Count us as extremely surprised when we heard the news that East St. Louis’ Police Chief, Ranadore Foggs, called it quits Saturday. Who the hell would have guessed that East St. Louis had a Police Chief?!

Chief Foggs told Mayor Alvin Parks Jr. about his decision Saturday.

Foggs said he had philosophical differences with the mayor on how the police department should be run. Foggs said his character and integrity were important to him and making the city safe was his No. 1 goal, and that’s why he came aboard the police department.

“I am sorry to see him leave. Chief Foggs had every intention of making the town very safe and I do too,” Parks said. “If Chief Foggs feels as if it’s time for him to go — while we’re disappointed, if it’s his decision, I respectfully accept his resignation.”

One could hardly blame anyone in the unenviable position of trying to keep East St. Louis safe for quitting all of five months after accepting the job, but as much as we’d like to imagine Foggs looking at every crime scene and whispering “I’m getting too old for this shit.” over and over again, it seems like Foggs quit because Mayor Parks was a little too bossy.

Councilman Delbert Marion, who spoke in an angry and serious tone about Foggs’ resignation, said the mayor has been trying to run the department.

“The mayor’s political influence, or attempted political influence, in the police department is unwarranted,” he said.

He said the mayor was trying to tell the chief how to schedule his manpower for patrolling the streets. Marion said some of what Parks was trying to do violates the police officers’ contract.

While city administrators bicker, East St. Louis is now left without any top-level police leadership and has plunged in to a deep darkness with the drugs, violence and fear running rampant on their now vacant city streets. Clearly something needs to be done…oh…right. It’s always like that. Scratch that. … The good news is, that despite concerns to the contrary, there has been no appreciable change in over-all crime levels despite being without a Police Chief!

Not sure what the process for East St. Louis Police Chiefs that want to quit is, but maybe it’s like that Judge Dredd movie with Stallone (trailer embedded below) where they just give you a shotgun and a trenchcoat, followed by a ceremony where they just push you out in to the vast wasteland and tell you to clean things up the best you can. That would seem a bit weird, since we’re pretty sure that’s what they do when they hire a new beat cop to go with the other three. On the other hand, pretty much everything about Judge Dredd (with the notable exception of hover-bikes) pretty much lines up perfectly with what East St. Louis has become in our mind.

via BND.com

“Oh officer, thank god you’re here! I’ve been shot three times in the leg and the guy left about 30 minutes ago in my car but my daughter is still in the car so at least I didn’t have to deal with her while I was bleeding all over the sidew…oh now don’t you look nice!”

The St. Louis Police department is dropping some change on a new set of “formal” uniforms for each officer. How much? Just 80,000. “Hey everyone! Let me know what you want me to buy before the state makes the mayor our boss again!”

The St. Louis police department is spending $80,000 on new formal uniforms. The new jackets are supposed to boost morale and make officers proud. but some officers have raised concerns about the cost.

Don’t worry officer, you’re new formal duds are bullet-proof…as long as they hit one of the gold buttons directly…and the gun miss-fires. Actually just trust us.

Police Chief Dan Isom said his officers are among the few large departments that don’t have formal attire to wear when they honor their fallen.

This is a great sentence if you think about it. So you’re the Police Chief of St. Louis and you have some of your officers dying. What do you do with your “spare” 80 grand? Well get fancy clothes to wear to the funerals of course! This is like a fat guy deciding to spend his Jenny Craig money on a new fancy fork.

“One of the small things that they ask for was a dress uniform that really would give honor to our fallen officers and really make it special when we went to our special ceremonies.” said Chief Daniel Isom of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Dept.

We think $80,000 worth of security cameras would make things a lot more “special”.

“The money could go to a bunch of different things. Any time you make a decision to spend money you could find 20 different things to spend it on.” said said Chief Daniel Isom.

…but we’re guessing that if you would have dropped 80 large on policing equipment no one would be saying “Wait, shouldn’t we be spending this on fancy coats?! Won’t someone think of the coats?!”

