On 4/25/08 Palestine Police assisted by Crawford County Sheriff’s Dept. arrested 32 year old Andrew J. Stephens for criminal damage to property over $300.00, to the Palestine Food Bank. Stephens remains in Crawford County Jail in lieu of $1,000.00 cash bond.

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Arrest in Thanksgiving Burglaries Case
Posted: March 31, 2008
      By: Jim Clark

The arrest of 29 year old Matthew Jones from Gibson City, Illinois brings to close a lengthy investigation of six burglaries in Palestine’s business district last Thanksgiving night. Jones has been the only suspect for quite some time. Palestine Police acknowledge the efforts and assistance from the Crawford County Sheriff’s Dept., the Illinois State Police Crime Lab, and the Gibson City Police. As a result a long awaited successful outcome has been completed. Palestine Police wants to acknowledge these crimes might never have been solved if it had not been for the Sheriff Department’s K-9 unit that played a key role in the apprehension and arrest of Jones. Jones is presently being held in the Crawford County Jail in lieu of $3500.00 cash bond. Jones is charged with four counts of Burglary (Class 2 Felonies) and one count of Residential Burglary. (Class 1 Felony)

I want to thank all the victims of these crimes for their patience. I know it took a long time to bring this to fruition, but dotting all the 'I's and crossing the 'T's are so important in today’s investigations.

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Property Damage
Posted: March 3, 2008
      By: Jim Clark

In the past ten days there has been several incidents of criminal damage to property, both in Palestine and the immediate surrounding area. Police would like for anyone with knowledge of someone owning or possessing a paint pellet gun that would likely use it for vandalism, please contact Palestine Police or Crimestoppers.

On Friday the 29th of February a person or persons with relatively small shoe prints broke all the windows out of the cab on a backhoe owned by the Indiana Railroad. It was parked about 150 yards east of the yard office behind a pile of rocks. Rocks were inside the cab and on the ground in the immediate area where the backhoe was parked. Youths have been seen playing in that area by railroad personnel. Any help with this crime would be greatly appreciated.

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Check Scam Alert
Posted: February 3, 2008
      By: Jim Clark

BEWARE

Click on this image for a larger view of an actual 'check' used to steal from a local resident recently.

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Email Scam Warning
Posted: February 1, 2008
      By: Jim Clark

I received an Email this morning from a person who claimed to be Mr. Kennedy Taylor wanting me to be his business partner as soon as I cooperated with his instructions. Mr. Taylor just happened to be telling me his tale of woe and how he desperately needed my help from the country of Nigeria. Anytime you get contacted by anyone from Nigeria, it is 100% false and it will be to your detriment to answer these idiots. Nigeria is famous for being the country most associated with scams.

Electronic Crimes
Posted: January 30, 2008
      By: Jim Clark

For those of you who wonder why we are unable to take on electronic crimes like wire or Internet fraud, here are the problems. It is very seldom the victim and criminal are in close proximity of each other. The crime must be prosecuted where the victim was wronged. If police find the perpetrator in a faraway location, the criminal must still be transported to the court of venue for prosecution. If the criminal does not want to be extradited from another state or country, then someone has to pay an attorney to forward extradition proceedings. If that hurdle is cleared, transportation must be arranged and paid for by someone. That someone, without help from federal authorities, will be the jurisdiction in which the crime was committed.

Say for instance a computer crime was committed against a person in our town from a criminal in Ohio. Ohio police would probably pick this person up for us on a warrant, but only if we agreed to extradite him to Crawford County. Now the alleged criminal does not want to be brought to Illinois to face his accusers, so he refuses extradition to our location. Now someone has to plead our case in Ohio to bring the criminal to Illinois. Someone has to pay for that proceeding and it probably won’t be the Ohio taxpayers. The bill for that service will be sent to, you guessed it, Palestine. Assume we won extradition, now someone from, you guessed it, Palestine, must send an officer to Ohio to pick up the bad guy and bring him or her to our court. Everyone is entitled to have bail posted, so we get the bad guy here, he or she has a bail hearing and then if they come up with the bail, do you think they are going to rent a local motel until their trial? No, they’re probably going back to Ohio, then the whole thing starts all over again. Do you think this getting expensive? Try all this if the criminal is from England or Japan. I can see tens of thousands of dollars being spent for this type of crime to recover maybe $300.00. It is not going to happen, so the next time you get a check in the mail offering you half the money if you will just cash it, tear up the check and throw it away. Be extremely careful when you are buying online that you are dealing with a reputable company and the method of payment is protected. Never give your personal information over the phone. Don’t throw away papers with your name and address. Shred them. My wife and I even pay $16.00 a month to a company called LifeLock to protect our identity. Their guarantee is for a million dollars if your identity is stolen. How will you afford that, you ask? If your identity is stolen the cost for protection will pale in comparison.

