Never a good idea to leave your wallet at the scene of the crime

This comes to us from UltimateFortBend.com …

A high school freshman has admitted that he and a group of friends broke into a country club storage facility over the weekend in Sugar Land and drove golf carts into a nearby lake.

Police say they were led to the boy, who attends Dulles High School, because of a clue he left behind: his wallet.

Sugar Land Police spokesman Doug Adolph said police were called to the Sugar Creek Country Club, 420 Sugar Creek Blvd., at 11:15 p.m. Sunday for a reported burglary.

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Officers learned that several golf carts were missing from a storage facility. Two golf carts were found in a ditch on Country Club Boulevard near the 17th hole fairway, and a third was found at the bunker of the 18th hole fairway.

Another was later seen submerged in Jane Long Lake, Adolph said.

On Monday, a country club employee told police he found 13 more carts that had been driven into the water.

A wallet was found in one of the carts, which led to the Sugar Land teen, Adolph said.

The boy, Adolph said, said a group of his friends took the carts out of the storage facility and drove them around the golf course. The boy said the others also are freshmen at Dulles High.

No charges had been filed in the case as of Tuesday morning, Adolph said.

You can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man!

Holiday cheer from Reuters…

OSLO (Reuters) – The people of Bergen rolled out the cookie dough Monday as local police tried to sniff out vandals who destroyed the Norwegian city’s traditional Christmas decoration — a town of gingerbread houses.

Saturday vandals entered a massive tent in central Bergen and crushed most of the 650-cookie-house town, topping off the ruins with paint and fire extinguisher foam.

Police in Norway’s second largest city asked the public to offer information that could lead to the perpetrators.

“The people who did this must be full of gingerbread dust, They will smell a long way,” police inspector Erik Sveaas told news agency NTB.

Local media reported that the destruction had shocked the residents of Bergen, a picturesque city on the North Sea coast where children decorate hundreds of gingerbread houses every year before Christmas.

Steinar Kristoffersen, who runs the Bergen Sentrum foundation behind “the worlds largest and greatest gingerbread town,” said the opening of the exhibit will be postponed well into next week due to the vandalism.

“We are rebuilding the whole landscape and are receiving a lot of gingerbread houses. Many want to lend a hand,” Kristoffersen told Reuters.

In an Internet campaign, some petitioners suggested the perpetrators be pilloried, but local Bishop Halvor Nordhaug cooled the atmosphere and told local paper Bergens Tidende: “We must not lynch anyone over a few gingerbread houses.”

You don’t need to make a federal case out of it…

USA Today and the Palm Springs (CA) Desert Sun drove this one…

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — A La Quinta man is scheduled to face a federal magistrate this month on accusations he threw thousands of golf balls into Joshua Tree National Park for more than a year.

Park rangers cited and released Douglas Jones, 57, on Aug. 17 with abandoning property, littering and feeding wildlife.

“Since (some time in) 2007, he had been coming into the park and just throwing golf balls across the landscape just tossing them out of a vehicle,” park spokesman Joe Zarki said Wednesday. “Apparently, there’s some tennis balls involved, as well.”

Jones also left cans of fruit and vegetables along the side of park roads and scattered park literature and permit forms, Zarki said.

“It wasn’t daily, but frequent enough that rangers were aware of it and keying into looking for this individual,” he said. “It was a time-consuming and fairly expensive issue for us.”

Zarki said park rangers spent more than 370 hours looking for and cleaning up after Jones, who is believed to have scattered as many as 3,000 golf balls at different locations in the national park.

“We had $9,000 of staff time tied up into that,” Zarki said.

Eventually, rangers found Jones in the park, confronted him and he confessed to what he had been doing, Zarki said.

Zarki said Jones told rangers he threw the golf balls because he wanted to leave his mark and also to honor deceased golfers. He left the food for stranded hikers.

Jones is scheduled to face a magistrate from the U.S. District Court at the end of the month.

Zarki said judges have some latitude when assessing penalties for violations of park rules. If found guilty, Jones could face fines or jail time, be barred from entering the park or be assigned another form of restitution.

Attempts to contact Jones were unsuccessful Wednesday.

Update: Tire deflating judge resigns

Thanks to our friends at the Washington Post…

A Charles County judge who acknowledged deflating a tire on a car parked near the courthouse in La Plata submitted a letter Thursday resigning as chief administrator of the Circuit Court.

“I am at a stage of my career where I feel that I can be of more use to the judiciary as a judge in the trenches than as someone with budget, planning, personnel and other management responsibilities,” Circuit Court Judge Robert C. Nalley wrote to Robert M. Bell, chief judge of the Maryland Court of Appeals.

Nalley made no reference in the letter to this week’s controversy over the tire deflation. He admitted to his supervisor and a Southern Maryland newspaper that he let the air out of the rear right tire of a 2004 Toyota Corolla parked outside the courthouse Monday.

Reached in his chamber Thursday, Nalley said, “Thank you, sir. I really don’t have anything to say.” Nalley, 65, is not resigning from the bench.

