• 'I thought it was a movie': N.J. couple allegedly stole cop cars, led police on chase

    View more videos at: http://nbcphiladelphia.com.

    The young couple accused of stealing multiple police cars from two cities and leading authorities on a high-speed chase through two states Tuesday morning have been identified as Blake Bills and Shayna Sykes.


    "I never heard of anyone stealing two police cars in one incident," said Philadelphia Deputy Police Commissioner Richard Ross.

    Camden, N.J., Police Chief John S. Thomson tells NBC10's Cydney Long that Camden Police Officer Sekou Reid-Bey made a traffic stop at 9:49 a.m., directly in front of Camden Police Headquarters at 800 Federal Street, when the incident began.

    "As [the officer] was interviewing the driver of that car, he heard his car door shut," he said.

    Thompson says Reid-Bey, 49, saw the couple jump into his cruiser. He says they struck him, breaking the officer's leg, before driving off.

    Read more at NBCPhiladelphia.com

    Initially, Sykes, 23, and Bills, 24, were pursued by both the Camden and Pennsauken Police Departments -- reaching 100 mph on the Admiral Wilson Boulevard, according to Camden County prosecutors. That pursuit lasted about 10 minutes and wove through the city of Camden and portions of Pennsauken.

    As the stolen police cruiser crossed the Ben Franklin Bridge the South Jersey officers peeled off and Philly PD picked up the chase. The suspect eventually crashed the Camden Police car in the area of 7th and Norris in North Philadelphia.

    Sykes fled from the crashed cruiser, according to law enforcement sources, leaving Bills trapped inside the Camden Police car.

    With police attempting to apprehend Sykes, sources say she managed to steal a Philadelphia Police car, No. 2625, from the area of 7th and Norris, also in Philadelphia.

    As it was being chased, the stolen Philadelphia cruiser hit three cars at 6th and Lehigh. It also nearly struck a pedestrian walking near 5th and Clearfield. That person fell and hit their head -- his/her condition is unknown.

    The car was eventually stopped at 1100 Hope Street on the edge of Northern Liberties. Sykes attempted to run from the cruiser, but was apprehended by several officers just feet from the stolen car.

    Sykes was handcuffed and put into another police cruiser. She was taken to East Detectives. The entire Philadelphia chase lasted about 15 minutes.

    "I thought it was a movie," Felix Vargus, a tow truck driver, told NBC10's Claudia Rivero. "She was trying to fight with them so she could escape again."

    Another witness who observed her arrest told Rivero the woman was not wearing shoes when she was taken into custody.

    Police say that drugs possibly played a role in the incident and that both Bills and Sykes will face a slew of charges including resisting arrest, DUI, fleeing police and risking a catastrophe.

    "And that's just here," Thompson said. "The other charges you will need to deal with Camden prosecutors for that."

    Sykes and Bills are suspected of evading an officer during an attempted traffic stop Sunday -- just two days before the high-speed chase.

    Camden prosecutors say they expect to charge the duo with aggravated assault and theft.

    Reid-Bey was being treated at Cooper University Hospital. 

    "He's doing well. He's going to be fine. He's in stable condition; significant injuries to the lower extremities of his body though," said Thompson. He says the officer, after being hit, went onto the cruiser's hood before being thrown to the concrete. The injured officer was then able to radio for assistance.

    An official with the Camden Fraternal Order of Police tells NBC10 that Reid-Bey is an 18-year-veteran of the force.

    "There will be a litany of charges she will face in Philadelphia," said Ross. "I think [authorities] did a great job under the circumstances."

    Bills and Sykes both hail from Macungie, Pa. Police say that Bills grandmother reported the couple missing earlier in the day after they allegedly took the woman's car and left her with the couple's 7-month-old child. Police also suspect the couple is involved in another police chase on Sunday that left an officer injured. 