The most common identity thefts are started by the credit card offers you get in the mail daily. Crimes are more sophisticated these days, so our response to these dangers needs also to change. Protect your identity, keep your doors locked and the keys taken out of your vehicles. Ladies, don’t leave your purses lying in your unattended vehicle or in the shopping cart while you just step over to the next aisle in the store to check something. Make every salesperson that comes to your door show you a permit to solicit. Use your phone for your business, not someone else’s

Crime News
Posted: January 29, 2008
      By: Police Chief Jim Clark

The Night of Thanksgiving, November 22nd, 2007 was marred by at least six buildings being forcibly entered, some ransacked and items stolen, others just entered and left with only damage to the door.

A residence on South Main and Brock’s Food Store were hardest hit. Palestine Police, Crawford County Sheriff’s Department and the Illinois State Police Crime Lab all joined together to solve these crimes. Currently police are waiting for the Illinois Crime Lab analysis to be completed, making an arrest eminent in these cases. The person to be arrested was from out of town and has since moved back to the perpetrator’s original location. He is associated with a lengthy criminal history.

A couple of weeks after that in mid December, two more businesses had an attempted break in, but neither was successful. The suspect in both of these was successful in entering the rear door of a local residence and stealing several items . Thirty year old, Ronald L. Westbrook was sentenced to four years in the Illinois Department of Corrections on January 18, 2008. Westbrook had been living at a residence in Palestine for a couple of months prior to these break-ins. Palestine Police were able to get a search warrant for where Westbrook was residing and recovered nearly one hundred percent of the stolen merchandise.

At the same time this was going on, Palestine Police were sent to a residence on Outer East Grand Prairie Street where a male subject about 30 years old was hawking a cleaning product in town without a permit. An elderly gentleman had his wallet stolen when he turned his back on the guy after laying his wallet beside him. A significant amount of cash and a couple credit cards, along with his personal identification papers and drivers license were contained in that wallet. Palestine Police caught up with the alleged perpetrator in Olney the following day. A search was made of the vehicle, his belongings and after questioning a case could not be made. No items from the wallet could be recovered and naturally he denied taking the wallet. Ironically, he was arrested for felony theft at the casino in Evansville that very evening.

On November 30, 2007, a call was made to an elderly woman about her grandson needing $3,000.00 cash so he could be released by the Canadian Fish and Wildlife after he claimed he was caught with some illegal fish. As you know if you read the Daily News it was a very elaborate scheme and unfortunately was successful. Palestine Police obtained a search warrant from the MoneyGram International company for the transaction and that resulted in police finding out where the money went to and an address where the person lived in Canada. Then we were ready to go forward, we thought, with the FBI. Sadly we were wrong. It did not rise to the level of criterion to be accepted by the FBI for further investigation.

Also in mid December another fraud was perpetrated on Ebay to a local resident who attempted to buy a laptop computer from a computer company in Kent, Washington. Palestine Police were able to obtain the name and address of the perpetrator, who was able to bilk $450.00 from one of our residents. Fortunately the sale was paid through PayPal and he got back his money. This same scam was thought to have been repeated nearly forty times on other victims in the U.S. This brought the total of this crime to in the neighborhood of $18,000.00. Still it was not enough for the Feds to get involved. The Illinois Attorney General’s Office will not get involved unless the crime is perpetrated wholly in Illinois. In other words the victim and the criminal must both be within the confines of the State of Illinois. The bottom line is, we must be vigilante as citizens and aware there are people out there trying every hour to swindle somebody out of their money. There was never a time more than now that the cliché “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” is the most sage advice one can get.

On the night of December 28, 2007, six unlocked vehicles were entered and things taken from petty change to several car and house keys being removed. Now some criminal not only has the keys to some of those vehicles, but the houses where they were parked as well.

Please people, remove your keys from your vehicles and lock them. Lock your houses also when you leave. The days when it was thought safe to leave your vehicles and houses unlocked are over, if it ever was safe. Crimes of opportunity are still number one. Locks keep a lot of criminals at bay. Since no other crimes regarding vehicles happened on a regular basis before or since, one must assume it was done perhaps by a Holiday visitor, probably from a location where everyone kept things locked up. What a pleasant surprise we must have been for that criminal. At any rate, no leads were ever obtained on these crimes, but as always keep vigilant and report anonymously to Crime Stoppers or call local police with information you might have.

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