Witness Protection
Even dangerous felons sometimes serve short sentences, but Benito Vasquez-Hernandez, 58—guilty of nothing—has been locked up for nearly 900 days (as of early March) as a “material witness” in a Washington County, Ore., murder case. The prosecutor is convinced that Vasquez-Hernandez saw his own son, Eloy, murder a woman in 2012, and the case is on hold until the victim’s body is found. The judge has given Vasquez-Hernandez two opportunities to leave, both impractical (pay a $500,000 bond or give a video deposition, but he speaks no English, is illiterate in Spanish and, said his lawyer, might be mentally incompetent). (Consolation: Material witnesses in Oregon earn $7.50 a day.)
The Continuing Crisis
■ The trendy St. Pauli neighborhood in historic Hamburg, Germany, suffers its share of uncouth revelers who wander out from nightclubs seeking restroom facilities but too often choose walls of storefronts and private homes, reported London’s The Guardian in a March dispatch. The solution, according to the civic group IG St. Pauli: paint jobs with an “intensely hydrophobic” product known as Ultra-Ever Dry, which somewhat propels liquid aimed at it right back toward the source by creating an air barrier on the surface. In other words, said an IG St. Pauli official, it’s “pee back” time, and shoes and trouser legs should expect splashes.
■ The Job of the Researcher: Cockroaches can be bold explorers or shy and withdrawn, according to recent work by researchers at Belgium’s Université Libre de Bruxelles, who caught a bunch of them, affixed radio tags and studied their movements. “Explorers” are necessary for locating food sources, although, obviously, they are also most likely to find Roach Motels; “shy, cautious” roaches are necessary for survival and group stability, and a mixture of the types ensures cockroaches’ legendary survivability. A Mother Nature News commentator wrote, hopefully, that understanding roaches’ personalities might make us “less quick” to “grab a shoe.”
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Compelling Explanations
Clueless in Florida’s Panhandle: Ten miles away in Mary Esther, Fla., in February, Robert Pursley, 54, was arrested for DUI and was asked about items in his truck. According to the police report, Pursley insisted that everything was his—“except for anything illegal.” A baggie of cocaine was in the truck’s center console.
Least Competent Criminals
Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) Tyler Lankford, 21, attempting a robbery of Minerva’s Bakery in McKeesport, Penn., in January, committed (according to police) the rookie mistake of laying his gun on the counter so he could pick up the money with both hands. The clerk grabbed the gun, and Lankford fled but was arrested in March. (2) There are expert counterfeiters, and then there is Cass Alder, 22, convicted by a court in Canada’s Prince Edward Island of trying to pass $100 bills that had been printed on novelty napkins but affixed by Alder onto thicker paper.
Is This a Great Country, or What?
“America’s Game” Is Gaming the Government: The U.S. Treasury recently took in more than $40 billion by auctioning off part of the wireless spectrum, but one buyer—the Dish satellite-TV provider—got a discount worth $3.25 billion by convincing the Federal Communications Commission that it is a “very small business” (despite its market value of $34 billion). Using awe-inspiring loophole-management, Dish created a separate company in partnership with a small Alaskan Natives’ group, which theoretically “managed” the company—though the Alaskans’ hands were tied by an earlier Dish-friendly contract. Thus, Dish got the benefits of being “very small” while retaining control—a “mockery” (said one commissioner) of the FCC’s simple-minded attempt to help small businesses.
A News of the Weird Classic (April 2010)
Supervisors at the Department for Work and Pensions in Carlisle, England, issued a directive in March (2010) to short-handed staff on how to ease their telephone workload during the busy mid-day period. Workers were told to pick up the ringing phone, recite a message while mimicking an answering machine (“Due to the high volume of inquiries we are currently experiencing, we are unable to take your call. Please call back later.”) and immediately hang up.
© 2014 CHUCK SHEPHERD