Isom admits cutting other perks, like take home cars from some bomb squad and homicide detectives. Chief Isom said, he was making that decision regardless to spread out vehicle for more officers to use. that’s why he likes the new uniform. It’s something for all of his men and women.

So is a big ass TV in the lounge, and a nice Christmas party totaling $10,000, leaving you with $70,000 to do something nice for all the citizens that are too scared to take the damn trash out to the curb after dark.

What STLPD officers we have work hard, and our dealings with them have always been great. The battle their losing to the city’s crime rate isn’t because they’re good people trying, it’s because they don’t have the resources to do what needs to be done in a situation this bad. Meaning, when Police Chief Tonedeaf tries to buy everyone fancy uniforms it just looks bad. The officers should be rewarded for their hard work, but there’s better ways to spend $80,000 of public funds and another $100,000 of private funds as the year you spent the first half complaining about your budget comes to a close.

The least he could do is buy the force some better cellphones so the next leaked photo of a bloody crime scene isn’t so damn grainy.

via Fox2

Three STLPD officers were sent to the hospital after opening a mysterious container at the Mansion House Apartments while serving a warrant.

They were serving a warrant at the Mansion House Apartments on 4th Street in downtown St. Louis when they opened a container and were hit with a strong odor that caused headaches, breathing problems and profuse sweating.

What box horribleness be strong enough a stink to give three men headaches, breathing issues and sweating? Rosie O’Donnell probably has a box that horrible, but we can’t think of anything that bad in the bi-state area.

There is no word on what caused the reaction, the investigation continues.  A test of the substance shows no hazardous material.  The officers are expected to be ok.

So it didn’t contain any hazardous material, but something must have made three grown men sick. What was in that damn box?! Yesterday morning’s slinger leftovers? A copy of “You Got Served” on DVD? Gwyneth Paltrow’s head? Damn, I guess we’ll never know what St. Louis cops hate so much just seeing it would make them fall ill…

via KMOX

Over the last weekend a piece ran in the Post Dispatch about a guy that had his laptop stolen. With the help of exactly no one, he managed to locate the thief by logging in to his computer and trick him in to typing in his name and address. The victim gave all the information to the police who did…nothing.

Four days after the June 20 burglary of his Pennsylvania Avenue home, Van Almsick grew tired of waiting.

“It was like, man, this is happening right now! I can’t wait for them to check into it,” he said.

Armed with a video camera and accompanied by two friends, he went to the house indicated by the tracking. He confronted the man who had been captured on camera and offered a deal: Give me the computer back, and I’ll leave, no questions asked. He got his computer but never found his other items, which ranged from iPhones to TV sets.

“I’m totally annoyed by police,” he said. “I felt like I had to do their job for them.”

That annoyed feeling your experiencing is because you did do their job for them.

The report above is just one of several the article included, but the best part was the interview with St. Louis Police Chief Dan Isom. Isom did an admirable job of saying the standard nothing, but unfortunately for him, we ran his comments through the Punching Kitty Translatmotron 2349234-9 (The extra nine is because this version also plays mini-discs. We got it at Costco.) and here are Isom’s comments quoted below, with the translation immediately following.

Begin Translation:

Police Chief Dan Isom said there are bound to be mistakes among the 140,000 yearly incidents the department handles. But he said his detectives do regularly take advantage of tracking software and GPS capability.

The problem, he said, is the result does not always come as quickly as people expect. Detectives take each incident and, in addition to investigating it, try to match it to larger crime patterns, which can take time.

Sure you have a photo of the guy as well as his full name and address, but what else do you have? How the hell are we supposed to wrongly imprison someone, dick around for three weeks so he can get away, or at least orchestrate a bloody shoot out in the street if you’ve got the guy red-handed? I mean, you did all the work, and then called to tell us where to go to pick up him and get your stuff back, the whole thing would have taken us 15 minutes! There’s the right way to do things, that then there’s this. What’s next? You gonna shoot the guy and text bloody photos of the aftermath to everyone in St. Louis all by yourself? I’d like to see you try!

