Homeless people give check to police officer

Homeless people givecheck to police officer
NEW YORK -- A police officer received a Christmas gift of $3,000 from homeless people who wanted to thank him for standing up for them.
Officer Eduardo Delacruz was suspended for 30 days without pay last month after he refused a sergeant's order to arrest a homeless man found sleeping in a parking garage.
In gratitude, organizations for the homeless put together the fund for the 37-year-old officer, his wife and their five children. Homeless people also contributed change scrounged from passers-by, money earned from recycling cans and bottles, even a portion of their welfare checks.
"We just wanted to thank him by contributing however we could," said Joe Bostic, one of 30 former and current homeless men and women who announced the gift. "And a lot of us gave quarters, nickels and dimes."
According to police, Delacruz told his superiors in the department's Homeless Outreach Unit that he would not arrest a homeless man for trespassing Nov. 22 because the man had nowhere else to go.
Serial killer strikesagain in Baton Rouge
BATON ROUGE, La. -- Women who had let down their guard were on edge again Tuesday after the Baton Rouge serial killer struck again for the first time since the summer.
Eva LeBlanc, a 43-year-old woman out shopping, said she had stopped keeping a gun in her car recently. "I'll go back to carrying it," she said.
Police said that genetic evidence connected the beating death last month of Trineisha Dene Colomb to the slayings of three Baton Rouge women. Colomb was a 23-year-old former soldier who lived in Lafayette, about 45 miles from Baton Rouge.
It was the first time in four months that investigators had linked a slaying to the Baton Rouge killer. During that time, women who once refused to leave their homes without pepper spray and a friend had started jogging alone again, despite repeated police warnings that the killer had not been caught.
"I think this is definitely going to shock people back into reality," police spokeswoman Cpl. Mary Ann Godawa said.
Democrats say theycan work with Frist
WASHINGTON -- Democrats say they can work with incoming Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee if he continues his past practice of reaching across party lines to get legislation through the closely divided Congress next year.
"He's viewed as reasonably moderate for a southern Republican, and I think there is an opportunity to work with him," said Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D.
Republicans on Monday tapped Frist to be Senate majority leader when Congress reconvenes Jan. 7. He will replace Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, who resigned last week after a verbal blunder at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party that implied he favored segregation.
As majority leader, Frist will set the legislative agenda and run the chamber as well as serve as the GOP's key spokesman in the Senate.
One of Frist's first moves was to call Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the departing majority leader. "I committed to work with him, to work with members of the Democratic Caucus, and I should also add independents as well to make this Congress ... one that is positive, that brings people together and that is productive," Frist told reporters.
Powerball: a perfectbut hard-to-get gift
The must-have gift that retailers have sought all season has finally arrived: It costs just $1, fits easily inside a stocking and with an estimated value of $280 million, no one will complain that it's not what they wanted.
Today's Powerball drawing offered the nation's fifth-largest lottery jackpot ever, and people lined up to buy tickets by the fistful for the multistate game.
Office manager Alisa Mills said people were already gathered at the Piggly Wiggly grocery in Irmo, S.C., when she came to work Tuesday morning.
"There were people waiting at 7:30," she said. "It's unreal."
Powerball sales also kept employees busy at Peterson's, a convenience store in Portland, Ore.
"It's been nonstop," store manager J.L. Stone said. "There's lots of office pools. The largest one so far bought 290 tickets." She added that many people were buying tickets as Christmas gifts.
Powerball is played in 23 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The odds of winning the grand prize are 1 in 120 million. The exact jackpot will not be known until the drawing is held at 10:59 p.m. EST today.
Associated Press