From: Blake's Blog

Cancel the posse, Mayo's been bagged

If you worry about crime in this community, start worrying a little harder.

It seems the cops are even having trouble catching 69-year-old grandmothers. I am referring, of course, to the harder-than-it-should-have-been police pursuit this week of Verline Mayo, a former poll worker indicted on charges of conspiring to help Ophelia Ford win last fall's District 29 state Senate race.

The Shelby County Sheriff's Office got a warrant to arrest Mayo about 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, but the deputies' quarry proved as elusive as Osama bin Laden juiced up on Geritol.

Deputies first tried to apprehend Mayo at the hospital, where she was being treated in the emergency room for a minor injury. Alas, she checked out just moments before they arrived.

Next, a deputy tried to call Mayo and inform her about the warrant by telephone, but she apparently hung up. Go figure.

Then deputies entered her daughter's home through a window (a "Gestapo" tactic, as Mayo later described it) and conducted a fruitless search for the wily suspect.

Finally, a few minutes after a Wednesday morning press conference in which Dist. Atty. Gen. Bill Gibbons announced that Mayo was on the run, she turned herself in and was bonded out of jail.

Mayo stands accused of voting on behalf of dead people, but she seems pretty lively herself. Had she stayed on the lam a little longer, I wouldn't have been surprised to see her face popping up on one of those "Wanted" posters at the post office.

Now, I realize these indictments are part of a serious criminal investigation, but it's hard not to laugh. The alternative is to cry.