The guy who (we’re told) admitted to breaking into Cagle’s was arrested for burglary, because he stole a Jeep top. Investigating that theft revealed he had broken into a car dealership in February and took stuff. And then, supposedly, that burglary led them to connect him to stealing the Nissan XTerra weeks ago. But the arrest for the XTerra theft came well before the arrest for the Jeep top theft, and both crimes scream out a connection to the Cagle thefts but there’s no clear link? Your guess with this is as good as ours, but it all continues to smell very very funny.

So he broke into B&B Auto in February and stole scrap metal, batteries, and oil. He didn’t sell those things, rather chose to stack them up in a house in Linwood, and when they were found the Sheriff’s Office immediately recognized them as being.. from B&B. Because batteries and scrap metal and oil are recognizable that way.

Meanwhile the biggest local crime of the last six months, with at least four, if not seven or eight, people involved, has no clues, no leads, no ties, no suspects… They can arrest one guy for taking a Jeep top but not a half-dozen guys for taking a whole Jeep.

Not only does arsonist Marvin Chase get a light sentence, the 18 months he spends in custody will be spent at a facility not even classified as a prison.

In this piece Stacey Meeks says state law requires them to track down property owners of the burned homes before an arsonist can be charged.. So remember kids: if you burn down a house where nobody lives, not only will nobody care, they can’t even charge you with a crime if the police bother to investigate it.

The 4 Cherokee Regional Library branches are cutting 3 employees, benefits for 3 more, reducing hours for 9, and dropping operating hours to 30 per week. Looks like Monday & Wednesday closures. Still more details to work out.

“‘County [Schools] has never paid its fair share,’ library trustee Donna Street said, comparing it unfavorably to the Dade County School District, which gives $38,000 annually but only has about a third the number of students.”

But they aren’t required to pay ANY share – the article notes that Catoosa schools pay nothing to the libraries there because the county covers everything. She’s not saying Bebe or Dade Co are unfair for only paying half the budget..

Like it or not, eventually this will turn into a separate property tax bill designated to support the library system.

More Bebe! Campaign Material Vandalism:

Again, we don’t condone vandalism.. But they should have known this would happen to a banner hanging at street level in town.

This one is hanging on the fence around old Barwick Mills on West Main Street.

Style points for matching the hair color, more or less, but lose points for the mustache being upside down.

OmniSource Staffing has 320 jobs to fill fast, looking for 80 people to start next week at $9. No idea what you’d be doing but if you need work, this is worth pursuing.

Thanks Bebe!

(No, she has nothing to do with this.)

Former LaFayette utility worker and firefighter Marvin Chase, who was arrested in December ’10 and accused of lighting thirty arson fires, pled guilty this week to setting only eight and gets 18 months in jail plus 20 years probation. That’s 2.25 months for every house. Obviously they had a really STRONG case against him to accept this kind of a deal.

LaFayette has had a fire problem forever, but in the last ten years fires have gotten a lot worse. As long as the fires stayed “over there” nobody cared, but once arsons moved to the “good side of town” it became a concern.

In May 2010 an arson fire was set on First Street near a councilman’s home, and another was set on Indiana Street within smell of North Main. At that point LPD declared an “epidemic” and offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arsonist’s arrest.

We did about half an hour of investigation and found a whole bunch of people who all named the same suspect, a teen crackhead who lived in Linwood and had been bragging about setting the fires. We didn’t name him in the article but hinted to his name and linked to something else naming him.

During the summer of ’10 LPD started actually investigating the arsons, but Chief Freeman refused to support the officers involved. P.D. Vaughn was head of the case and he resigned in disgust because of getting no support.. Along the way Robbie Tate also had some responsibility for the investigation and he requested a transfer to road patrol because of how Freeman was treating him and the case.

In December 2010 LPD picked up the same kid we named as a suspect for stealing metal to fuel his drug habit. He pointed fingers to Marvin Chase, who was a firefighter for the city and had worked for the gas department until recently. The juvenile rolled on Chase to help get himself out of trouble, and they had to call officer Vaughn to ask him where the case file was since nobody had looked at it in months. Stacey Meeks, who inherited the case, then took credit for tracking down the arsonist and solving the case. Said Marvin confessed to twenty and was responsible for thirty.

The LU called Meeks out for his minor role in the case, and named the juvenile suspect again because we were told by members of his own family he had rolled on Chase to get out of his own role in the fires.

Meeks wrote a chapter-length response on our blog post chewing us out and denying everything we said, dared us on Facebook to call him on the phone… It’s all still there, phone number and all, mixed with about sixty comments on that article.

Fast forward to this week..

The fires they nailed him for don’t all fit the pattern. The one that had an eyewitness was set in the day off Rhyne Rd. One was on West Main.. Two were set at the same time on opposite sides of town. There are way more fires unsolved than solved, and one has been set since his arrest that they say is a “domestic issue” for some reason.

The end results of this are very unsatisfying. Justice done very lightly, and only for a portion of the crimes. Others who were involved, or who set other fires, face no punishment.

Did Marvin Chase set fires? Yes. Did he set them alone? No. Did anyone else set them on their own? Yes. Will anything else ever come from this? Absolutely not.

Someone vandalized the Bebe! billboard south of town on 27 heading to Trion. Please note that we don’t condone vandalism, violence, or other law-breaking even in protest.

Someone climbed up there, blacked her teeth, and wrote a profanity on the jacket. The billboard company or someone from her campaign, maybe, cut the damaged sections out of the board before we got our photo.

This is a crime, and dangerous.. Will cost a lot of money to fix. We understand frustration, but don’t resort to this.

The vandalism may not be related to politics, it could just be random.. We DO have wild herds of youth who wander the county with nothing to do except break things. Even if it’s done out of frustration with Heiskell, there’s no connection to the Shaw campaign. But it’s probably just a matter of time before someone tries to blame it on Shaw or the LU.

WQCH Radio, 06/02/12:

“THE CITY OF LAFAYETTE’S ‘GARBAGE PICKUP EXPERIMENT’ IS OVER, AND NEXT WEEK, IT’S BACK TO THE OLD TWICE-A-WEEK PICKUP SCHEDULE. THAT INCLUDES GARBAGE PICKUP ON EITHER MONDAYS AND THURSDAYS OR TUESDAYS AND FRIDAYS, DEPENDING ON YOUR LOCATION.

“FOR THE MONTH OF MAY, THE CITY COUNCIL ORDERED THE SANITATION DEPARTMENT TO TRY THE ‘ONCE PER WEEK’ PICKUPS ON TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS. THEY WERE INSTRUCTED TO ‘KEEP TABS’ ON EXPENSES DURING THE MONTH, TO SEE IF THE REDUCTION IN PICKUPS SAVED THE DEPARTMENT SIGNIFICANT MONEY.

“THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO REPORT THOSE FINDINGS TO THE CITY COUNCIL IN JUNE, AND FUTURE PICKUP SCHEDULES WILL THEN BE DETERMINED BY THE CITY’S ELECTED GOVERNING BODY.”

Considering how terrible the “experiment” went (mostly due to poor communication and limited distribution of larger trash cans), the city will probably decide to keep twice a week pickup permanently and raise garbage pickup rates by $6 to $10 a month.

Next month we should do another experiment: shut down the golf course or airport two days a week and see how much money that saves. If the savings are substantial, make the change permanent and don’t charge the 90% of residents who don’t benefit from those toys extra fees to get their garbage hauled off.

You should be getting one of these from the Queen in your mailbox soon. We’ve never seen Bebe this desperate before:

The stories her PR firm ginned up with CNN and Channel 3 are, as noted before, the core of her campaign – and the statements attributed to them aren’t even quotes from their reports. This mailer shares nothing positive she’s done, and nothing about the 224 jobs lost last month. (The company Shaw spoke against promised maybe 20, and all he said was the county shouldn’t be involved in private business.)

But that’s OK. The only people in Walker County who believe lies at this level were already going to vote for Heiskell, and some who weren’t sure who to vote for have been convinced by this stunt to vote AGAINST her.

Dr. Shaw doesn’t have the resources or the moral failings to do an advertisement like this. Heisekell has $10,000 of billboards, is lining up broadcast advertising, has the resources of the county at her disposal, and still has to resort to copyright infringement and outright blatant lying to try and get ahead.

Since the Shaw campaign won’t respond in a similar manner, here’s a volunteer attempt:

And unlike the Heiskell mailer, this one is actually true.

This isn’t affiliated with the Shaw campaign, and won’t be mailed – but everyone is strongly encouraged to share this with their voting friends. Expect to see more come out before the election is done.

LHS graduation is tonight at 8 PM. Congratulations to all who reached the goal; we hope you are becoming, and become, adults whose lives honor both your family and your God. Don’t waste the blank slate of potential and opportunity that lies before you.

There are several other things going on today and through the weekend, including a Cruise In car show, a youth rodeo, the last day of school, and a kick-off party for the library’s summer reading program. There are also quite a few political meetings and candidate events coming up throughout June.

For a full schedule of upcoming activities and events, check out the new & improved LU Calendar.

Update on the vehicle thefts from Cagle’s Used Cars:

The Sheriff’s Office has made four arrests, two 18-year-olds and two juveniles, for stealing cars – but they’ve only been charged with stealing one Nissan XTerra before the Cagle robberies. Steve Wilson says there’s no “direct link” between the XTerra theft and the Cagle’s car thefts a week later, even though the cases have many similarities, and at least one of the suspects (we’re told) has admitted to both crimes.

No links. Except all the vehicles stolen were destroyed in the same way. Papers and personal items taken from the XTerra were found at the Pigeon Mountain cliff where four of the Cagle vehicles were destroyed later. The property where the XTerra was found, east of town, is owned by the same family that owns the property on the southwest side of town where Cagle’s destroyed cars were located. Also, the boys accused of stealing the XTerra were arrested by the officer investigating the Cagle thefts.

At the very least Wilson should have said “we haven’t FOUND a clear link” but he cannot rule out a connection unless there’s security video showing someone who ISN’T these kids stealing the cars, or fingerprints of six OTHER thieves in the Cagle’s vehicles.

But Wilson is completely confident that the four boys will never be attached to the Cagle thefts. If he wasn’t, he would have told the media something else. Why is he so confident in the outcome of the investigation when the mud on the cars is barely dry? Did the Sheriff’s Office make a deal with these four, charging them with one crime instead of seven, in exchange for information? Are they being protected for some reason?

It’s possible investigators just haven’t gotten enough information to tie the four arrested youth to the Cagle thefts, but if there was any possibility they might be charged for those in the future, Wilson would have been more careful in his choice of words to the paper.

Meanwhile, the Sheriff’s Office is spending more time trying to figure out how LU knows some of the case details than it’s spending to track down the thieves.

WQCH Radio, 05/31/2012:

“ANOTHER JOY-RIDING CRIME TO REPORT. THIS TIME IT’S IN THE CITY OF LAFAYETTE, AND THE VEHICLE TAKEN WAS A BUSH-HOG EQUIPPED TRACTOR. CITY MANAGER FRANK ETHERIDGE SAID LAST THURSDAY, THE PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT PARKED A TRACTOR NEAR THE LAFAYETTE AIRPORT AFTER A DAY OF MOWING. UNFORTUNATELY, ETHRIDGE [sic] SAID THE EMPLOYEE LEFT THE KEYS IN THE TRACTOR. AN UNKNOWN SUBJECT GOT IN AND TOOK THE TRACTOR FOR A SPIN. IN THE PROCESS A NEARBY PRIVATELY-OWNED AIRPLANE HANGAR WAS DAMAGED AS THE TRACTOR BRUSHED AGAINST THE SIDE OF THE METAL BUILDING. ETHERIDGE SAID THE CITY’S INSURANCE COMPANY WILL GET THAT BILL, SINCE THE TRACTOR WAS CITY-OWNED. THE TRACTOR WAS RECOVERED AND WAS NOT BADLY DAMAGED. NO ARRESTS HAVE BEEN REPORTED IN THE CASE.”

Another vehicle taken for a joy ride, with damage done. Based on the kind of equipment and where it was left, this doesn’t seem connected to the other vehicle thefts that happened on the same night – except maybe a shared attitude. So we can safely say there’s “no direct link” between the rash of car thefts and this tractor-jacking. Unless there actually is.