    By NBCPhiladelphia.com

  • Cop jumps from patrol car to tackle moving motorcyclist in San Diego

    By Neysa Greer, Lauren Steussy and R. Stickney, NBCSanDiego.com

    An officer pursuing a potentially stolen motorcycle in Mission Valley, San Diego, was dragged down a street after attempting to stop the motorist, according to the San Diego Police Department.

    The pursuit began late Thursday at about 10 p.m. near Mission Center Road and Hazard Center Drive, police said.

    The officer was responding to a report of a stolen motorcycle when he saw the motorcycle and began following it.

    The motorcyclist fled up the hill to Murray Ridge Road.

    In an attempt to stop the motorcyclist, the officer jumped from his patrol car and grabbed the motorcyclist.

    The motorcyclist continued to flee with the officer still holding on. The officer was dragged for an unknown distance until the motorcyclist lost control and crashed, police said.

    Authorities took the motorcyclist into custody.

    Read more from NBCSanDiego.com

    The officer was not injured, however there were three incidents earlier this week in which officers were injured on the job.

    On Monday, an officer was punched during a scuffle with a suspect outside a convenience store at Florida and El Cajon Boulevard in University Heights.

    Then, later the same day, a woman was arrested for battery on a peace officer after she punched the officer at the downtown trolley station at American Plaza and India Street.

    The next day, an officer was attacked by a man along the side of the road in Mission Bay. Authorities on the scene said a father trying to drive his 21-year-old son to a mental health facility crashed the car after the son became violent.

  • Robbery sparks epic chase, college lockdown, arrest at baseball diamond

    View more videos at: http://nbclosangeles.com.

    By NBCLosAngeles.com and wire reports

    LOS ANGELES -- A violent pawn shop robbery on Wednesday sparked a police chase across three California counties, a carjacking, an eight-hour lockdown for thousands of college students and staff, and the arrest of three suspects, including one within sight of Los Angeles' police chief at a charity event.

    Two suspects remained at large early Thursday but the lockdown at California State University, Fullerton ended at 12:10 a.m. local time (3:10 a.m. ET).

    The chase began after five men wearing ski masks and armed with handguns robbed at pawn shop in Moreno Valley at about 3 p.m. (6 p.m. ET), shooting an employee of the store.


    The clerk was shot four times and underwent surgery at Riverside County Regional Medical Center, where he was in a critical but stable condition on Wednesday night.

    Pawn shop clerk shot 4 times in robbery that sparked pursuits, campus lockdown

    California Highway Patrol officers responded to a call describing the suspect vehicle and followed it to Fullerton.

    At 3:47 p.m., the pursuit ended after the car exited the Orange (57) Freeway and stopped after it was involved in a minor collision in front of the university campus, Fullerton police Sgt. Jeff Stuart said at a news conference.

    Nearly 10,000 students were at the university preparing for next week's finals when two men ran onto campus, where one was immediately taken into custody. The other man fled and was seen going into the school’s Mihaylo Hall, where business and economics are taught, Stuart said.

    The school activated the lockdown at about 4 p.m. local time (7 p.m. ET), sending a text to students telling them to stay where they were, The Associated Press reported.

    The three other men headed southbound from campus. One was taken into custody, and another carjacked a vehicle and led authorities on a high-speed chase. The driver blew through several stop signs and red lights in residential areas of Compton.

    Read more from NBCLosAngeles.com

    The man abandoned the car in the Watts area of Los Angeles and ran through a crowded area before surrendering on a baseball field at Imperial Courts Recreation Center, which was hosting a toy drive held by the Los Angeles Police Department.

    LAPD Chief Charlie Beck was among those attending the event and chased after the suspect as he headed toward the baseball diamond, away from dozens of police officers gathered at the park.

    Chris Bugbee, a spokesman for Cal State Fullerton, told NBC that police had captured a total of three suspects, but two remained at large.

    Stuart said SWAT team members were searching the area.

    "A large number of students were able to flee the building where the suspect ran into. They've been evacuated from the campus. Those students and staff members that are still on campus are in what's called a shelter in place," Stuart said before the lockdown was lifted. "Our goal is to go around and rescue those individuals as we do our search. This is going to be an all-night operation."

