Police Car

A fugitive who used his head as a battering ram to escape from a moving police car came to his senses yesterday and surrendered, authorities said. Talion T. Goffney, 24, of Pennsauken, was arrested May 4 after police saw him dealing drugs at the Clementon Court apartments on the White Horse Pike, Clementon Police Chief David Kunkel said. Officers confiscated a handgun and a half-ounce of cocaine from Goffney and put him in the backseat of a patrol car in handcuffs, Kunkel said.

A South Philadelphia motorist at the center of a Deptford Township police brutality case testified yesterday that two police officers "were playing tug of war with me" as they beat him in the backseat of a police car. Joseph A. Rao, 19, nervously told a Superior Court jury in Gloucester County how he struggled with two police officers after he was stopped Feb. 2, 2006, for allegedly running a stop sign. After the officers handcuffed him and put him into the police car, he said, two officers dived in and attacked.

THE SUN hung low in the sky as Franchezka Garcia followed the police cruiser in her minivan through the battered streets of West Kensington. Garcia's stepfather, Jose Castro, sat handcuffed in the cruiser's back seat that warm spring evening. Minutes before, Garcia, 26, her boyfriend, Jay DeJesus, 22, and Castro, 46, had stopped for gas at Front and Lehigh. Castro went inside the mini-mart for a pack of smokes. As Castro emerged from the store, Garcia saw Officer Joseph Sulpizio stop, search and handcuff him. She thought that he was taking Castro to the police district, so she and DeJesus followed in her minivan.

A .22-caliber bullet was shot through the windshield of an Easttown police car that was parked in the station's lot Monday night. An Easttown police officer, who was not identified, arrived back at the station at 10:55 p.m. and had been inside for only about five minutes when he heard the single shot fired, according to Police Chief John C. Stillwell. The officer, one of three men on duty, dived to the ground after the shot, according to Stillwell, and called for assistance.

The Langhorne Borough Police Department is revved and ready to go. The only problem is the police are still waiting for wheels so they can get around the borough. For the first time in more than 25 years, the borough has a police force - a chief and and two part-time patrol officers. But the police car that has been on order since Dec. 20 has not arrived. "The manufacturer keeps telling the dealer that the car is en route," Mayor Jeff Minton said. At a special meeting Monday, Langhorne Borough Council appointed two part- time patrol officers, Michael L. Jones, 20, of Middletown, and Edward G. Ottaway, 34, of Penndel, who were chosen from among 23 applicants.

Following its manager's advice to pay now instead of later, Upper Southampton's Board of Supervisors has voted to purchase a new police car. "If you don't do it this year, we're going to be in dire straits next year. Sooner or later, you have to pay the piper," township manager Robert M. Pellegrino told the board Tuesday. The 3-1 vote to pay the piper about $11,500 this year will allow the police department to replace one of its 11 cars. The vote transferred a surplus in the patrolmen's salary fund to another fund to purchase the car. The current budget made no allocation for a new police car. Pellegrino said that the fleet of cars was heavily used, and that about two-thirds of the cars have traveled more than 75,000 miles.

Cherry Hill Mayor Maria Barnaby Greenwald repeatedly borrowed an unmarked township police car - sometimes for several weeks at a time - beginning last December while her own car was having mechanical problems, council members learned last night. Police Chief Robert Tonczyczyn said he and Business Administrator Jacqueline Lampert arranged for Greenwald's use of a 1986 Chevrolet that the township leased for its police investigators so that if the mayor needed a car when hers was not available, "she would have a clean car. " The car that Greenwald borrowed was an unexpected addition to a 12-car fleet provided under a three-year contract with Miller Leasing of Mount Holly, the chief said.

The New Jersey State Police arrested a teenager on an attempted-murder charge yesterday after he led officers on a high-speed chase through a portion of Cherry Hill and backed an automobile into a state police car, injuring one trooper, a police spokesman said. Mark Skversky, 18, of the 1500 block of Hillside Drive, Cherry Hill, was arrested just after 2 p.m. at an apartment in the Village of Pine Run, Blackwood. The State Police Major Crimes Unit charged him with aggravated assault on a police officer, possession of stolen property, escape and resisting arrest in addition to attempted murder, Lt. Thomas Gallagher said.

Police are searching for a Houdini-like suspect who stole a 25th Police District patrol car early yesterday while handcuffed, drove into New Jersey, and escaped after crashing the car by a Camden apartment complex. The suspect, described as a slightly built Hispanic man in his 20s, managed to steal patrol car 2520 after he had been left in the back of the Chevrolet cruiser with his hands cuffed behind his back. How the suspect took control of the vehicle will be the subject of an internal investigation, said Lt. Frank Vanore, the department spokesman.

Add another mishap to the life of Richard Legree, the controversial Valley Township police sergeant and Coatesville constable. At 5:30 p.m. Friday, Legree, 41, stopped by to visit his ill mother at her home in the 100 block of North Fifth Avenue in Coatesville. He parked his unmarked Valley Township police car in front of her house and left the car keys sitting on the front seat. Less than five minutes later, the 1991 Chevrolet Caprice was gone. Legree said he heard the car door shut, looked out, and saw the car being driven off. He immediately called Coatesville police, who notified other departments.