[Isom] continued: “I certainly understand people’s frustration. I’ve been a victim of larceny myself.

Man I’ve got to move to the county one of these days.

Every crime is important to us,

That’s just something you say. Like how you say you love all your children the same, but we both know the one that plays with his trucks by repeatedly smashing them together is starting to get on your nerves and we both know he’s never leaving the house.

…but there’s a reality of looking at the number of crimes that are reported in the city of St. Louis…

We live in a crime ridden city, and I’ve pretty much given up on fixing it.

…and assessing which ones we have credible evidence to move forward on.

I forgot what we were talking about.

There are decisions we have to make each day about what we pursue.”

Look, flat out. Did you get stabbed or not? If you didn’t, you’re going to have to wait for a while…and by “a while” I mean it might be quicker to stab yourself and try to frame your laptop thief for it…also if you could transform yourself in to a little white girl, it wouldn’t hurt.

Do we make mistakes sometime? Certainly.

Like the time I said ok when you could ask a me few questions…

Is there miscommunication? Certainly.

For instance, I never pick up the phone when I hear it playing “The Bitch Is Back”! …oh, that’s my personalized ring tone for Mayor Slay…”Oh hey, like 30 more people died today, and like 1,000 more cars were stolen!” ….pffft! Always something with that guy!

But we use that type of information every day successfully.

At least I managed to get all my stuff back when I was robbed! The system works (for me).

via STLToday

Friday night, 62 cars were broken into downtown, most of them just south of Busch Stadium. It’s time like these when we wish the police would tell us everything’s going to be ok and that not to worry, they’ve got things under control. We don’t live in a town where you can’t even go to a ballgame without thinking about what inning you should leave to go get your car rather than thinking about what inning you have to leave before your deluxe nachos make a reappearance south of the border, do we?

Of course we do.

Police Captain Mike Caruso tells KMOX it’s time for parking lot owners to watch their lots even after they’ve taken a driver’s money.

And, if you’re not parking on a lot, Captain Caruso recommends leaving nothing in sight inside a car, locking the car, parking in lighted areas and never hesitating to call 9-1-1 when someone suspicious is loitering near a car.

“it’s time for parking lot owners to watching their lots”? When the hell was it not their time to do that? Sure no one has any assumption of security on those lots where you have to fold up your five dollars (or…ahem…your two dollars folded over a bunch of times because how would they know?!) and put it in the corresponding parking space slot, but the lots for $10 and up with the attendant in the little booth? Those should give you peace of mind…but they don’t.

Police are stepping up patrols.  One undercover car theft unit operating Saturday night made its first arrest shortly before 5.pm.

Hey alright! Got one! Why didn’t anyone tell the police that people steal cars downtown? If they would have known, they would have started trying harder earlier! Like how when we finally found out that girls rarely look up when using a public restroom we had already gotten too big for the air vent…we could still fit in there, but we couldn’t really move our arms so that kinda defeats the purpose.

via KMOX

Sure no one would ever want to shoot a baby, but honestly, a one month old is way too little to be an effective human shield. You cover chest and you expose the face, cover your face with the baby and you expose your chest as well as your nose to any baby stink. The trick really is to find the perfect mix of size and cute “You wouldn’t shoot me, would you Mr. Policeman?” factor. Your best bet is Justin Bieber, but the Biebs wasn’t in North St. Louis the other day, so one would have to improvise with a baby.

Police said the 40-year-old man and a 20-year-old woman got into an argument around 11 p.m. at the corner of Delmar and Academy.

As the argument escalated the man shot a gun in the air and then ran into a house with a one-month-old infant in his arms. According to officials, the man never threatened to harm the child.

Police managed to talk the guy out of the house a couple of hours later and no one was harmed.

The incident happened just weeks before the city rolled out it’s new tax payer funded “flak jacket papoose” program. Sure it seems dangerous to have your kid strapped to your chest during a gun fight with the police, but in North St. Louis being shot is like the chicken pox…it’s better to just get it over with while they’re young.

via KMOV