’ll have to talk to Mr. Weinman down at the station,” Smith said. “The key question is, he oughta what?”
- Craig Gaines

July 4 ,1911- Mayor Jonah Woolsey (second from left) addresses a large crowd gathered at Main Avenue and Baylor (now Third) Street, during three hours of speeches in celebration of the holiday. Later that evening, stray sparks from fireworks at Memorial Park would light several piles of unused bunting afire next to the Geo. Hardlin and Sons lumberyard, thus setting off what became known as the Great Downtown Fire of 1911.

The fire raged for twelve hours, spanning thirty blocks and burning over six hundred buildings. Amazingly, only two people lost their lives.

The following year, the fireworks were moved to the City’s new fairgrounds, two miles outside of town.
- RJ White

(Original)

You may have noticed the City-Suburban Transit Authority’s fleet of buses are all starting to grow humps on their roofs. It is nothing to be alarmed about, since it is all part of the CSTA’s conversion to compressed natural gas-powered buses, something that sounds like an especially good idea with increased CSTA ridership (due to escalating gas prices) and today’s sixth city-wide Ozone Action Day in a row.

After dozens of buses being in service for several months, the CSTA has finally issued a press release (reprinted in its entirety below) regarding the new cleaner buses:

“The City-Suburban Transit Authority has introduced new buses using cleaner burning compressed natural gas. The buses are manufactured under license by the Gleason Coach Company, from a Canadian design, at a factory across the state in St. Alban’s County. They cost approximately $500,000 each and are cleaner burning than the diesel buses they are gradually replacing.”

According to Monty Neville, local transit enthusiast and host of Bus World (monthly, on public access cable channel 114), the North Side and the Berman Gardens depots have totally converted to natural gas while the other twelve depots are slated to gradually convert over the next two years.

Neville told The City Desk, “These buses are the best thing [CSTA chief procurement officer] Hank Lamberty has ever brought into the bus fleet. They are much better than the buses with the water fountains he tried back in ‘97. That was a mess, although it wasn’t as bad as the on-board vending machine fiasco of 1953. I can’t get into detail on that because of the lawsuit.”
- Hoyt Schermerhorn

As a public service, The City Desk periodically offers up selected items culled from local police reports.

9:17 pm
200 block of Euclid Avenue: A 7-year-old girl reports to 911 that “monsters are knocking at my door.” Dispatch sends a cruiser to reassure the girl, only to find people dressed as Frankenstein and the Werewolf knocking on her door. Police interviews reveal a wrong address on a “Halloween-In-Summer party” Evite is to blame. The partiers leave and police calm the girl down.

9:26 pm
200 block of Euclid Avenue: The girl calls back, reporting more monsters. Police are sent back out to the house, and direct Freddie Kruger, 24, and Jason Voorhies, 25, to the right address, and again calm the girl.

9:45 pm
300 block of Pacific Lane: Baby with gun.

9:37 pm
200 block of Euclid Avenue: The girl calls again. A City Desk review of the 911 tape reveals the girl is hyperventilating while describing “a man with fangs and a black cape” at her front door. Police return, direct Dracula to the right address, post an officer in front of the house for the rest of the night, and take the girl into protective custody. According to the police report, she says her parents are at a Jimmy Buffet “Parrotheads” party.

10:42 pm
500 block of Karl Avenue: Police arrest Neil Levan, 32, for filing a false report after he tells a passing officer that the girl he’s with has “stolen his heart.”

2:18 am
25000 Industrial Access Drive: Massive warehouse explosion.

1:38 pm
800 block of Jarvis Street: Two men and a woman report their cars were apparently damaged by a hit and run driver in the parking lot of St. Norbert’s Church. Police are looking for a red 1974 Dodge Dart with the license plate LXI 483 in connection with the incident.

2:41 pm
Intersection of Hudson and Bergen Streets: Fire department reports theft of hydrant after routine hydrant check.

3:06 pm
2513 West Merton Drive, Oakhurst Section: Apparent murder/suicide. Five victims.

4:18 pm
2300 block of  Lorimer Street: Several complainants of tires being slashed on parked vehicles.

4:26 pm
North River at Granville Street: Aviation and Harbor units respond to reports of a dog in the river. The dog was rescued by Aviation Unit officer Alex Drake and is recovering at the ASPCA.

