A man whose extensive criminal history includes a 1995 arrest for attempted murder in Youngstown, Ohio, is in Cook County Jail with his bond set at $1,000 after being arrested in Riverside and accused of selling bogus magazine subscriptions and pocketing the money.
Riverside police arrested Frederick Dawson, 42, of Youngstown, on July 10 about 11:20 a.m., as he was going door to door in the 100 block of Northgate Road. He told police he was soliciting for magazine subscriptions and was employed by a company called Midwest Circulation LLC. He reportedly showed police proper paperwork from the company along with company receipts.
But as police investigated, they learned that Dawson had been fired from the company in May and that the company had been receiving complaints that subscriptions sold by Dawson werenft being filled.
Police in Riverside are still trying to determine how much money Dawson allegedly took from local residents for the bogus subscriptions. He was charged with one felony count of theft, based on his prior criminal history, which includes 19 arrests and/or convictions in Ohio, Kentucky, Kansas and Utah.
Other suburban police departments are also looking at Dawson as a suspect in similar scams perpetrated in other towns.
eOne-man crime wavef gets 2 years
Dubbed a ‘one-man crime wave” by Riverside Police Chief Thomas Weitzel in 2003, William Wesley Brown was sentenced on July 9 to two years in Illinois state prison after pleading guilty to stealing a laptop computer and a global positioning system unit from two vehicles in Riverside on Dec. 18, 2011.
At 1:20 a.m. that morning, Riverside police received a call from someone who said a man approached him on the street and offered to sell him a laptop computer. That person called police, who apprehended Brown at 26th Street and Veterans Drive in North Riverside. He was in possession of the laptop and GPS unit.
At the time of his arrest, Brown was on parole after serving seven years of a 15-year sentence for a series of offenses that led to his nickname. In July 2003, Brown stole an SUV from a Riverside home and led police on a high-speed chase that ended with the vehicle crashing into a tree in Centennial Park.
Brown and an accomplice eluded police but were arrested at a Chicago hotel by River Forest police, who were also looking for them. While being booked in River Forest, Brown escaped from the police station, sparking a manhunt involving 30 police officers. He was eventually discovered hiding in a car that police said he was planning to steal.
Weitzel said he was disappointed in Brownfs sentence, given a criminal history that includes 30 arrests and 15 convictions. The Cook County Statefs Attorney had asked that he be sentenced to 10 years.
Brown is being held at downstate Pinckneyville Correctional Center.@
Get out of my pool
The owner of a home in the 3800 block of Madison Avenue, Brookfield, called police after discovering four people, three male and one female, in his backyard swimming pool at about 12:30 a.m. on July 13.
When the homeowner confronted the subjects, they jumped out of the pool and ran northbound on Madison Avenue. Police did not find anyone in the area.
Graffiti reported in Brookfield
Brookfield police reported several instances of property vandalized by graffiti last week.
A truck belonging to Ice Cream Planet, 9345 Southview Ave., was sprayed with green paint overnight, July 8-9.
On July 10 about 5 p.m., police received a report that someone used blue and green spray paint and a black magic marker to deface a slide at the playground of Lincoln School, 8801 Shields Ave.
On July 11 about 2:15 p.m., police were notified that someone scrawled graffiti in black spray paint on the east wall of Sparkle Cleaners, 9110 Broadway Ave., behind the village mural at the site. Police also reported that someone had used a red magic marker to tag the letters ‘RIP” on the mural itself.
Overnight July 11-12, someone used white spray paint to scrawl graffiti on the north wall and in a stairwell leading to the basement of St. Barbara School, 8900 Windemere Ave.
Burglary
The owner of an apartment building in the 8900 block of Grant Avenue, Brookfield, reported to police on July 9 that some time in the past three weeks, someone stole a lawnmower from the shed behind the apartment building. Entry to the yard was gained by someone apparently cutting the back fence near the shed and rolling it away from the fence post.@
These items were obtained from police reports filed by the Riverside, North Riverside and Brookfield police departments, July 8-13, and represent a portion of the incidents to which police responded. Unless otherwise indicated, anybody named in these reports has only been charged with a crime. These cases have not been adjudicated.
– Compiled by Bob Uphues