To better document encounters between officers and the public, video recorders will be mounted in police cars of the Delaware River Port Authority. The DRPA board approved a plan Wednesday to spend $343,987 to install the recorders in 48 cars used by officers who patrol the authority's four toll bridges and the PATCO commuter rail line. The cameras will be purchased from Computech International of Great Neck, N.Y. They will automatically record an officer's actions, providing "indisputable documentation" of all encounters and improving internal investigations of public complaints, the DRPA said.

Marcus Hook Mayor James "Jay" Schiliro was ordered held over for trial Tuesday on charges that he fired a gun inside his house while holding a 20-year-old friend hostage. At a preliminary hearing before District Judge Nicholas Lippincott, Nicholas Dorsam, 20, of Chichester, testified that he and Schiliro had a "good friendship" but that on a February night, the mayor ordered a police car to bring him to his house, then compelled him to drink wine and would not let him leave. Schiliro is to be tried on charges that include recklessly endangering another person, false imprisonment, and furnishing alcohol to someone under 21. Dorsam, a former neighbor, said he received a text message from Schiliro while at a friend's house indicating the mayor had been drinking and wanted to talk.

Without realizing, or caring, that a marked police car with two uniformed officers was right behind him, police said, a 24-year-old man on a bicycle rode into a busy Kensington intersection in broad daylight Friday and fatally shot the driver of a Cadillac in the head. After witnessing the 6 p.m. attack, police chased the shooter for several blocks as he first shed his bicycle and later his two-inch barrel revolver. The officers caught up with the suspect in the 2100 block of Monmouth Street.

A Delaware County man has filed a civil lawsuit against two Darby Township police officers, one of whom allegedly beat him, causing head injuries that required a 10-day hospital stay. "This is an egregious assault and battery," said Joseph Oxman, lawyer for Samuel Mirra of Nicole Lane in Darby Township. The officers, Daniel Fynes and Detective John Lundell, could not be reached for comment. Township Solicitor Michael Pierce had no comment. The township is also named in the suit.

A NEW JERSEY woman has been charged with kidnapping a young girl at the Jersey Shore after police say the victim - who had been forced at gunpoint to drive to Philadelphia - crashed the car into a police cruiser on the Ben Franklin Bridge. Shortly before noon Friday, according to authorities, a Delaware River Port Authority cop was assisting a driver on the bridge when the juvenile victim purposely crashed into his cruiser. The girl then jumped out of the car and told the cop that her passenger, identified as Floribert Nava, 45, of Wildwood, N.J., had kidnapped her at gunpoint in Wildwood earlier that morning and forced her to drive to Philadelphia.

After three days of he and his girlfriend living on the streets of Camden, coming off heroin and cocaine highs, stealing and wrecking two police cars, and running down a police officer, Blake Bills sounded a little touchy when Detective Paul Alminde asked, "Why?" "I was cold and tired; I wasn't thinking clearly. I don't know, dude," replied Bills, 24, according to the transcript of his statement to police. The statements of Bills and girlfriend Shayna Sykes, 23, were introduced as evidence Monday at a preliminary hearing where a Philadelphia judge ordered both held for trial on a long list of charges in a March 5 bistate crime spree.

AMID ALL of the noise in the courtroom - attorneys arguing about the merits of driving while being "dope-sick" and about who stole which car, a judge sustaining this and overruling that - Blake Bills managed to find time to quietly mouth a few words to Shayna Sykes. Maybe it was a thought about the drug habit that was fed with 20-to-30 bags of cocaine and heroin a day, as Bills allegedly told a detective earlier this month. Or maybe it was the couple's decision to go "out with a bang," as Sykes put it in her statement to police, when the couple allegedly stole two cop cars on March 5 and led police on separate white-knuckle chases that ended in smoke, flames and twisted metal Whatever the message, a Municipal Court worker, looking every bit like an annoyed librarian, marched toward Bills and shushed him Monday afternoon as the couple's marathon preliminary hearing dragged out. When the hearing was finally over, Judge Frank Brady ordered Bills, 24, and Sykes, 23, held on charges that include reckless endangerment, assault and driving under the influence.

After three days living on the chilly streets of Camden, coming off a high from heroin and cocaine, Blake Bills told police that "I wanted to be warm and mobile and I saw a police car. " And so began March 5 and what Bills, 24, admitted was a "drug-induced stupid decision. " Actually, a string of them as Bills and his girlfriend, Shayna Sykes, 23, stole the Camden police car and led police in a chase over the Benjamin Franklin Bridge and into North Philadelphia. Before the day was over, the pair wrecked the Camden cruiser after Bills sideswiped several cars, a tree and then hit a house at Seventh and Norris Streets.

Marcus Hook Borough Council members have asked their mayor to resign after he allegedly requisitioned a police car to transport a friend to his home, then shot off a gun in his house while drunk. James D. Schiliro, elected to a four-year term as mayor of the Delaware County town in 2009, gave alcohol to the 20-year-old friend and threatened to hold him hostage during the incident last month, according to court records. While Schiliro, 38, has not been charged, the potential charges include endangering another person and furnishing alcohol to a minor.

Marcus Hook Council members have asked their mayor to quit after he allegedly ordered a police car to transport a friend to his home, then shot off a gun in his house while drunk. James D. Schiliro, elected to a four-year term as mayor of the tiny Delaware County borough in 2009, gave alcohol to the 20-year-old friend and threatened to hold him hostage during the incident last month, according to court records. While Schiliro, 38, has not been charged, the potential charges include endangering another person and furnishing alcohol to a minor.