Crime Blotter
Maniac Cops Taking a cue from William Lustig's splendid 1988 film Maniac Cop, several New Yorkers in recent weeks have been pretending to be police officers for all the wrong reasons.
The female officer grabbed his arm through the window, but that didn't stop him. After being dragged a ways, she let go, suffering a twisted knee.
Police haven't caught the fake cop yet, but they have identified him, which is something. He's 29-year-old Lorance Williams, who has a rap sheet stretching back into his teens.
That same day at JFK, an asshole real estate developer named Eddie Sitt was busted after he tried to pull the "I'm a cop" routine to prevent his Porsche from being towed.
The car, according to the Post, had a sign in the window reading "Federal Law Enforcement Group," together with a cop-specific EZ-Pass sticker. And when Sitt tried to stop the PA officers from towing the car, he flashed a badge and told them he was a federal agent. Then he tried to make all buddy-buddy.
The real cops, recognizing the badge as something that might've come in a cereal box, arrested Sitt. The jackass now faces up to seven years on criminal forgery and impersonation charges.
At around 6 p.m. on Jan. 17, a woman riding the Staten Island Ferry popped into the bathroom to freshen up. While she was there, a 16-year-old named Andrea Sanders snatched the woman's purse off a countertop and fled. Without even looking in the purse (which contained a radio, but little else of value), the teen ran to the side of the boat and chucked it overboard, the Post reported.
Nobody knows what the hell that was all about, but she was arrested on Jan. 18, charged with petit larceny and being a big jerk.
Finally, though this took place in Jersey, we think it deserves special notice. When New Yorkers go the public suicide route, they mostly use tall buildings or subway tracks. Not Union Beach resident Wolfgang Persieck, who died last weekend-and how!
Police were at first baffled after finding a head outside a movie theater, and a headless body inside a car some distance away, according to the Daily News. The car's front seat was littered with suicide notes. So how the hell'd that happen?
Simple and clever enough, it turns out.
Mr. Persieck, whose notes cited personal and financial troubles, tied a length of rope around a lamppost. Then he tied the other end around his neck. Then he got in his car, hit the gas, and did Isadora Duncan one better. Instead of strangling him, yanking him out of the car or just breaking his neck, the noose popped Persieck's head clean off his shoulders like a champagne cork.
No word yet as to what was playing at the theater.