In Florida, the sun is far brighter than the criminals

People tell us how much they love to read about strange laws, stupid criminals and odd events. That’s why we have the Uncommon Law feature above this one.

Having worked for newspapers there, I can imagine Florida having its own space for such stories. Someone beat us to that idea, though. Here’s how The St. Petersburg Times describes one of its blogs:

Exploding pythons. Armless, one-legged drivers. The thief who stashed a puppy in his pants. Welcome to Bizarre Florida, where weird is the norm.
Here’s a sample of recent items that you can find on the blog, preceded by a goodie by the Associated Press that I picked up before the St. Pete staff did:

A Polk County deputy has turned in his badge after his wife and mother-in-law took his patrol car out for a joyride.

Officials said 44-year-old Charles Buckner resigned Monday after serving 21 years with the sheriff’s office.

The arrest report says Gail Buckner and Sharon Cooper face charges of vehicle theft, theft of a firearm and impersonating a law-enforcement officer.

***

If there is an open warrant for your arrest, asking a cop for a ride may not be the smartest thing you can do.

When a Stuart officer agreed to take a woman to a pay phone, he decided to run her ID before she got in the patrol car, according to TCPalm.

He also found a crack pipe in her possession before he took her to the county jail.

***

After leading Marion County deputies on a chase, John W. Woodward, 23, told them it was “the most fun” he’d had in two years, an arrest report cited by ocala.com says.

A deputy tried to pull him over as he was leaving his mother’s house, and he crashed through a baseball field fence before another deputy stopped Woodward’s car, authorities say.

Woodward told deputies he had drunk six beers before he got in the car, sped away from the deputies, the report states. His blood-alcohol level was 0.134 percent (the legal limit is 0.08).

***

[Some of these are tragic, not funny]

On Saturday, an Orlando cop saw a man fall from his scooter and, as police often do, approached to see if the man was hurt and offer any assistance, OrlandoSentinel.com reports.

Instead, the man, later identified as Jhmason Louis Ridore, jumped back on his scooter and drove away at high speed, stopped and jumped into a lake, where he drowned.

Ridore had been carrying cocaine and marijuana in his clothes, reports show.

***

A Bay County deputy was sent to a beach because of complaints of a woman going topless there, newsherald.com of Panama City reports.

As he questioned a heavily intoxicated, but appropriately clothed, woman who was a prime suspect, she removed her shirt to wring it out.

At that point, he arrested her for exposing her breasts on a public beach.

***

A thief calls in an order for money, and sometimes it is delivered. Whoever has been calling Clay County fast-food restaurants, pretending to be a manager or supervisor, has sometimes succeeded in having employees send him cash.

Ones who did deliver money brought it to locations the caller directed them to in Jacksonville, often on Dunn Avenue. One employee put the cash, as instructed, into a specific mailbox, according to gainesville.com.

***

It appears that the Port Orange Police Department has decided a cop whose duties included training his colleagues on how to use various firearms wasn’t really up to that particular job.

Fourteen-year veteran Gerald Zito, 58, will go back on the street as a patrolman, the department told news-journalonline.com.

His transgression? He shot himself in the stomach with a gun while attempting to put it in a drawer.