Best of OMG PD: 2012's Strangest Police Calls

Your local Patch editor spends many hours compiling police logs so you know what's going on in your community. Your editors have also, in many cases, been left scratching their head when reading some of these logs. Public safety news always gives us plenty of fodder for our weekly column, "OMG PD." Short for "oh my gosh," OMG PD highlights the wacky, the funny, the unusual and just plain weird.

For your amusement, we've compiled five of the wackiest stories that have arisen from MetroWest area police logs in 2012. In no particular order: 

1) The car-fleeing mom and daughter duo

A Sherborn resident in September reported that she and her daughter had just been leaving in their car when they heard what they believed to be a person in the backseat. The mother and daughter then jumped from the vehicle and allowed the car to cross the road and crash into their neighbor's yard. Holliston and Ashland police were called for mutual aid. The area was checked, but officers were unable to locate a suspect. The likely culprit? Items shuffling in the backseat.

2) The man who had not yet learned that posting stuff on the Internet can get you in trouble.

A 26-year-old man was arraigned in November on a charge of unlawful wiretapping. According to Shrewsbury police, the man, while pulled over for speeding, videotaped an officer without the officer's knowledge or consent. (It's illegal to record a person's voice without permission.) A 90-second video of the stop was later posted on YouTube under the heading "Shrewsbury bad cops." The video was taken down. 

3) The powder assailant

A customer at the Natick Mall in June caused quite a commotion when she threw a powdery substance from inside her pocketbook at a cosmetics store clerk. Just prior to the powder assault, the customer had been expressing her displeasure about the cost of an item. Apparently, the powder caused some sort of adverse reaction on the clerk's skin; this resulted in emergency officials calling for a hazardous materials response. (The powder was harmless.) 

4) The $5 fight

I encourage you to read this full story to follow the complicated series of events that led to a Framingham man in June being beaten over a $5 winning scratch ticket. In short: a man excitedly shares with some folks in the neighborhood the good news that he has won $500 from a scratch ticket. Man goes to redeem scratch ticket; man learns he won not $500, but $5. Man returns home, is attacked by the people he told he had won; they were looking to take his money.

5) The case of the missing torso

Our story in April about a woman's torso being mistakenly mailed to BJ's in Westborough instead of a lab in Florida earned a few jokes. "The first clue," blogger Jon McGrath commented, "would have been knowing that BJ's only carries torsos in 12-packs." 

Officials correctly labeled the package and it was sent on its way.