La Plata Police Chief Cassin B. Gittings said Thursday that an investigation into the tire deflation was continuing. Two county sheriff’s jail officers witnessed the incident, and one recorded it with his cellphone camera, said two sources familiar with the investigation who requested anonymity because the probe is ongoing.

Bell could not be reached Thursday. William D. Missouri, chief administrative judge of Maryland’s 7th Circuit, which includes Charles, said Nalley’s resignation from his post as chief administrative judge won’t be effective until Bell accepts it. “I suspect [Bell] will accept the resignation and make it effective immediately,” Missouri said.

As chief administrative judge, Nalley was responsible for assigning cases to judges and overseeing the Circuit Court’s budget and personnel, and he largely decided which defendants were entitled to continuances on court dates.

“The county administrative judge runs the court,” Missouri said.

The owner of the car, Jean Washington, 51, said that a Charles sheriff’s deputy told her Monday that Nalley was deflating her tire. Washington rushed out and moved her car to another parking area, where another deputy told her that the rear right tire was flat.

Washington said she did not have a permit for the first parking spot.

But would he be so understanding if the robe were on the other foot?

This comes from the AP…

LA PLATA, Md. — A circuit court judge has acknowledged he deflated a tire on a car parked in a restricted area near his courthouse earlier this week. But he isn’t apologizing.

Charles County Judge Robert C. Nalley told station WUSA on Wednesday that he let out the air because leaving notes for those parked illegally isn’t effective.

The chief administrative judge for Maryland’s 7th Circuit said Nalley told him what he had done on Monday. Judge William D. Missouri suggested to The Washington Post that Nalley might be sanctioned.

The owner of the car, Jean Washington, works part-time at the courthouse in La Plata as part of a cleaning crew and said she didn’t know she couldn’t park in the restricted area. She said she never received any warnings.

Police are investigating the incident.

It wasn’t me, it was my evil twin

This comes courtesy of the Houston Chronicle…

A Harris County grand jury this week will review whether a state district judge caused nearly $3,000 in damages to his neighbor’s Range Rover by scratching the vehicle with a key after a surveillance camera captured his actions on video.

Judge Woody Densen, 69, could be charged with felony criminal mischief. Prosecutors have reviewed the video, which the neighbor gave to Houston police.

Densen previously told the neighbor he didn’t know who damaged the car. Densen has not yet been charged with any crime and he has declined to comment.

The judge’s attorney, Robert Pelton, could not immediately be reached for comment Monday evening.

Adam Kliebert, 40, a home builder who lives next door to Densen in the Rice Village neighborhood, said he installed surveillance equipment inside his townhouse in the 2300 block of Bolsover at Morningside last month and focused the cameras on his driveway because his Range Rover and his ex-girlfriend’s Mercedes had been damaged on several occasions.

Scratches on door

Kliebert contacted Houston police May 23 after his video cameras recorded a man he said was Densen walking behind the vehicle and apparently tampering with the car twice that morning. More lengthy scratches were found on the rear door of Kliebert’s 2006 Range Rover when he went outside to inspect it.

Although Densen’s actions are partially obscured on the surveillance footage, his arm can be seen making contact with the car, sometimes gliding or moving in a jerking motion along the vehicle’s rear door.

On one occasion, Densen looks back over his shoulder before pausing for several seconds directly behind the vehicle, looking down and dragging his arm along the rear of the car.

“I could understand if it was the neighborhood kid — some punk kid that lives around here — but a judge?” Kliebert said. “I knew who did it — I just didn’t have proof.

“I thought whoever was doing this was doing it at night. I didn’t think he would do it in broad daylight,” he said.

In a secretly videotaped conversation the next day, Densen told Kliebert he didn’t know who damaged the vehicle, but suggested the vandalism might have occurred because the SUV was partially blocking the sidewalk.

“On that car, I’m sure it’s probably going to cost you a bit to take (the scratches) out and get it painted,” Densen tells Kliebert on the video.

Felony crime

Because damages to the car total more than $1,500, Den- sen could face a state jail felony charge if he is prosecuted. He would likely be suspended from serving as a visiting judge in any courtroom if he is indicted.

If convicted, Densen could face 180 days to two years in a state jail and a fine of up to $10,000. He could also be disciplined by the state Commission on Judicial Conduct.

Densen presided over criminal cases as judge of the 248th State District Court in Harris County from 1983 until he was defeated in a re-election bid in 1994.

He later served as a visiting judge in various criminal courtrooms for many years. He remains eligible for visiting judge assignments, although he has not accepted any since the summer of 2007, court records show.

This is not the first time someone has complained of Densen’s conduct. In 2007, a group of Harris County defense lawyers filed a complaint with the state Commission on Judicial Conduct, alleging Densen accepted a guilty plea from a defendant whose lawyer was not present and jailed a woman who appeared in court without counsel just days after she had fired her attorney.

The state commission dismissed the grievance without taking any action.

Densen voluntarily stopped accepting visiting judge assignments after that complaint was filed, said Kelly Smith, general counsel for Harris County’s district court judges.

In 1999, the state commission publicly admonished Densen for using the prestige of the judicial office to advance his private interests because he distributed invitations to his own election fundraiser while sitting on the bench as a visiting judge.