Unanswered questions Part V

The Huffington Post has produced another round of mugshots which raise more questions than they answer. (Italics mine.)

Jason Engel, 21, of Pittsburgh, was arrested after he skipped a court hearing on charges that he stole $400 from a 2-year-old's piggy bank.

Is it possible to sink any lower than that? If Jason goes to jail, do you think the other inmates will take a dim view of his crime? How will they express that view? And how enterprising must that 2-year-old have been to earn so much money? Doesn't your own two-year-old seem a bit feckless by comparison?

Matthew Ibarria, a fugitive from Florida wanted for allegedly attacking a relative, was arrested after jumping naked from a car in Georgia. This dashboard video from a Kingsland Police Department vehicle allegedly shows him running away.

Why did they feel the need to insert an "alleged"? Isn't he pretty clearly running away? Did Mr. Ibarria think that a lack of identifiable clothing would make him unidentifiable? Doesn't going for a drive with no clothing demonstrate a certain lack of planning?


Jacob Lee Bovia is facing real indecent exposure charges for exposing his fake genitalia to a group of women on Maryland's Anne Arundel Community College campus.

Is waving a prosthetic around really a crime? Wouldn't most coeds just laugh as soon as they realized that Jacob's "penis" was only a rubber toy? What was he doing, lying in wait outside a NOW meeting?


Former Elvis impersonator Michael Conley blamed his diabetes for starting a standoff with Florida police, in which he threatened to use a weapon of mass destruction against them. He allegedly held up a vial of what he called Ricin -- a highly potent toxin -- as he barricaded himself in a motel in February, 2012. He was arrested about four hours later.

Do former Elvis impersonators feel obliged to get fat the way Elvis did? If so, can Mr. Conley blame the King for his diabetes? Should Muslims publicize this incident in order to show that they are not the only terrorists around?


Barker called 911 repeatedly in Hudson, Fla. asking them to fetch him a taxi and saying that he lost his football. Cops arrested him for allegedly misusing the emergency system on Feb. 20, 2012.

Does Mr. Barker not look like a kid who just lost his ball? Or did he think that by scrunching up his face he would be unrecognizable? And why wouldn't the cops help him look for his lost ball? (They might have found his marbles while they were at it.)


Those who attempt to arrest Mark Loescher have their work cut out for them. When he was arrested for assault, he not only told officers that he was Elvis Presley's brother, a friend of President Bush, and director of the CIA, but he was also half-orangutan.

If Mr. Loescher believes that he is the director of the CIA, does he at least accept blame for the current mess in Afghanistan? And if he is half orangutan, doesn't that mean that Elvis was as well? Was it their father or mother who was the orang? Does it seem sporting for the Huffington Post to mock the ravings of a schizophrenic off his meds? Is it hypocritical for me to criticize them when I am doing the same? Should Mr. Loescher be used as a cautionary tale about what happens when you skip your meds?


A Martin County sheriff's deputy in Florida arrested Ramon Blair, 28, based on tips from informants that Blair would have hundreds of dollars of crack cocaine "on his person." An initial search turned no results, but a more thorough search while in custody revealed that Blair had hidden the crack in, well, his crack. Blair was told to undress, squat, and cough -- and police found what appeared to be a white piece of paper in his buttocks, which contained crack cocaine.

Who was the lucky sheriff who got to search for that cocaine? How heated was the argument at the station house about who would be assigned that task? In corporate American, there is an expression: shit flows downhill. Does that apply here? And Ramon looks like such a nice guy -- who would ever want to inform on him?


Portland, Ore. couple Nikolas Harbar and Stephanie Pelzner were arrested on Valentine's Day, 2012 after Harbar allegedly bound his naked girlfriend and threw her in the back of a car -- in the pursuit of a sexy role-play romp. Cops, after a long search, found that Pelzner wasn't a kidnapping victim, but that both were disorderly conduct suspects.

How funny would it have been if Ms. Pelzner had claimed that she was in fact an unwilling kidnap victim? And why did the cops have to conduct a "long search" of the naked Ms. Pelzner in order to find that out? Did the cops argue over who got to conduct that search as well?


Misty Lawson, 30, a self-described "professional baby maker" on her Facebook page, allegedly punched her son in the face and body several times during an in-home, state-mandated anger management course.

Does that picture not look like an advertisement for a porn movie? ("Stripper Nurses from Hell"?) Doesn't Misty look as if she could be a lot of fun -- if you happen to catch her in the right mood? Should her anger management school have its license revoked? Do all professional baby makers resent their own product so much? 

He had a real sweet tooth. Cops say they found 22-year-old Andrew Toothman lying down inside Kentucky Food World IGA market on Feb. 2, completely covered in chocolate and peanut butter. He'd also allegedly written "Sorry" in NyQuil on the floor.

Why would Mr. Toothman not just steal the sweets and enjoy them at home? Given how much he loves sugar, wouldn't you expect him to be a little fatter? How fat will he be in twenty years? Will the judge go easier on him because he has expressed remorse?