    He added: "It's a huge campus, so it's a very daunting task."

    Read more US stories from NBC News

    A student in one of the locked-down buildings said he witnessed officers checking every classroom.

    "A cop came running through and he said, 'They have guns, they have guns,'" said another witness, Shant Fermanian. "So all these people started rushing so me and my cousin, we looked up, and we just got out of there as soon we can. We had no idea what was going on."

    Fermanian said he saw a man, who was later taken into custody, run around a nearby building but did not see any weapons.

    Christine Accetta, locked down in McCarthy Hall, tweeted a photo about 6:30 p.m. (9:30 p.m. ET) of a barricade students created inside a classroom. Four hours later, Accetta tweeted: "We have been released!"

     

    Another student, Raquel Mireles, said the university had been regularly in touch with students via text message with updates on the developing situation.

    "They're just trying ... to keep us safe," Mireles said, who said she was in College Park. "They're being really helpful. The cops have come through and told us to stay calm."

    She said the blinds had been closed in the classroom she was in, and chairs had been placed in front of the door.

    "The lights are off. We're kind of just all huddled together right now," Mireles said.

    While she talked on air to NBC4, a loudspeaker announcement told her to evacuate the building.

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

  • Six percent of pursuit suspects escape California police

    View more videos at: http://nbclosangeles.com.

    By Gordon Tokumatsu and Samantha Tata, NBCLosAngeles.com

    A man who led police in California on a chase from Claremont to Pacoima Monday afternoon was still at large more than 24 hours later, a situation that police say represents a sliver of chases that end with the suspect’s successful escape.

    More often than not, police say, officers eventually take down a pursuit suspect. About 6 percent of pursuit suspects escape the blaring squad cars, police and media helicopters and, sometimes, K-9 units, according to data that includes all California law enforcement agencies, NBCLosAngeles.com reported.

    In 2010, there were 5,183 pursuits and of those, 341 suspects fled on foot and were not arrested.

    Out of the 5,508 pursuits in 2011, 348 suspects escaped on foot. According to LAPD, that escape rate is “pretty good.”

    Some notable pursuit suspects have tried to hide in plain sight.

    Read more from NBCLosAngeles.com


    In 2004, a man led police on a chase from Simi Valley to the Beverly Center in Hollywood where he disappeared among the shoppers before finally being caught.

    The next year, a pursuit suspect ditched his motorcycle at the Glendale Galleria and blended in with the crowd.

    Monday’s pursuit suspect appeared to blend into the brush. The chase began at about 4:45 p.m. in the Arcadia area when the driver of a dark-colored truck failed to stop for officers as part of a narcotics investigation.

    Disappeared in trees
    The driver barreled down freeways at times reaching speeds in excess of 80 mph before transitioning onto surface streets where he circled neighborhoods in Arleta and Pacoima for nearly an hour.

    After driving into a dead-end alley in Pacoima, the driver jumped out of the vehicle, scaled several fences and seemed to disappear among the trees in residents’ backyards.

    By Tuesday afternoon, the man had managed to evade officers for more than 24 hours. Still, investigators say evidence left behind in the vehicle and two arrested passengers make them confident they’ll catch the driver eventually.

    A man and a woman jumped out of the moving truck during the pursuit and were subsequently arrested. The woman hopped out while the truck was travelling under a canopy of trees.

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  • Fellow activists express disbelief at arrest of NATO summit bomb plot suspects

    Michael Towson

    Photo of bomb plot suspect Brent Betterly, 24, taken by a fellow Occupy protester in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

    By Thomas Francis, Special to msnbc.com

    Friends of three activists charged with plotting to hurl firebombs during the NATO Summit in Chicago reacted for the most part with disbelief Sunday, saying that the arrests appear to be an effort to undermine peaceful protest.

    Brent Betterly, 24, Brian Jacob Church, 20, and Jared Chase, 24, were charged Saturday with a terrorist conspiracy to firebomb four Chicago police stations, the home of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and President Barack Obama’s local campaign headquarters.

