MAN FOUND GUILTY OF WEARING STOLEN POLICE JACKET

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

DATE: THURSDAY, February 13, 1992                   TAG: 9202130246
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-7   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: By KATHY LOAN
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium
MAN FOUND GUILTY OF WEARING STOLEN POLICE JACKET
When Blacksburg police Officer M.G. Mickey responded to a prowler report last month, he was surprised to find two people still crouched at a bedroom window.
He was even more surprised to find one of them wearing a Blacksburg Police Department jacket.
"It was pretty shocking," Mickey said after a General District Court hearing Wednesday.
Mickey said he investigated the prowler report in the 300 block of Webb Street about 1:30 a.m. on Jan. 9 and found two men trying to break into a ground-floor apartment with a claw hammer.
"To us, that's kind of personal when someone wears a police jacket and commits a felony," Mickey said.
Felony charges against Robert Stuart Collins, 20, and Christopher Ray Goff, 21, were certified Wednesday to a county grand jury, which meets in April.
Judge Thomas Frith also found Collins guilty of misdemeanor possession of stolen property, fining him $100 and imposing a 30-day suspended jail term. Collins was also found guilty of unlawful wearing of a police jacket and fined $100.
Collins and Goff, who live in separate apartments in the 300 block of Webb Street, had pleaded not guilty to felony charges of attempted breaking and entering and possession of burglary tools.
The navy blue jacket, with police patches, a sewed-on badge and a name plate, had been reported stolen Dec. 8. It was taken from a police car that was broken into while an officer answered a noise complaint in the same general area of Webb Street.
"I woke up to a noise. I heard a tearing at my screen," Lesley Fields, one of four Virginia Tech students who lived in the apartment, testified. She looked out her window and saw two people standing there whispering loudly.
She dialed 911.
Mickey testified he came around to the rear of the apartment building and saw two men crouched at the ground floor window of an apartment. One was holding a claw hammer. A flashlight was found on the ground and a window screen had been torn from its frame.
Neither Collins nor Goff testified. Collins' attorney, Dutton Olinger, said the two misdemeanor convictions will be appealed to Circuit Court.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB