Nick Snyder, the guy we told you confessed to the Cagle car thefts and vandalism, has after 17 days finally been charged with the crime. Jessie Clayton and two unnamed juveniles were also picked up. Clayton confessed and named Snyder, which apparently made it hard for the Sheriff to keep insisting nothing links Nick to the thefts.

Wilson is bad to pontificate and predict the outcome of investigations that haven’t been conducted yet. A benefit, apparently, of being the final word in local law enforcement with the DA in your pocket. It works, except for when somebody else confesses too and world + dog find out because the suspects all have big mouths.

Other reports say Snyder and Collins ripped off ANOTHER dealership in Rossville.. And remember last week they picked him up for having that scrap metal and batteries from another dealership in LaFayette, although how they knew it came from there and not Cagle’s is beyond us.

Two Jeeps in Rossville, a Jeep top in LaFayette, and a Wrangler and a Cherokee or Liberty from Cagle’s. Somebody really likes Jeeps.

We knew Nick Snyder was involved within 72 hours of the crime, it wasn’t difficult. Feels like they did everything possible to NOT solve this thing and the people involved were so utterly stupid about it that they couldn’t keep from arresting them. But Snyder isn’t in custody; he apparently took off after being bonded out for his other arrests.

The leading theory was seven people stole six cars in one trip or four stole three cars in two trips.. Seven seems the most likely of those possibilities. We’ve also heard the stories about this coming from a big drinking party, and the property on Pigeon where all the vehicles were taken (including the XTerra before it ended up off Round Pond) is used for G—-t underage booze parties on a regular basis. That might be why this open and shut case with a confession took “hundreds” of investigative hours and two weeks to halfway solve.

“Sheriff Wilson praised the diligent work of detective sergeants Mike Hinch, J.B. Mullis and Jeff Herpst for solving the auto theft cases.”

Thanks for letting the main guy who confessed run off, and then arresting three others after they admitted it and surrendered. Good work while you were eating lunch or something.

Last night the City Council voted to split police and fire chief, also voted to resume once-weekly trash pickup again. SunRae Water didn’t show up for the meeting but “sent their regrets” and requested a time to speak during July’s meeting.

The garbage change is “effective immediately” which means no more Friday or Monday pickup, again, after having restored two-day service last week.

There will be no letters or billing notices, you’re expected to rely on “local media” for this info – so be sure to tell your neighbors what’s going on. Most of the city doesn’t follow LaFayette-based media like LU or WQCH.

New bigger cans are promised for those who need them, call the city and ask for one. If they don’t provide it, contact your councilor. A second can is $12 a month for those who need more capacity.

No decisions made about who to put in the fire or police chief positions now that they’re split. That will be addressed again later.

According to family members, 15-year-old LHS student Austin Whitten was injured in a swimming accident Saturday afternoon and is now (at least temporarily) paralyzed from the chest down. They have requested prayer from the community regarding his recovery and future prospects.

A Facebook support group for the Whitten family, started late Saturday evening, has collected more than 850 followers in less than 24 hours.

There was a small earthquake early Friday morning centered between Naomi and Ringgold.

WQCH Radio, 06/08/11:

“THE LAFAYETTE CITY COUNCIL IS EXPECTED TO DECIDE ON WHETHER TO ‘SPLIT’ THE POSITION OF PUBLIC SAFETY DIRECTOR AT THEIR MEETING ON MONDAY NIGHT. WORD FROM A HIGH SOURCE IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT IS: THE DECISION IS ‘AS GOOD AS MADE’ AND THE COUNCIL WILL VOTE FOR A SEPARATE POLICE CHIEF AND FIRE CHIEF.

“UNDER THE CURRENT SYSTEM, THE POLICE AND FIRE DEPARTMENTS ARE LUMPED-TOGETHER UNDER THE ‘DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC SAFETY’ POSITION. SINCE THE TERMINATION OF PUBLIC SAFETY DIRECTOR TOMMY FREEMAN, HIS ‘SECOND IN COMMAND’ BENJIE CLIFT HAS BEEN ACTING AS INTERIM DIRECTOR.

“CITY MANAGER FRANK ETHERIDGE SAID FRIDAY MORNING THAT HE COULD SAY NO MORE ABOUT THOSE BEING CONSIDERED FOR THE POSITIONS ‘UNTIL AND IF’ THE COUNCIL ACTUALLY VOTES TO SPLIT THE DEPARTMENTS AT THE MEETING MONDAY.”

It’s a move we need to make. Next step: finding men (or women maybe) to fill those roles.

The council meeting will be tonight at 7:30. Also on the agenda: a presentation from SunRae Water, discussions of the May garbage pickup “experiment,” and other regular business.

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.