    Stephanie Auguiste, a 25-year-old from Hollywood, Fla., met all three of the alleged bombers through Occupy Fort Lauderdale, a Florida offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement. She said the police description of the trio as violent anarchists didn’t match the young men she knew.

    Courtesy Stephanie Auguiste

    Stephanie Auguiste, 25, met all three of the alleged firebomb plotters through Occupy protests in Florida.

    She said that when she spoke with Betterly by phone last week about his time in Chicago, “He was telling me how local police officers were harassing them a lot and how they were pretty violent toward protesters. “ Betterly was “shocked” by the aggressive tactics but didn’t give Auguiste any indication that he was planning to strike back with force, she said.  

    Auguiste also said she found it hard to believe that Church -- who she knew by his middle name, Jacob -- is the same person described in charging documents as remarking about the sight of a “cop on fire.” Rather, she remembers Church as a soft-spoken artist who liked making still-life sketches and opposed the National Defense Authorization Act on constitutional grounds.

    “He’s not the kind of person who had the desire to commit violent acts toward anyone,” Auguiste said of Church. “He believed in peaceful protest.”

    Both Church and Betterly had lived in South Florida. Their friend, Chase, was from New Hampshire. Auguiste said she only met him once but found him to be “extremely friendly, very warm.”

    Chase and Betterly have had brushes with the law. According to a Reuters report, Chase was charged with attempt to commit assault and reckless endangerment in June 2003, after he pulled a knife in a fight with another man. The report also detailed an incident a month later where Chase was in another fight, after which he hit a man with his car. The man wasn’t injured, but Chase was reportedly found guilty of assault.

    (Chase’s uncle, Michael Chase of Westmoreland, N.H., told the Union-Leader newspaper that his nephew had only become politically active when the Occupy Wall Street protests bloomed. Of the charges, he said, “Seems outrageous and completely out of character for him. … He’s no angel. He’s not happy with the economy. Nobody is.”)

    Last October Betterly was charged for burglary of an unoccupied structure, grand theft and criminal mischief when after a night of drinking, he and two friends broke into an Oakland Park, Fla., school to swim in the pool, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Those felony charges are still pending. 

    Olivia Ferguson

    Olivia Ferguson, 36, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said she believes the charges against Betterly "about as much as I believe in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy."

    Olivia Ferguson, 36, said she often shared a tent with Betterly on the plaza adjoining the Fort Lauderdale City Hall during the Occupy protests. An electrician, Betterly would sometimes visit the encampment overnight after having worked 16 hours that same day, she said.

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    “I believe Brent is a terrorist about as much as I believe in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy,” said Ferguson, from Fort Lauderdale. Recalling Betterly’s fondness for drinking, she believes that the home-brewing kit allegedly being used to make Molotov cocktails was probably just for making beer. Recalling his blond dreadlocks and goofy charm, Ferguson said she gave Betterly the nickname “Spicoli,” after Sean Penn’s party hearty character in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”

    At one Occupy Fort Lauderdale meeting in October led by Ferguson and Betterly, a man in the group spoke up to advocate more forceful forms of protest – spray-painting and property destruction. “Brent and I said absolutely not,” Ferguson said. “We were totally against that.”

    Another Occupy activist, Mike Howson, 25, said he was “really surprised” to see Betterly’s name surface in connection with a terrorist act. “Like most of us, there were political things you’d bitch about, but he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would actually go through with something like that.”

    Michael Howson

    Mike Howson, 25, of Sunrise, Fla., said Betterly "didn't seem like the kind of guy who would actually go through with something like that."

    Howson, who resides in Sunrise, Fla., remembered Church being more reserved than the outgoing Betterly-- the type who “observes before he interacts with people.”

    One activist who met Betterly and Church in Florida, and spoke about them on condition of anonymity, was not as surprised as their other fellow protesters, saying they were more inclined than most to push the limits of peaceful protest, 

    “Jacob (Church) was immature and he was angry -- that’s a dangerous combination,” the activist said. 

