{"id":355089,"date":"2010-02-23T18:11:32","date_gmt":"2010-02-23T23:11:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chicagopressrelease.com\/press-releases\/cops-tip-leads-to-arrest-of-fake-officer-who-made-couple-undress"},"modified":"2010-02-23T18:11:32","modified_gmt":"2010-02-23T23:11:32","slug":"cops-tip-leads-to-arrest-of-fake-officer-who-made-couple-undress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/355089","title":{"rendered":"Cops: Tip leads to arrest of fake officer who made couple undress"},"content":{"rendered":"

A McHenry County man accused of posing as a police officer and making a teenage couple remove their clothes in front of him was jailed Tuesday, thanks in part to a Crime Stoppers tip that came in to investigators about nine months after the incident.<\/p>\n

Michael T. Spencer, 19, of Harvard, was arrested by McHenry County Sheriff’s police on charges of robbery, burglary, aggravated false impersonation of a police officer, aggravated battery and criminal damage to property stemming from the May 15 incident near Streit and Lindwall roads, a rural area in the northwestern part of the county.<\/p>\n

Authorities say Spencer approached the teens – a 15-year-old girl and 16-year-old boy – as they sat in a parked car and claimed he was a McHenry County police officer. He ordered them out of the vehicle and then searched it before searching both of the teens, sheriff’s police said.<\/p>\n

Spencer, sheriff’s police said, then commanded the teens to remove their clothing, smashed the boy’s cell phone, took his driver’s license and punched him in the face before leaving the scene in a dark-colored vehicle believed to have been driven by a woman.<\/p>\n

Sheriff’s Lt. <\/span>Andrew Zinke said efforts to identify the phony cop were at a dead end until someone who had knowledge of the incident called in an anonymous tip to Crime Stoppers and linked Spencer to the crime.<\/p>\n

“Thankfully because of Crime Stoppers and a person’s guilty conscience we were able to make this case,” he said. “It was somebody that had information and after nine months made the call. It points out what a valuable took Crime Stoppers is.”<\/p>\n

Spencer was in custody Tuesday at the county jail unable to post a $5,000 cash bond. If convicted of the most serious charges against him – robbery and burglary – he would face a maximum three to seven years in prison.<\/p>\n

The investigation is continuing and further arrests are expected, sheriff’s police said.<\/p>\n

The arrest comes just about a month after Spencer admitted guilt to a charge of teasing a police animal and was sentenced to 30 days in jail, court records show. The charge was filed after an April 25 arrest in which, police said, Spencer twice barked at a Harvard police dog named Hunter while the animal was locked in the rear of a squad car, causing the dog to charge and collide with the vehicle’s interior.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Read the original article on DailyHerald.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/img><\/a>
\n<\/img><\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A McHenry County man accused of posing as a police officer and making a teenage couple remove their clothes in front of him was jailed Tuesday, thanks in part to a Crime Stoppers tip that came in to investigators about nine months after the incident. Michael T. Spencer, 19, of Harvard, was arrested by McHenry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-355089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355089\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}