BABY BORN IN CAR AT 100 MPH

ASHLAND, Wis. (AP) - Jereme Tauer Jr. was born at almost 100 mph as his parents hurtled down U.S. Highway 2 in northernmost Wisconsin in a Dodge Neon. His parents, Jereme and Lisa Tauer of Hurley, managed the birth without a doctor, pain medication or even stopping the car.

"We were just shocked," said the baby's grandmother, Billi Tauer of Hurley. "When (her son) called, he was so excited, and we thought it was just over the birth. He's like, 'Ma, ma, ma, we have a boy! We have a boy, we have a boy - and, and, and, you're not going to believe - he was born in this car!"

Lisa Tauer's contractions started about 3 a.m. Tuesday. Her husband took their 16-month-old daughter to his parents' home and then returned to take her to the hospital.

"By the time he came back, I was standing on the street and waiting for him to get in my car," she said. "By then, my contractions were 10 minutes apart. So I'm like, 'OK, we have time.'"

But as Lisa, a 28-year-old manager at Fashion Bug, and Jereme, a 29-year-old carpenter and mason, sped toward the hospital, her contractions became more frequent and her water broke.

"I felt like I needed to push, and he was telling me, 'Don't push, just breathe,'" she said. "I was like, 'I can't just breathe. The breathing's not working anymore!'" She pushed "a little bit" and felt better. Then Jereme turned on the car's interior light, and the surprised couple saw the baby's head.

"I was like, 'I better push it all the way out,'" Lisa Tauer said. "So he was holding onto the head, while I was trying to push."

She reclined her seat as much as possible.

"I was like really high up, so the baby landed right on the seat," Lisa Tauer said. Her husband was driving at 90 mph to 100 mph and trying to keep an eye on the road.

"I just kind of cradled him as he came out, and watched him, watched the road. Watched him, watched the road," Jereme Tauer Sr. said. "There wasn't even time to stop, to hit the brakes and stop."

With the six-pound, 13-ounce boy in the car, the couple spotted a squad car. Jereme Tauer flashed his lights, pulled over and explained the situation. The officer escorted them to Memorial Medical Center in Ashland, about 220 miles northeast of Minneapolis.

Jereme Tauer said one good thing about the experience is that he won't forget the moment his son was born.

"I had a good look at the time, because it's right by the dashboard," he said. "It was 4:35."

MAN IN PRISON WITH 32 CHARGES RUNS FOR OFFICE

Mar 23, 4:52 PM (ET)
By BISWAJEET BANERJEE

LUCKNOW, India (AP) - Babloo Srivastava has spent the last 10 years in a northern Indian prison facing 32 charges, including murder and kidnapping. But that won't stop him from running in state elections. Srivastava will run his campaign from prison as Uttar Pradesh, a northern Indian state infamous for crime and political violence, heads to the polls next month.

"Necessary permission has been taken from the election commission," Srivastava's lawyer Ram Ugrah Shukla said in the state capital Lucknow on Friday.

Indian law only bars a person from running for office once they are convicted of a crime by a court, which often happens years, even decades, after an arrest.

Srivastava was charged with murder and running a kidnapping and extortion racket before his arrest in Singapore in 1997. He has never been convicted of any wrongdoing.

“PIMP OF THE YEAR” SENTENCED TO 23 YEARS

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - A man who touted himself as "Pimp of the Year" was sentenced Friday to more than 23 years in federal prison. Matthew "Knowledge" Thompkins pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to transport minors to engage in prostitution and conspiracy to engage in money laundering.

Authorities said that the Bronx, N.Y., man had prostitutes working for him in New York; Atlantic City; Las Vegas; Philadelphia; Youngstown, Ohio, and other cities. When he was arrested in December 2005, authorities found two huge trophies in his home proclaiming him "Pimp of the Year."

In a letter to U.S. District Judge Freda Wolfson asking for leniency, Thompkins, 37, wrote that at times he and the prostitutes who worked for him - some of them as young as 14 - "bonded as a family."

