Roxborough dealer gets hosed

This one will leave you in stiches.

The owner of Express Vac and Sew, a Roxborough vacuum cleaner and sewing machine repair shop, was busted by police yesterday for running a dirty little side business.

Undercover narcotics cops made three drug buys from Darren Clarkson in the past week alone, including once in his shop, said Capt. Debra Frazier, the head of the Narcotics Field Unit. Clarkson, 41, sold pills and cocaine to the officers, Frazier said.

Investigators found 10 grams of cocaine, 62 percocets, eight valiums, $140 in cash and a .40 caliber handgun inside the shop, located on Ridge Avenue near Krams Avenue, Frazier added.

"The store is in the middle of a row of quiet stores on a sleepy block, but the only commerce he was involved in was drugs," Frazier said.

Clarkson was charged with weapons and narcotics violations. His girlfriend, Jennifer Crangle, was also arrested and charged with conspiracy and drug offenses, Frazier said.

Don't mess with the commish

Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey still likes being in middle of the action after all these years.

The city's top cop and his driver, Officer Christopher Frazier, were on their way back from a downtown meeting at about 1 p.m. on Wednesday when they heard a call go out on police radio about two people trying to pass off a fake check at a Bank of America.

Car One arrived at the bank, located at 16th Street and JFK Boulevard, before any other law-enforcement teams. One of the suspects was inside the bank, trying to pass off the phony check, while the second was working as the lookout outside.

"Next thing I know, the commissioner says, 'I got the one outside. You go after the other one." Within seconds, the city's top cop was patting down the twenty-something suspect, who turned out to be a woman dressed in baggy clothing.

Ramsey led the lookout person back into the bank. "I asked her if she had any weapons and patted the outside of her clothing. I heard a lot of, 'Yo dawg, don't touch me,'" said Ramsey, who didn't bother mentioning to the young offender that he was the police commissioner.

Frazier said the other suspect, another young woman, was still trying to pass off a bad cashier's check for $4,900 when he got inside the bank. "She was trying to convince them that she worked construction and got four months' pay," Frazier said.

Ramsey seemed delighted as several cops teased him about the arrest at last night's Fencl Award ceremony in South Philadelphia. "We're always out there, responding to calls," he said. "That's the fun part of the job."

Don't mess with the commish

Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey still likes being in middle of the action after all these years.

The city's top cop and his driver, Officer Christopher Frazier, were on their way back from a downtown meeting at about 1 p.m. on Wednesday when they heard a call go out on police radio about two people trying to pass off a fake check at a Bank of America.

Car One arrived at the bank, located at 16th Street and JFK Boulevard, before any other law-enforcement teams. One of the suspects was inside the bank, trying to pass off the phony check, while the second was working as the lookout outside.

"Next thing I know, the commissioner says, 'I got the one outside. You go after the other one," Frazier said. Ramsey, in full street cop mode, went straight for the suspect, who turned out to be a twentysomething woman dressed in baggy clothing.

"I asked her if she had any weapons and patted the outside of her clothing. I heard a lot of, 'Yo dawg, don't touch me,'" said Ramsey, who didn't bother mentioning to the young offender that he was the police commissioner.

Instead, Ramsey marched the suspect into the bank, where Frazier was with her cohort, another woman in her 20s who had tried to pass off the bad cashier's check for an estimated $4,900.

"She was trying to convince them that she worked construction and got four months' pay," Frazier said. Both women were taken into custody, although their names weren't immediately available.

Ramsey seemed delighted as several cops teased him about the arrests at last night's Fencl Award ceremony in South Philadelphia. "We're always out there, responding to calls," he said. "That's the fun part of the job."

Late news update

Relatively quiet around here tonight except for this -- Homicide Unit investigators say that a 38-year-old man was found fatally shot about an hour ago on Wynnefield Avenue near 56th Street in Overbrook. The victim, whose name was not released pending notification of his family, was shot once in the face and head. He died at the scene. As of earlier today, the homicide count stood at 125, a 25 percent decrease from this point a year ago, according to the PPD's Web site.

Map's the Ticket

As I mentioned in a post here months ago, the Police Department under Commissioner Chuck Ramsey seems to have made a renewed effort to make their Web site more useful to the press and general public.

The latest addition allows you to play chef in the crime lab and create your own crime map. You add the fix'ns -- date, location, type of crime (pick from rape, robberies, homicides and more) -- and voila! A personalized crime map that you can show to friends and loved ones.

