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Quick Takes


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Purchase price

Joseph Talbot went to great lengths to keep his arrest by New York state police for driving while intoxicated on Dec. 29 under wraps. Talbot, 43, initially refused to submit to fingerprinting or to take a photograph for his mug shot. Then, when the Times of Wayne County, a 12,000-circulation weekly published in the Upstate area, published a story on the arrest, the Newark, N.Y., man apparently tried to purchase every newsstand copy in the county. In all, newspaper owner Ron Holdraker said, Talbot spent $1,250 buying up 1,000 copies of the Dec. 31 edition. But Talbot’s efforts backfired, spreading the news further as the story of his arrest and subsequent attempts at suppression went viral on the internet.

Young-old media

Brinkley City Councilman Larry Taylor will have to watch out for a new media tycoon in the small Arkansas town: his son. The city official’s 19-year-old son Hayden Taylor recently used his savings to purchase the Central Delta Argus-Sun newspaper for a song. After putting down his $5,000 investment, the Arkansas teen changed the weekly’s name to the Monroe County Herald and planned a reboot as the paper’s owner, publisher, editor, and reporter. The younger Taylor, who said he purchased the paper because it was cheaper than another year in college, said he plans to target the City Council’s plan to raise taxes in 2017.

Stanza stumper

At first, she was embarrassed. Then, she was confused. That’s how poet Sara Holbrook described the experience of flunking a section of a standardized test that asked seventh- and eighth-graders to analyze poetry—her poetry. In a Jan. 4 column for The Huffington Post, Holbrook explained that a teacher in Texas contacted her in December about questions on state assessment tests regarding her poems. She said she had to guess at an answer to a question about her purpose in creating a stanza break where she did in the poem “Midnight.” The real answer—she created the stanza break because she pauses there when reading it aloud—was not an answer choice. The experience left Holbrook with a message for parents: “Any test that questions the motivations of the author without asking the author is a big baloney sandwich.”

Mind gone to pot

Lon Victor Post probably should think long and hard about how he gets his news. Now he’ll have some time. Deputies from the Mohave County, Ariz., sheriff’s office arrested the 54-year-old after finding him smoking marijuana in his car on Jan. 4. Surprised by the officers’ interest, Post allegedly told cops it was fine for him to smoke since Arizona had legalized marijuana in the November elections. On the contrary, Arizona voters rejected by a 4-point margin the ballot proposition that would have allowed marijuana smoking. After being told the news, Post allegedly resisted arrest, was tased, and finally was taken into custody by officers.

Luggage racket

Antonieta Robles Saouda may have received points for creativity when guards caught her trying to smuggle her boyfriend out of a Venezuela prison, but that didn’t save her from arrest. After a visit from Saouda to Puente Ayala prison, prisoner Jose Vargas Garcia curled up inside her suitcase, and Saouda proceeded to walk out of the prison, suitcase in tow. Guards became suspicious, however, as Saouda had trouble pushing the small piece of luggage. They opened the suitcase, found Garcia, and arrested Saouda. Authorities took Saouda’s 6-year-old daughter, who had accompanied Saouda on the visit, to social services.

Litter bug

Three days after authorities locked up Ross Lebeau for possessing drugs, police in Houston finally cleared him. Harris County sheriff’s deputies arrested Lebeau for transporting a large amount of methamphetamine during a traffic stop in December. Lebeau insisted, however, that the substance was kitty litter, which he kept in a sock in his car to reduce fog on the windows. What seemed like a dubious story coupled with a positive field test for meth led officers to book Lebeau on drug charges. The dubious story, however, turned out to be true, as a county forensics lab confirmed Lebeau’s account three days later. Through a lawyer, Lebeau blamed the field-testing equipment rather than the officers for the mix-up.

Choice location

Some retail shops make for good burglary candidates. Some don’t. Police in Deerfield Beach, Fla., are expecting to make an easy arrest after a man tried and failed to burglarize a spy shop specializing in high-quality hidden cameras on Jan. 4. “This is probably the last place you would want to try and burglarize,” owner Evan Tannenbaum told WSVN. Indeed, the store’s cameras recorded a hooded man trying and failing to break a window before turning his face into an HD camera lens and walking away. Now Tannenbaum and the police are waiting for someone to recognize the very clear face.

Warm-up act

Nick Taylor of Roseville, Mich., doesn’t dispute that he left his car running and unattended, but he doesn’t see why that drew a ticket from local police. The reason: His car was warming up in his own driveway at the time. Taylor took to Facebook on Jan. 5 to object to a ticket he received from Roseville police. According to the citation, Taylor had violated either city ordinance 99006 or 895. But ordinance 895 regulates rodent control and ordinance 99006 does not exist. Taylor hoped to resolve the matter on Jan. 26 in court, where he planned to contest the charge.

Lost and found

Half a year after losing his car in a parking garage, a United Kingdom man has finally reunited with his lost BMW. On Dec. 30, police in Manchester, U.K., found an abandoned BMW tucked in a parking spot in an Etihad Stadium parking garage. After running the plates through a database, authorities discovered the car had been reported missing after its driver couldn’t find it following a concert at the stadium in June. According to police, the driver searched all the parking garages at the stadium for the next few days after the show and reported the vehicle stolen when he couldn’t find it.

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