5 pm
300 block of Peachtree Lane: City police and a representative from dispatch arrive at the home of Muriel Goshen, 87, bearing cake and balloons to celebrate her 100th 911 call since her husband, Jack, passed on three years ago. Some of Goshen’s notable calls have included a noise complaint about a birthday party for her 8-year-old neighbor, a report of “another Kraut blitz” during the annual air show, and an allegation that city employees performing routine maintenance work to gas lines were attempting to dig a tunnel into her basement to “steal all of Jack’s tools.” Goshen, confused and frightened by the group of similarly dressed people outside her home, makes her 101st emergency call, screaming at the operator, “The United Nations is trying to break down my door!”

6:13 pm
500 block of Audubon Avenue: A man reports the theft of a stop sign. The Department of Transportation was contacted and replaced the sign.

7:43 pm
3000 block of Western Avenue: Officers respond to silent alarm at Bruno Hardware. A large cat was found stuck in an air conditioning vent on the roof and rescued by ASPCA and Emergency Services Unit officers.
- Craig Gaines, Hoyt Schermerhorn, RJ White

A vague new academic discipline creates a bonafide new-media star.

When Jack Arkush was a child, he would sometimes accompany his father downtown, where William Arkush was a mid-level advertising executive for the Kenner Agency. “He worked on campaigns for sporting goods, for eyewear,” Arkush says. “General-interest stuff that didn’t interest me.”

What interested the younger Arkush, as it turned out, were the elevators in his father’s office building. “The first time he took me to work, we walked into the lobby, and there were two elevators waiting,” Arkush says. “We stepped into one. As the doors closed, I saw people filing into the one across the way. We started to rise first, but when we got to the twentieth floor, where he worked, the people who took that other elevator were already there.”

Most people would accept that outcome with equanimity, if not indifference. Jack Arkush was different. He felt it as an injustice. “It didn’t bother me that we didn’t get to the twentieth floor first,” he said. “It bothered me that I didn’t understand exactly why we didn’t get there first.”

Today, Arkush—a portly, bearded man of fifty-eight—doesn’t have that problem. He works on the second floor of the Haber Building on the central campus of Watson University, and he takes the stairs. The building is named for Albert Haber, an engineer whose achievements in solid mechanics included patenting several viscoelastic materials for use in aerospace. “Haber would have hated what I do,” says Arkush. “He probably would have asked for my office to be removed from his building.” Arkush laughs. For the last fifteen years, he has been the head of the university’s tiny but influential Conceptual Engineering Department. “Other scientists can point to their products and their solutions,” he said. “I have only problems and questions.”

Conceptual Engineering is not recognized by many university-level science departments: or rather, while it is recognized by nearly everyone in science, it is rarely recognized as a formal discipline. Conceptual Engineering is, in the broadest of terms, the process by which difficult and sometimes paradoxical circumstances are communicated between scientists in different fields. “You could also call it ’shooting the shit’,” says Arkush, laughing. But after he stops laughing, he stands and walks to the other corner of his office, to a desk occupied by a slim middle-aged woman named Diane Paranzino. “For more than forty years, I’ve been preoccupied with that elevator problem in my father’s office building,” he says. “From time to time, I have brought it up with friends, and nearly everyone is interested, on some level. Nearly everyone thinks they can explain a part of it to me. And nearly everyone wants to.”

[Read more →]

For a city that has hosted kings, presidents and many other world leaders, a visit from a cabinet secretary in an outgoing administration might seem like small potatoes. But Idaho’s Dirk Kempthorne, the current United States Secretary of the Interior, was here recently for a very special reason: to officially establish Carpe’s Marina as our city’s second entry in the National Register of Historic Places.

Nuncio Carpenello first went into business on the east bank of Keets Harbor in July, 1858, only days after arriving from Salerno, Italy. Local residents were amused when the burly immigrant constructed scaffolding inside his small and rickety wooden shack so elaborate that it forced him to sleep with his feet outside the walls. For many weeks afterward they heard the constant pounding of hammers and creaking of boards. In mid-September the shack suddenly disappeared, and in its place was a 26-foot long, eight-foot wide boat moored just offshore. Carpenello had built the craft on his own, from the hull up.

