Police blotters from the Lufkin Daily News and the Wise County Messenger have inspired a hunt for other “hot beds of ridiculous crime, crazy criminals and eye-popping problems,” as the Messenger‘s Kristen Tribe described her own county. In terms of criminal absurdities, it seems that Denton, a college town and a slightly larger city, is also full of zany crime. The Denton Record-Chronicle‘s blotter is filled with colorful language and rich detail, devoting several paragraphs to incidents with the most complex plotlines.
Here are our favorites from the last few months:
June 2
Denton police arrested a man early Friday with a Bible tucked into the front of his waistband and a crack pipe in his pocket.
May 31
Two men robbed a convenience store late Wednesday and left with a pillowcase full of cash and Newport cigarettes. [The clerk] was unable to provide a detailed description, but said that one of the men was taller than the other.
May 23
A former neighbor stole a man’s property that he was using to try to drain [said] neighbor’s filthy pool…When the neighbor moved out, he left the pool undrained. The pool eventually turned green and was inhabited by snakes, frogs and mosquitoes, and the neighborhood association granted the victim permission to drain it.
May 21
A woman reported to police that while she was asleep in her living room Sunday, someone came in and stole her Xanax, Diazepam and hydrocodone from her handbag. She said she does not know who stole the medications, but she allows several people the run of her apartment and does not lock her door because it makes her feel confined.
May 16
Officers responding to a report of two roommates fighting sorted out their stories and decided that neither had committed a crime.
May 15
A man reported that on several recent occasions someone has jumped a fence into his backyard and stolen his property. He reported some ‘Bullet Pops’ and Weight Watchers ice cream were missing from a freezer on his back porch.
May 5
A woman reported that someone crated one of her dogs and stole her underwear while she was gone from her apartment.
April 27
A woman reported Wednesday that a man she met in a mental health facility bilked her out of $700. The woman said she invited the man to her apartment, and … she gave him her debit card and her pin number and asked him to withdraw $30 for her. Later, she discovered that he actually withdrew $220 and kept the rest of the cash. He called her and apologized, saying he would repay the money, she said. She invited him over again, and when he left this time, she later realized that he had taken her debit card with him.
April 25
Someone is stealing [a woman’s] elderly pets as retaliation for filing police reports against neighbors, [she] wrote in an e-mail report to Denton police.
April 21
Denton police confiscated more than 30 political signs for about a dozen candidates from the front yard of a man’s home. The man told police he was making signs to advertise his upcoming garage sale.
April 16
Two men reported to Denton police that someone had thrown a jar of pickles through one of their windows while they were away. … One of the men told police he thinks his girlfriend threw the jar of pickles through the window because they got into an argument the previous night, and he said he recognized the jar.