Wolfson was unmoved. She gave him nearly the maximum sentence.

"You wouldn't send your sister or your daughter out to do that," she said. "That's no family."

One former prostitute, Melissa Smith, spoke at the sentencing, saying she was practically a slave.

"If he gets out, I know he'll do it again," she said. "That's all he ever talks about - pimping and ho-ing."

A Thompkins associate, Demetrius Lemus, 37, of Bronx, N.Y., also was sentenced Friday to eight years in prison.

Five women have also pleaded guilty in the case and are awaiting sentencing.

CROOK ASKS FOR DISCOUNT FOR MAKING HEADLINES

MESA, Ariz. (AP) - One of the two men accused of terrorizing Phoenix in a series of random late-night shootings thinks his notoriety deserves compensation. Dale Hausner called the East Valley Tribune from jail and requested a discount Tribune subscription as a reward for generating newspaper headlines. Hausner called himself "Dale the Innocent" when placing the collect call, and said he deserves a "sweetheart deal."

"I've sold a lot of newspapers for you," Hausner told the paper Wednesday. The Tribune declined Hausner's request.

Hausner, 33, and Samuel Dieteman, 31, are accused of shooting at numerous people over a 14-month period as they cruised Phoenix-area neighborhoods during the night. Hausner is charged with seven murder counts and Dieteman faces two murder counts, plus charges related to dozens of other shootings of people and animals. Prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty.

Hausner has sent several letters and made several phone calls to the Tribune since his arrest in August. Dieteman has declined media requests for comment. Both have pleaded not guilty.

BRAZILIAN HOUSEWIFE FRIES HUSBAND

Mar 23, 10:38 PM (ET)
By STAN LEHMAN

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) - A Brazilian housewife was convicted and sentenced to 19 years in prison Friday for killing her husband, chopping his body into small pieces and frying it. Rosanita Nery dos Santos, 52, drugged her husband in his sleep, then stabbed him to death two years ago in Salvador, about 900 miles northeast of Sao Paulo, said police spokesman Idmar Bonfim.

She then hacked Jose Raimundo Soares dos Santos' body into more than 100 pieces, which she boiled and fried before hiding in plastic bags beneath a staircase in her house, Bonfim said. He said police discovered the body parts after receiving an anonymous phone call. Bonfim said the killing was either part of a black magic ritual or an attempt by the wife to collect life insurance worth about $34,000.

Citing testimony from the woman's relatives, he said she may also have committed the crime "to avenge many years of humiliation from her husband." He did not provide further details. Santos denied killing her husband but said she chopped up his body, Bonfim said. "She claims masked assailants entered her house, killed her husband and then forced her to cut up the body and fry it because that would prevent the stench of a decomposing body from alerting neighbors," he said.

Law Enforcement: This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/478/drug_police_corruption

Just another week of drug prohibition-related law enforcement corruption. An NYPD cop gets caught with a stash in her undies drawer, an Ohio cop has some bad hits, more prison guards get greedy, and a former St. Paul cop goes to prison.

But before we get to it, we need to make a couple of corrections. Last week, we briefly included a former Wisconsin prosecutor who got busted with marijuana and grow equipment in our hall of shame. We shouldn't have. He was a prosecutor long, long ago and for only a brief period, and while he was charged with manufacture and delivery of marijuana, it's not clear that he was dealing. Our apologies to Gene Radcliffe.

More than a year ago, we included Arizona attorney William Reckling in the list of law enforcement bad boys. We shouldn't have. We saw him as a hypocritical prosecutor who used drugs himself, but that's not the case. After belatedly coming across our article, Reckling wrote to clarify that he was a city attorney, who, unlike district or county attorneys, don't prosecutions. Furthermore, Reckling wrote, he shares our views on the cruelty and futility of the drug war, and his experience getting busted has so soured him on his homeland that he is leaving for the more freedom-loving climes of Central America. Good luck to him.

