Dog walkers who let their pets foul on the street in Islington, North London, are being hounded down by Britain’s first crack team of anti-poo wardens.
The 22-strong Dog Squad has been set up to bite back against messy pups and their selfish owners.
Undercover and plain clothes enforcers hit the streets this month – and residents are being asked to snitch on repeat offenders by calling a “shop a dropper” hotline.
Those caught failing to clear up after their beloved pet are now being slapped with an £80 fine.
Islington Councillor Paul Smith said: “Residents are sick of dog mess, and we’re taking strong action against irresponsible owners.
“Dog-fouling is anti-social and there’s no excuse. There will be zero tolerance for those who refuse to do the right thing. Our Dog Squad is targeting hot spots, and there will be fines and court action for anyone caught letting their dog foul our community.”
The Dog Squad wardens work undercover and in uniform, and they are even releasing updates on penalties and patrols via Twitter.
But opposition Liberal Democrat councillor Greg Foxsmith pooh-poohed the scheme.
“Never in the history of street cleaning has so much been paid by so many for poo. In a few weeks’ time, when the money has been squandered and the contract is over, the streets of Islington will once again be paved with dog mess.”
Hundreds of plants stolen from a National Trust reserve in Derbyshire are potentially lethal if taken as a medicine, police have warned.
The plants, Arum maculatum, were stolen from the reserve at Dovedale and police believe people may use them as a treatment for cancer.
Officers warned that the plants have the potential to kill if they are not prepared properly.
Other side effects include sore throat, stomach pains and irregular heartbeat.
Wildlife crime officer PC Emerson Buckingham said: “We are concerned because these plants are poisonous.
“It’s been suggested that they could be used to fight cancer.”
The plants are more commonly known as Lords and Ladies or Cuckoo Pint.
A 40-year-old Florida woman accused of stabbing a man with a seashell and biting his ear has been arrested on a felony charge.
A 41-year-old man told Port St. Lucie police at about 3 a.m. on May 15 that he and Patricia Wehr “went out for drinks because she had to be in court tomorrow for a battery charge … and she was stressed,” according to a recently released police report.
The man said they had a fine time until returning home. Wehr, he said, was intoxicated and started an argument. He said she tried to grab his head, scratching his face. He said Wehr bit him on his ear in the bedroom before following him to the kitchen. He said she stabbed his shoulder about four times with a “sea shell similar to a thin conch shell.”
Meanwhile, the man said he tried to get away and sat on a couch, but Wehr jumped on him. The attack, he said, stopped when he called 911. Wehr, listed as a dental assistant, told police she was going to lose her job. She also wanted the man out of her home.
Wehr of Port St. Lucie, was arrested on an aggravated battery with a deadly weapon charge.
A man tried to smuggle heroin into the United States by concealing it in his rectum.
He was caught by U.S. officials and a drug-sniffer dog named Malone as he walked across the border from Mexico.
35-year-old Paulo Alfredo Macias was being held in the El Paso County Jail without bond after being caught on Monday at the Paso Del Norte pedestrian crossing with nearly 5 ounces of heroin.
“Internal body carriers are not common at land border ports of entry so this is a significant seizure,” El Paso Port Director Hector Mancha of Customs and Border Protection said in a statement on Wednesday.
Macias, a Texan, had been selected for screening at the El Paso crossing, and the dog helped officials determine he was carrying drugs, the statement said.
In an interview with officials, Macias admitted he had heroin hidden in his body, and he removed an oval-shaped pellet containing the drugs, it added.
A man from Nova Scotia has been found guilty of manslaughter after he hit his fiance hard enough to kill her after she bit his penis.
James Leopold, 33, told jurors that it was an accident when he hit his fiance, Laura Lee Robertson, 47, in the neck with his two hands in reaction to her biting his penis following an argument in April 2011.
“It just happened,” he told the RCMP, court was told. “It just happened so fast.”
On April 14, 2011, RCMP in Liverpool. N.S., received a report of a missing woman after Robertson failed to show up for work. Her body was found April 27 in a wooded area.
Leopold told the court he panicked after Robertson’s death and moved her body from their apartment.
Leopold had pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder. The jury was instructed they could find him guilty of the lesser offence of manslaughter.
A forensic pathologist testified Robertson was likely strangled and she suffered “significant force to the neck.”
Leopold will be sentenced at a later date.
Florida police said that they have arrested a man who called 911 on his neighbor after discovering that the neighbor in question was driving a truck in Arkansas at the time.
Volusia County sheriff’s deputies said that 66-year-old Theodore Gasper called 911 at 1:12 p.m. on Monday and accused his neighbor of threatening to harm him with a gun.
Deputies arrived and discovered that Gasper’s neighbor wasn’t even at home. The neighbor, who is a trucker, was in Arkansas at the time.
Deputies spoke to the trucker on his cell phone, verifying he had been away from his home since May 6. When deputies told Gasper the neighbor was not home, he called the neighbor’s girlfriend, Janet Brumley, a liar and demanded that Brumley’s house be searched, the report shows.
Deputies gave Gasper several opportunities to recant his story but instead became verbally aggressive and refused, deputies said.
He later admitted to lying once he was arrested on a charge of giving false information to a law enforcement officer.
“I am sorry for lying,” the arrest report quotes him as saying. “I’ll take my medicine for lying.”
The call was likely related to an ongoing dispute over a dirt road they share as a driveway.
Here is a hint: don’t call the cops to get back at your boyfriend if you have a kinky, dark secret to hide of your own.