    The same activist was more surprised that Betterly was implicated in the plot, but recalled his increasing frustration when the Fort Lauderdale movement cleared out its camp in December.

    “He went to Washington, D.C. for that national Occupy convention,” said the activist. “He then stayed near McPherson Square, and I can only surmise that he became somewhat radicalized by people he met there, because when he was here he was very much committed to nonviolence.”

    facebook.com

    Evan Rowe said suspect Brent Betterly "didn't seem to have a coherent ideological motivation, but he was tactically eager to pursue actions which might get him arrested in the pursuit of the Occupy cause."

    Evan Rowe, 34, who met Betterly through Occupy Fort Lauderdale, answered questions via email. “Brent was always super-eager and hard core,” he said. “He didn’t seem to have a coherent ideological motivation, but he was tactically eager to pursue actions which might get him arrested in the pursuit of the Occupy cause.”

    In Rowe’s opinion, the arrests were a “public relations exercise” by law enforcement agencies that need to invent sophisticated terrorist plots to justify their out-sized budgets, he said.

    In a statement to reporters Saturday, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez said that the investigation of the NATO bombing plot had been going on for weeks and that the Chicago Police detectives were assisted by the FBI and U.S. Secret Service. Alvarez called the men “domestic terrorists” who had come to Chicago “to hurt people.”

    Kris Hermes, a spokesman for the National Lawyers Guild, which is representing the three accused bombers, said Sunday that prosecutors have yet to show evidence to support police claims of terrorist acts. “This is a direct attempt to stifle protest and to turn the public opinion against peaceful protesters.”

    Defense attorneys hope to learn more about the state’s case at a court hearing Tuesday. “We strongly believe that undercover cops in this case were manufacturing crimes,” said Hermes. “They were provoking these guys to do things that they would not have otherwise done -- and it’s not even clear that they did engage in any criminal activities.”

    Hermes said that the same two undercover cops who busted Betterly, Chase and Church were behind the bust of Sebastian Senakiewicz and Mark Neiweem, both of Chicago. Senakiewicz was charged with falsely making a terrorist threat while Neiweem stands accused of attempted possession of an explosive device. Police have said the two plots were unrelated.

    Sunday afternoon, thousands of protesters marched from Jackson Drive and Columbus Drive, near Lake Michigan, to McCormick Place, the setting for the NATO Summit. Some 60 countries are sending delegations to the event, where diplomats are discussing the war in Afghanistan and missile defense in Europe.

    There were reports of clashes between protesters and police at the conclusion of the march, but it appears that the demonstration was largely peaceful.

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  • Deputies refuse to evict 103-year-old woman

    By msnbc.com staff

    In Georgia, deputies and movers refuse to evict a 103-year-old woman and her 83-year-old daughter. Msnbc's Tamron Hall has the story.

    A 103-year-old woman and her 83-year-old daughter got a last-minute eviction reprieve when sheriff's deputies and movers decided they couldn’t uproot the women from their longtime Atlanta home.

    Fulton County Sheriff’s deputies and a moving company hired by the bank showed up at Vita Lee’s Penelope Road home on Tuesday, according to a report on WSBTV.com.  Deutsche Bank apparently holds the mortgage that is being serviced locally by Chase, the station reported. The planned eviction was reportedly the latest move in a legal battle that dates back years.

    But when the men saw the frail woman, they opted to leave instead of carry through with the forced move, WSBTV.com reported.

    The reprieve comes just three weeks shy of Lee’s 104th-birthday. Lee said she just wants to live out her last days in the place she has called home for more than half a century.  "I love it. It’s a mansion," she said about the modest house.

    Still, the stress of the situation was apparently too much for Lee’s daughter, who reportedly was rushed to the hospital. Lee said she hopes now the bank will leave her alone.

    "Please don't come in and disturb me no more," Lee told WSBTV.com. "When I'm gone you all can come back and do whatever they want to."

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