The weekly rundown of corrupt cops is supposed to be just that. Sometimes it's pretty clear cut; sometimes it's more subjective. We don't generally include police who get caught using or possessing drugs. While people who arrest people for doing the same thing they do in their spare time may qualify as hypocrites, that doesn't make them corrupt. Where do you draw the line? This week, we include the Ohio cop who has so far only been arrested on possession charges on the basis of claims in the search warrant that he was dealing. At this point, that cop is a borderline case. Now, if we run into a judge or prosecutor who is persecuting drug offenders during the night but snorting lines at home, we'll probably include him too, just because of the unmitigated hypocrisy of it. I guess we hold them to a slightly higher standard than police and prison guards. These are judgment calls, but that's the way we've tried to make them so far. Okay, let's get to it:

In New York City, an NYPD rookie officer was arrested March 15 after police executing a search warrant on her home found a large stash of drugs in her underwear drawer. Officer Carolina Salgado, 30, was arrested after a month-long probe of drug sales near the home she shared with her boyfriend, Nelson Fernandez, a reputed Latin Kings gang member. During the search of her home, police found 150 small bags of marijuana, two bags of cocaine, $3,000, and a bunch of Latin Kings paraphernalia. Although Salgado and Fernandez were not home at the time, police found them in a car nearby. In the car, police found another 15 bags of pot and two more bags of cocaine. Salgado faces counts of endangering the welfare of a child (three children with no adults present were at the home when it was raided) and drug possession.

In Toledo, Ohio, a Toledo police officer was arrested Saturday on drug possession and related charges. Officer Bryan Traband, 36, and another man were arrested at Traband's home after police serving a search warrant found cocaine and marijuana. According to the search warrant, police received two confidential tips last month that Traband was involved in selling and using drugs, but authorities so far have only charged him with possession of cocaine, marijuana, and drug paraphernalia and permitting drug abuse. The 13-year veteran of the force has resigned and is now out on a personal recognizance bond.

In Amite, Louisiana, a Tangapahoa Parish sheriff's deputy serving as a county jail guard was arrested March 15 after agreeing to smuggle crack cocaine and vodka to an inmate. According to federal officials, Deputy Harris Robertson has confessed to smuggling banned items into the jail at least 10 times since September and receiving from $100 to $300 per delivery. Robertson went down after someone called in a tip that he was delivering drugs, alcohol, cell phones and food to prisoners, and the feds set up a sting. An agent posing as an inmate's friend gave Robertson 15 grams of crack, two bottles of Grey Goose vodka, and $300 for his efforts. Robertson was arrested after accepting the goods and cash. Now he faces up to 40 years in prison on federal possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine charges.

In Sacramento, California, a former state prison guard pleaded guilty last Friday to smuggling methamphetamine into a prison in Amador County. John Charles Whittle, 47, a 22-year veteran of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, went down after internal affairs investigators intercepted a package mailed to Whittle's home and found it contained 10 grams of meth hidden inside a teddy bear. When agents arrived, Whittle had already removed the meth and secreted it in a stab-resistant prison guard vest. Whittle admitted that he was paid $5,150 by friends of inmates to smuggle drugs into the Mule Creek State Prison. He agreed to forfeit his profits and now awaits an April 19 sentencing date, when he faces up to two years in prison.

In St. Paul, Minnesota, a retired St. Paul police sergeant was sentenced to five years in prison last Friday on methamphetamine trafficking charges. Retired Sgt. Clemmie Tucker could have faced up to life in prison after he was caught picking up a meth shipment at the Greyhound Bus terminal in Minneapolis. He pleaded guilty in September to possession with the intent to distribute more than a pound of meth. US District Judge Joan Ericksen said she was going to give Tucker a "substantial break" in sentencing because he had no prior record and little likelihood of reoffending, but gave him a few years "because drugs are so harmful."