Posted on 11/22/2022 12:04:54 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
GAINESVILLE, Fla. (WFLA) — A Gainesville man is in jail after being accused of stealing from a Walmart store that he claimed he owned.
According to Gainesville Police Department records obtained by WCJB, Steven Francis, 51, was caught stealing clothes from the Walmart located behind Butler Plaza in Gainesville.
Upon arrival, officers said Francis told them he was the owner of the store after a “hostile takeover.” Francis said he had no remorse for taking the clothes because he already owned the store.
According to WCJB, the items taken are estimated to be worth over $200.
Francis is currently behind held at the Alachua County Jail.
Present him with the property tax bill and the employee withholding responsibility,
Talk about missing the perfect headline, this was one such occasion. It’s obvious this should have led off with “Florida man.....”
In the day, Gainesville had (and still has) a large VA Hospital, with inpatient and outpatient mental health treatment services. Then and now, the medicate, stabilize, and release policy results in lots of mentally ill veterans off their meds and wandering loose on the streets and in marginal living situations.
There are also a couple of Florida Department of Corrections facilities in Alachua County with regular releases or escapes that provide a source of new dangerous types. I dated a local girl who lived near the DOC work camp. Due to a murder by an escapee, she and her entire family went about armed at all times on the recommendation of the local sheriff.
And, just as schools of fish draw sharks, college towns stuffed full of vulnerable and naive students draw human predators.
Here's a funny story. One night, plotting political mischief, I met some friends for a late night meal, and driving one of them back to his apartment, we stopped at the post office near the campus so I could check my PO box.
A seedy looking older guy in jeans and a denim shirt was doing the same, and safely back in my old Mercury Cougar, I mentioned that I had seen that bum several times wandering on or near the campus. My friend gave me a look and said, "Don't you know who that is?" It was Harry Crews, a famous writer at the time and a visiting professor in creative writing at U. of Florida.
I remember those Hare Krishnas. One fine clear day, coming out of the main U. of Florida library, I could see in a glance the Krishnas, a fire and brimstone street preacher, and a Trotskyite communist group all fishing for student recruits. I consoled myself with the observation that there did not seem to be any takers.
Not up to Florida standards
Harry Crews - I had to look him up. That’s funny you thought him a bum. He looks a little rough around the edge in some pics.
Turns out he passed in Gainesville in 2012.
I lived by Shands at UF. Where is/was the Vet hospital?
UF had Danny Rolling for a serial killer.
He got lethal injection instead of Ol’ Sparky...
I think Ted Bundy went through FSU.
The VA hospital is close to Shands, across Archer Road from the U of Florida dental school adjoining Shands. Set back from Archer Road and with road access on SW 16th Ave., the VA Hospital is easy to overlook.
In 1978, Ted Bundy killed two girls at the Chi Omega sorority house in Tallahassee, badly beating three more girls. At the time, Bundy was living at a rooming house on College Avenue, between the front of the FSU campus and the Florida State Capitol building. I lived in Tallahasse for almost thirty years and know both locations well.
Gotcha on both points.
I’ve only been to FSU once, and needless to say, sobriety was a tad of an issue that evening.
UF v FSU game.
Ted Bundy went through two years before I went there.
Security on campus went crazy post Bundy, understandably.
The Chi Omega house was...strange afterwards. They didn’t rush at first. Two years later they rushed, but quietly and only for legacies, I think. Their participation in Greek Week and Homecoming was muted at best.
I lived in the Beta Theta Pi house, the only fraternity located on sorority row. It was choice real estate during sorority rush.
I was “too old” to go after Sorority chicks by the time I went to UF.
I just gawked like a perv...
If you’re thinking about the Walmart IN Butler Plaza, you’re thinking about the wrong one. That old one (and the rest of the stores in that particular plaza) are closed, the place razed, and rebuilt with PF Chang’s, cheesecake factory, and all the fancy retail that goes with it. This Walmart is a new one, and along with a lot of other development, is behind the old one in all that wooded undeveloped area. Unless you’ve been back in the past 5-6 years.
That sounds like me at most of the UF v. FSU games that I have been at.
I think that applies to most everyone at those games.
Watching football sober is like hunting sober, or fishing sober...
:)
The WalMart that I have in mind is the new one at the NW corner of Archer Road and SW 34th Street. Butler Plaza was originally Butler Field. As a young boy, when my father was in law school at U. of Florida in the late 50s, he used to take me to look at the private aircraft parked at Butler Field, near where the PF Chang’s is now.
One of my law professors was a transplant from the midwest who had taught law in Bloomington and Boston. He and his wife went to one U of Florida football game and were so appalled at the drinking and rowdy conduct that they never went to another. As he put it, it was like going to a cockfight.
He could never be Florida Man!
You haven’t partied for a UF game until there’s an accidental gun discharge and an actual dumpster fire.
Yikes! That is beyond my experience. The wildest football game I was at was when Tulane beat LSU in the old Tulane stadium, December 1, 1973. We Tulane students stormed the field, pulled down the goal posts, and milled about for more than an hour before moving the party back to the campus, our dorm rooms, and local bars. At the time, the drinking age in Louisiana was 18 and was interpreted generously as including the last year or two of high school.
The gunshot and fire were at our apartment complex, not the stadium.
We used to hang a big screen over the railing.
We would smoke meat, grill food, and get drunk in our parking lot.
Absolutely saw the same thing growing up. Gainesville was a special place for that kind of “diversity” even back in the 70’s.
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