Albuquerque, N.M. _ It may have been the most dramatic doughnut run in police history.
An Albuquerque Police Department patrol helicopter landed across from a local Krispy Kreme doughnut shop last Thursday at around 2 in the morning.
“They landed in a vacant field near the Krispy Kreme,” said police spokeswoman Beth Baland. “They’re not bad officers. It was just poor judgment,” she insisted.
After the chopper touched down, an officer hopped out, ran into the store to buy a dozen as the pilot waited. He got back in and they took off.
The helicopter had just finished its nightly patrol and was heading back to the station, Baland said. “It’s not like they went up just for the doughnuts,” she insisted.
Keith Turner, who was working nearby, said he saw the helicopter circle and land. “I was like, `No, they’d better not go and get doughnuts,”‘ Turner told The Associated Press. He said the officers gave them a goodbye toot on their police siren as they departed.
Many local residents have found the incident amusing, and one man offered to pay the fuel and maintenance costs of the aerial doughnut run. The two officers will probably be sanctioned, however, the police department said. Their exact punishment has not been determined.
Too Late for a Robbery
MIDDLETOWN, Conn. _ Bankers hours are more than just a nuisance for one apparent would-be robber who arrived a few minutes after one branch’s 3 p.m. closing time.
Wearing a mask, Michael Maslar allegedly intended to hold up a teller when he climbed out of the bushes around Citizen’s Bank in Middletown, Conn., last Monday.
“The bank manager and a customer saw [Maslar] walk through the bushes, across the parking lot and _ up to the door,” Middletown Police Lt. David Gervais told the Middletown Press.
“He grabbed the door, and it was locked,” Gervais said. “He walked casually away back through the bushes.”
Maslar got in his pick up truck and drove off, but he was arrested within a minutes by police, who had been summoned by the startled witnesses in the bank.
Officers said as they followed Masler in his truck, he threw out a T-shirt with eyeholes cut in it. They recovered it, along with a yellow note he had also tossed from his vehicle.
The note said this was a robbery and demanded all the large bills. Police did not find a weapon.
Maslar, who was on probation for a 1991 bank robbery conviction, was charged with criminal attempt to commit third-degree robbery and held on 0,000 bail.
—
Crime Blotter, a weekly feature of ABCNEWS.com, is compiled by Oliver Libaw.
Leave a Reply