The maps can only show crimes in 30-day period, and so far you can't look back further than January 2007. All in all, though, it's a quick way to figure out what's been going on in your neighborhood.

A Widow's Nightmare

Hats off today to my upstart DN crime colleague, Dafney Tales, who delivered today with the haunting story of Geraldine Campbell, who's 50-year-old husband, Eugene, was tortured to death in their Mantua home in January.

Eugene, by the way, suffered from kidney disease and had a pacemaker. His killers used boiling water, hot oil, a telephone cord and a hammer on Eugene before finally shooting him in the back.

Dafney describes it a bit better than I do, though:

WITH EVERY PEN stroke, Geraldine Campbell's obsession with her husband's killers intensifies.
Each day, on food-stained napkins, crumpled envelopes of unpaid bills and blank pages of her husband's dialysis book, she sketches dozens of pictures of one of the killer's squinty eyes, large ears, cropped beard and jagged scar across his right cheek.

Like hundreds of murder victims' relatives, 60-year-old Geraldine Campbell is haunted. Haunted by the memory of witnessing the murder of her husband in their Mantua home in January, and haunted by the knowledge that the killers walk free.

...CLICK TO READ ALL OF
"A Widow's Nightmare"

Spitz's Spot: Update

Yeah, he did resign, but I still encourage people to come up with a snappy caption for the photo in the last post.

Spitz's Spot: Guv Spent $80K on Hookers

Even if New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer ends up resigning because of his involvement in a high-end prostitution ring, I imagine it will be weeks, if not months, before the salacious stories stop popping up. (Yeah, yeah, pun intended.)

According to an Associated Press story that was filed on-line just eight minutes, the man once dubbed "Mr. Clean" may have spent as much as $80,000 to get dirty with call girls.

Knowing my readers, I figured most of you would relish a chance to pile on some one-liners, possible headline suggestions and other thoughts. Have at it!

Killers Plot to Whack Cop?

Sorry, folks, I intended to post this last night as soon as the story was finished but ran into some obligatory computer problems.

The story is straightforward and speaks for itself; police officials don't feel this detective was in any immediate danger, but the mere fact that two accused killers started to work on a plot to take him out is flat-out disturbing. For those just joining us, here's what happened:

Two accused local murderers were apparently scheming to take out a cop who put both of them behind bars.
About a week ago, police officials learned that Terrence Snead, 26, and Gerald Waters, 33, were overheard in prison discussing a plot to kill the Homicide Division detective whose investigation led to their arrests, a police source said.

The two accused killers hadn't yet formed an actual plan, but Waters did manage to get the detective's name and home address, which he passed on to Snead, the source said.

Both men are locked up at Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility in Northeast Philadelphia.

The detective and his family didn't appear to be in any imminent danger, but the Police Department has taken normal precautionary measures and assigned extra protection to the detective's family, the source added.

The District Attorney's Office is expected to approve misdemeanor charges of terrorist threats against Snead and Waters.

Homicide investigators last night charged Snead with the Jan. 14, 2007, fatal shooting of Brian Burns, 18, on Newkirk Street near Jefferson in North Philadelphia.

Snead also was charged last night with attempted murder in the shooting of a 29-year-old man in that same case, investigators said.

Snead was first arrested on Jan. 17 in the April 28, 2006, murder of Terrence Hawkins, 26.

Waters was arrested in 2005 for a June 2004 murder, according to court records. *

PD Site Becoming Useful

About a month ago, Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey told me in an interview that he planned on giving the department's out-dated Web site an overhaul, with an eye towards making it more useful to average citizens.

" I want to put crime stats on the Web site. People shouldn't have to pick up a newspaper and read a box that says we have 'x' number of homicides. Why can't they just go to our Web site to see how many robberies, rapes and deaths, as well as how many arrests have been made in different categories?" Ramsey said. "We work for the public and the public has a right to know ... being accessible is important."

Sure enough, the site -- www.ppdonline.org -- has added a few new tricks. The city's homicide tally is now prominently displayed at the top of the site (47 this year vs. 61 last year, by the way), and visitors can view updated lists of the city's most wanted criminals, including the 196 fugitives whose mugshots were published by the city last month. Ramsey's 22-page crime plan is also available for your reading pleasure.

From a selfish perspective as a journalist, the updates are good -- and long overdue, especially when compared to the NYPD's site, which has long offered weekly breakdowns of crime across their city.