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.

Q. Some time ago, you had a letter regarding parking in the center lane of South Broad Street. The city lost revenue because there were no tickets. Well, I have a related problem with cars running the red lights at Bustleton Avenue and Hartel Street. This happens many times an hour. I live nearby and I have never seen a police car staking out that light. I often see police cars parked at the nearby Dunkin' Donuts just a stone's throw away with the cops just talking. A little more patrolling would net the city plenty of extra revenue from the tickets that would be issued.

Philadelphia lawyer Graham McDonald was friends with Mitt Romney and other boys who allegedly attacked a prep-school classmate in the 1960s for his appearance. And though McDonald did not take part in the attack, he recalls Romney as a tireless prankster who would take things to "the edge. " McDonald said he wasn't there and did not remember the episode described in Thursday's Washington Post: In 1965 at the all-boys Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., Romney, then a senior, allegedly led a pack of young men who pinned down a classmate while Romney clipped off the crying boy's long hair with scissors.

Philadelphia lawyer Graham McDonald was friends with Mitt Romney and other boys who allegedly attacked a prep school classmate in the 1960s for his appearance. And though McDonald did not take part in the attack, he recalls Romney as a tireless prankster who would take things to "the edge. " McDonald said he wasn't there and did not remember the episode described in Thursday's Washington Post: In 1965 at the all-boys Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., Romney, then a senior, allegedly led a pack of young men who pinned down a classmate while Romney clipped off the crying boy's long hair with a scissors.

THE PHILADELPHIA Parking Authority is spotlighted in an A&E cable TV show titled "Parking Wars. " If A&E were to do one on the Philadelphia Police Department, I suggest the title "Fireproof. " Just what do you have to do to get yourself fired, if you're a Philadelphia cop? Just how bad to the bone must you be? The latest awful example is Officer Michael Paige, 45, driving a patrol car marked with the words "Honor, Service, Integrity" — the Philly cops motto — but his honor is besmirched, his service suspect, his integrity questioned.

Aid worker found dead in Pakistan QUETTA, Pakistan - The body of a British Red Cross worker held captive in Pakistan since January was found in an orchard Sunday, his throat slit and a note attached to his body saying he was killed because no ransom was paid, police said. Khalil Rasjed Dale, 60, was managing a health program in Quetta, in southwestern Pakistan, when armed men seized him from a street close to his office. The identities of his captors are unknown, but the region is home to separatist and Islamist extremists who have kidnapped for ransom before.

A man was arrested Wednesday afternoon after he fired a gun at officers in a marked police car on a Kensington block, then led them on a short foot pursuit through the neighborhood, police said. The man was on a bike near D and Cambria Streets when he brandished a silver revolver and fired three shots at police in a patrol car about 4:15 p.m., police said. All three shots missed the car. A department spokeswoman said that no police were injured and that the officers did not fire back.

A wild 15-minute police car chase of a suspect that criss-crossed the city Friday night ended with an accident that killed a man and injured a woman and a 4-year-old boy. At 9:54 p.m., a 25th District officer reported that he was in pursuit of a man driving a silver 2001 Volkwagon because the man had pointed a gun at the officer. Depending on the crime, police car chases are often terminated quickly by supervisors because of the risk of accidents and bystanders getting hurt.

MIAMI - Newly released police video of a handcuffed George Zimmerman may be important for what it doesn't show: No obvious cuts, scrapes, blood, or bandages. No clearly broken nose. No plainly visible evidence of a life-and-death struggle with Trayvon Martin. As the furor over race and self-defense raged on in Florida and around the United States on Thursday, Martin's family and supporters seized on the footage to dispute Zimmerman's claim that he shot and killed the unarmed black teenager after the young man attacked him. While cautioning that the video was far from conclusive, some legal experts agreed that it did raise questions about Zimmerman's story.

Robbery suspects shot by police in N. Phila. * 21st Street near York Two suspects in an armed robbery were hospitalized after being shot by undercover police in North Philadelphia yesterday, and cops were searching for a third man who fled. The shooting unfolded about 4:40 p.m. after four undercover narcotics officers saw two men rob a man at gunpoint. When police approached the men, one of them fired at least five shots at cops, Lt. Ray Evers, a police spokesman, said, adding that three of the officers returned fire.

The last moments of shooting victim William Panas Jr. - loaded by friends into the rear of a car and driven high-speed and nonstop to a Port Richmond hospital that had closed - were described by a friend Wednesday in testimony that moved the witness and many spectators to tears. "There was nobody there," said Joe "Bear" Mascino, recalling the horror when he, his brother, and a friend arrived with the unconscious Panas at shuttered Northeastern Hospital on Allegheny Avenue at Tulip Street.