
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 14, 1990                   TAG: 9003143036
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CRIME-BUSTING

ROANOKE County Sheriff Mike Kavanaugh seems to have a way of turning the trivial into the ridiculous. And in the case of the cow that jumped over the moon - the plywood cow, anyway, that somehow jumped three weeks ago to the top of the sheriff's office in Salem - things are getting, ahem, udderly ridiculous.

No bull: Kavanaugh's special assistant last week asked the Salem police to check the offending bovine for hoof, er, fingerprints. Maybe his own investigators aren't high-level enough to check out the dastardly rooftop deed without Salem's help.

Or maybe Kavanaugh has doubts about the hands on his own spread. One theory holds that some of Kavanaugh's deputies were responsible for the cow on the roof.

In 1988, Kavanaugh was brought into court on a charge of allowing his cattle to roam into a neighbor's yard. It never came to a verdict, but deputies later had to withstand ribbing by the public and by law-enforcement authorities from other jurisdictions. Even today, it's said, an occasional "moo" sound can be heard.

On the other hand, Kavanaugh's doubts seem to extend in all directions. "Everybody who walks by this office," he said, "is a suspect."

Anyway, Salem Chief Harry Haskins granted the request (no prints were found), but only after assurances that the request was part of a bona fide criminal probe and not an internal investigation by Kavanaugh of his own sheriff's department.

Trouble is, prosecutors in neither the county nor Salem can quite figure out what an appropriate charge might be, even if the culprits were corralled.

Rustling? It wasn't a real cow, just plywood.

Damaging public property? So far, there's no word of any evidence that the roof was harmed.

Littering? Violating Salem's sign ordinance? That'd be stretching things mighty thin.

Embarrassing a sheriff with silly jokes? This one at least has the virtue of being true. Alas, however, there's no law against it - and if there were such a law, it might have trouble passing First Amendment muster.

But if there were such a law, Kavanaugh needn't worry about getting caught in its horns. He remains uncowed. But it's impossible to imagine his being accused of having a sense of humor, silly or otherwise.

by CNB