It all started as a call to police claiming domestic abuse. But it ended in charges that a man and his girlfriend had sexually abused a dog.
Dana Kintz, 28, called police March 12 to the couple’s home in the 4000 block of Russell Boulevard, alleging that Shawn Ingram, 37, had punched and slapped her.
Police checked his cellphone and found child pornography on cellphone, as well as images of Kintz engaged in sex acts with a dog.
Both were charged with unlawful sex with an animal, a misdemeanor. Ingram also was charged with felony possession of child pornography.
Officials said there was sufficient evidence to charge Kintz as a willing participant, although she claimed Ingram had coerced her behavior, and made her wear a dog collar and mask.
Ingram denied it all to police, but officials said they found he had posted pictures of the activities to animal fetish websites.
Ingram has served time in prison previously on a child porn conviction. He is listed on Illinois’ sex offender database as living out of state but not shown on Missouri’s list.
Kintz told a reporter she believes she was charged only because she refused to cooperate with authorities on the child porn issue; she said someone else was responsible for the pictures on Ingram’s phone.
She also said the dog at issue has since run away.
Ingram lawyer’s Douglas Forsyth, said, “I don’t have any comment about anything.”
Florida police have said that they have arrested a man accused of throwing a Bible at the back of his roommate’s head.
The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office said that Steven Robert Moniz, 45, was arrested around 12:30 a.m. Saturday in Port Richey after his roommate, Kimberly Covas Shisgal, flagged down a passing deputy and said she had been struck in the back of the head with an unidentified object while taking out the garbage.
Moniz told deputies he threw a Bible at Shisgal because she was shouting at him and had a knife in her hand.
Deputies said they found a Bible with a bent cover on the kitchen table but found no evidence of a knife.
Moniz was charged with simple battery and taken to the Land O’Lakes jail in lieu of $150 bail.
An man who sewed his teenage son’s butt won’t be going to jail.
52-year-old Randy Swopes has accepted a plea deal instead.
Swopes from Illinois will be put on 24-months probation and have to do 250 hours of public service.
The incident took place in 2008 and his son was 14 years old at the time.
So why did he take a needle and thread to the teen?
Swopes’ son suffers from Crohn’s Disease. It’s an autoimmune disorder that causes one’s own immune system to destroy healthy tissue.
Those afflicted can suffer from fever and gastrointestinal tract problems. It can also result in a fistula, which is an abnormal connection between an organ and another structure.
The fistula needed medical attention during the time of the offense, the report said.
Swopes chose to sew it shut himself rather than take the son to the hospital which resulted in an infection that put the teenager in the hospital for almost a month.
Swopes was charged with aggravated battery. Typically, a charge for regular battery can be deemed “aggravated” when great bodily harm occurs or some sort of weapon is used.
In Swopes’ case, it was likely due to the needle he used to sew up his son.
Illinois will also aggravate normal battery offenses based on the perpetrator and victim’s status. For instance, attacks against physically handicapped people can be charged as aggravated battery.
The state charges the offense as a felony.
Had Randy Swopes not taken the plea deal, he could’ve been sentenced to prison for two to five years.
He entered an Alford plea to aggravated battery.
In an Alford plea, a defendant does not admit guilt but acknowledges that prosecutors have enough evidence to possibly win a conviction.
An pastor is facing a voyeurism charge after allegedly placing hidden cameras disguised as air fresheners in the women’s bathroom of the Indiana church he has headed for the last decade.
55-year-old Robert Lyzenga was arrested last week by the Tippecanoe County Police Department on the felony count. He was freed from custody after posting $5000 bond.
The voyeurism investigation started last month when police were dispatched to the Sunrise Christian Reform Church, where a woman reported that an air freshener had fallen off the door inside a stall.
“The back of the air freshener had come off, and she saw there was a camera inside,” cops reported in an affidavit filed in support of a court application to search Lyzenga’s home and church office.
After discovering the hidden camera, the woman checked a second stall and found another air freshener containing a hidden camera.
A third stall “also had an air freshener inside the door, but no camera was in that one.”
An examination of the devices revealed that “the three air fresheners were not really air fresheners. They are plastic rectangular boxes, and two of them had been modified to hold the cameras which were discovered inside,” Detective Robert Goldsmith reported. All three boxes “had stickers on them with ‘Glade Air-o-matic’ on the stickers,” which appeared to be homemade.
A review of memory cards removed from the purported air fresheners showed that they contained footage of two adult women and a female juvenile “using the restroom.”
A church worker told cops the air fresheners first appeared in the stalls in February, raising the possibility that many other women were videotaped (and the footage was downloaded from the hidden cameras).
The examination of one memory card showed a “brief video recording in an office area” at the point where the hidden camera was picked up, turned on, and apparently placed inside the plastic box. In an effort to match up the video with a specific area, cops last Wednesday returned to the church, where they told Lyzenga that they wanted to take a look around the building.
Lyzenga showed them around to several offices, but officers made no matches. That is when Goldsmith “asked about Lyzenga’s office,” according to the affidavit.
Goldsmith “noticed Lyzenga was very nervous” as he accompanied the investigator into the space.
The pastor’s office, Goldsmith reported, appeared identical to the office seen on one of the videos (down to a Superman mouse pad on the desk).
Lyzenga was subsequently arrested in connection with the surreptitious bathroom filming.
Married for 30 years, the father of three was fired from his pastor’s post immediately following his May 10 arrest.
