Three Stooges Run Into 2 Detectives

These guys could be called Moe, Larry and Curly – except what they were up to was no nyuk-nyuk-nyuk.

Three kooky crooks fell afoul of two lucky Tosa detectives last Wednesday, and if you saw it on the screen – and it weren’t that they endangered everyone around them over four bottles of liquor – you might think it was hilarious hijinks.

The team of Wauwatosa plainclothesmen was on routine patrol at about noon on May 22 when they decided to pull in to the Pick ‘n Save at 1717 N. Mayfair Rd., on no particular business.

They were just parking, when….

Suddenly, two men barged out of the store, pushing a cart and seeming to be in a great hurry. Behind them came a Pick ‘n Save employee, pointing at the men and shouting for them to “Stop!”

The two subjects saw the unmarked squad car and picked up their pace, one officer said in his report. They appeared headed for a maroon Cadillac that was idling in the lot, with a third subject inside.

When one of the detectives jumped out of the squad car and yelled, “Police, stop, get on the ground!” the two abandoned their cart in the middle of the traffic lane and split up, high-tailing it toward either side of the Cadillac.

The first detective caught up to his man and “knocked him to the ground with a strike to the chest” when he turned as he tried to get in the passenger side.

The other detective ran down his man and pushed him against another car. When he saw the Cadillac coming toward him, as if to run both him and his struggling suspect down, he “directed him to the ground” and took up a defensive position.

Spinning its wheels madly on the wet pavement, the ’94 Cadillac slewed around. The first detective ran to the open driver’s side window and shouted “Stop, police!” The driver refused to stop, and the detective was able to scramble to the passenger side, trying to protect his colleague.

Somehow, as the Cadillac spun, the detective found himself on the driver’s side again, but now the driver’s window was up. So the detective smacked his radio on the windshield and hollered, “Stop!” as loud as he could.

To no avail. The driver kept his foot on the gas, his wheels finally bit pavement, and the land-yacht lunged forward, only to come to a screaming halt when the driver almost hit someone coming into the lot.

The driver did escape a moment later, and made a hard, tire-shrieking turn onto Walnut Road – leading through the city dump and straight to the Wauwatosa police station.

The driver realized his mistake, though, and at the last second cranked the Cadillac about and through the crowded parking lot of the Wauwatosa Post Office. He then careened south on Mayfair Road.

A patrol officer catching up to the action saw that there was no maroon Cadillac backed up in heavy traffic at Watertown Plank Road, and on a hunch tried the parking lot of the commercial building at 1233 Mayfair.

There was the Caddy, with a man leaning hard back in the driver’s seat as if, perhaps, he didn’t want to be seen.

All were corralled, two bottles of Grey Goose vodka and two bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey were recovered at the scene, and all three men were arrested pending charges of theft and resisting arrest.

One of the men was noted to have an extensive record of retail theft arrests, and a television set found in the car's trunk appeared to belong to the Walmart Corp.