BAD TIMING

In this age of Community Oriented Policing, had the officer not heard the dispatcher’s broadcast, he would have been expected to help that young man push the TV set to wherever. Talk about bad timing – or good timing if you’re a cop - as luck would have it, a witness called the cops and the broadcast went out at the same time the thief and the arresting officer were converging at the police station.

MAN IN WASH. PUSHES STOLEN TV PAST POLICE STATION
A cop heard dispatchers relay the call as he was pulling into the police station parking lot

Associated Press
December 28, 2010

SEATTLE — Prosecutors in Washington state say a man was arrested when he was caught wheeling a 50-inch television in a shopping cart right past a police station.

Seattlepi.com reports that a bystander called 911 to report that she saw a man grab the TV out of the back of a delivery truck, load it in the cart and start pushing it away.

An Auburn police officer heard dispatchers relay the call as he was pulling into the police station parking lot — and then he saw the man, dressed entirely in camouflage, walking by with the cart.

Charging documents say that when the officer asked 22-year-old Johnathon D. Barnes what he was doing, he said he bought the TV from and friend — and then he ran.

The officer caught up with Barnes and arrested him.