Soon “Nunce’s Ark” was a familiar sight, tooling around the harbor and navigating the tricky eddies of the Ostahanoc River. Large as it was, the “ark” drafted barely four inches deep, and could travel safely far upstream, even in the river’s shallow north branch. For the many businesses that lined the river, Carpenello’s craft provided both delivery and waste removal services that were cheaper and more reliable than the horse carts of the day, particularly given the uneven condition of the city’s roads in the late 1850s.

By early 1862, Carpenello’s wife and fifteen children had joined him in the United States, and in addition to his regular rounds upriver – extending from before dawn to well after dusk – he and his brood erected the building whose foundation still stands. Carpe’s Marina has been built and rebuilt at least a dozen times, surviving fires, floods and the remnant winds of half a dozen hurricanes. But the substructure supporting the building was as sturdy and thick as Carpenello himself. It had to be.

Beginning in autumn of 1861, Carpe’s Marina had become one of the principal stations on the Underground Railroad, the covert network of shelters for fugitive slaves on their way to freedom in the northern United States and Canada. The marina’s status as a secret hiding place for former slaves was so well-guarded, and the substructure of the building so solidly built, that evidence of its role was not re-discovered until 2002, when the marina was scheduled for demolition in advance of the new Happenstance Landing at Keets Harbor entertainment and shopping complex. Explosives experts surveying the lower levels of the building were surprised to find the foundation extending nine feet below their expectations.

That extra nine feet contained a sub-basement with a veritable treasure-trove of Civil War-era artifacts. As it turns out, Nuncio Carpenello’s delivery business had added those late-night and early-morning runs not to carry supplies safely past the uncertain roads leading to the north end of the city, but to transport people beyond the uncertain attitudes and prejudices of their fellow man. The demolition crew was soon replaced by a film crew from the History Channel, whose documentary footage of the subsequent excavation is expected to air this September. That’s about the time construction on the Happenstance Landing at Keets Harbor is scheduled to be finished – the property line now 653 feet north of its original location.
- David Andrews

As a public service, The City Desk periodically offers up selected items culled from local police reports.

12:08 am
Harding Park, Officers disperse a group of people loitering in the park after hours.

1:01 am
3400 block of Spring Street: A woman reports excessive noise in adjoining house. The responding officers could hear nothing.

2:17 am
300 block of Bay Street: City EMS reports a break in and vandalism to an ambulance parked at LeFleur’s Donuts while the paramedics were taking a lunch break.

2:42 am
3400 block of Spring Street: A woman reports excessive noise in adjoining house. The responding officers could hear nothing.

3:01 am
4700 block of McKinley Avenue: Officers respond to silent alarm at a Kwick Stop Market finding clerk unconscious behind counter.

3:12 am
3400 block of Spring Street: A woman reports excessive noise in adjoining house. The responding officers could hear nothing.

3:47 am
2700 block of Huron Street: Officers respond to a 911 call of a cow in the roadway.

4:37 am
3400 block of Spring Street: Officers respond to a complaint of excess noise. Beverly Fouineur, 86, arrested for wasting police time.

5:14 am
21000 block of State Road: Gerald Crass, 18, and a minor are charged with vandalism, second-degree robbery, and cruelty to animals after police find them on the property of Chicken Delicious Farm. Police say the accused stole eggs from a chicken coop, and then egged the coop.

7:14 am
Archibald Field: Homer Chamberlain, an agronomy student at Watson University, is charged with vandalism and destruction of university property. Police have been conducting a three-week sting operation on Chamberlain, who they say has been strategically spreading fertilizer around the 50-yard line at Archibald Field. Chamberlain was arrested before he could finish the alleged prank, but police say a view from the top of the stadium reveals that a fast-growing portion of turf reads “THE COUGARS SUC.”

10:26 am
1300 block of Cedar Street: Police respond to a peeping Tom complaint from adult webcam model “Cindy.” She tells officers she was in the middle of her morning shift in her “studio” when she noticed a figure standing outside her first-floor window. The perp ran from the scene when “Cindy” threw one of her stilettos at the window. An investigation is under way.

3:07 pm
Riverview Apartments: A man reports someone threw a full cup of cherry cola into the front seat of his 2003 Chrysler Sebring convertible.

5:26 pm
500 block of Fairview Avenue: Mildred Bailey, 57, is charged with vandalism. According to the police report, officers apprehend Bailey as she is spray-painting a comma onto graffiti that read “F*** you b***!” Bailey allegedly says she was painting an introductory comma after “you.”
- Craig Gaines, Hoyt Schermerhorn