Wow that's really awesome, this man was arrested by police 146 times?? he breaks the world record for what he's done and now Bennie Crabtree is the most-arrested man in the World
Records show Crabtree has been arrested 146 times since 1998, the year new record keeping was instituted.
One longtime police officer estimated Crabtree, 61, has been arrested over 1,000 times. The Enquirer tracked one arrest back to 1968, when he was 20.
In the last decade, jail records analyzed by The Enquirer show Crabtree spent 1,277 days behind bars. At $65 a day - the cost of one night's stay in jail - Crabtree has racked up a tab of $83,000, a bill paid by Hamilton County taxpayers.
Ask any veteran cop who has worked Downtown and they nod knowingly at Crabtree's name.
"He is a dangerous person, but he always falls just under the threshold," said Col. Vince Demasi, who made the 1,000 arrests guess.
Crabtree's record includes criminal trespassing, disorderly conduct and theft. The record's sprinkled with the occasional aggravated menacing charge, usually the result of a threat he made after being asked to leave a business. He steals food and goes where he's not wanted - the University of Cincinnati, hospitals or Clifton businesses.
Crabtree keeps his lock-up local. His crimes have never led to prison.
Even if a judge imposes jail time, he's always been released within months. These days, he's back on the street within hours because of jail overcrowding.
In the aggravated menacing case, Crabtree got 180 days, but served just 50.
Walking through Over-the-Rhine one recent Wednesday, oblivious to a steady rain, a clove cigarette dangling from his lips, Crabtree recounts a conversation with a jail official during his last arrest.
"They told me to stay out of there and quit getting in trouble," he said.
Crabtree is one of six people who make the 100-plus arrest club - people who have been arrested more than 100 times.
Together they have spent 6,310 days in the Hamilton County Jail since 1998, costing taxpayers nearly a half million dollars, the Enquirer found.
Crabtree's first police mug shot, from a 1994 arrest, shows a man with a full face and thick brown hair. Horn-rimmed glasses cover ocean-blue eyes.
The years haven't been kind. Now 61, he looks beaten down. He's gaunt and has a degenerative eye disease that's left him mostly blind in one eye. His gray hair is long and greasy.
Crabtree grew up on West 8th Street, one of two children. He dropped out of school after the 8th grade, but said he can read and write.
His parents are dead, but police who know him say his family abandoned him long ago.
"He's lived on the streets his whole life," Demasi said. "He's one of the ones who fell through the cracks. He's pretty old now, but back in the day he was a pretty rough fellow."
Police and court reports over the years show Crabtree has mental problems, but there are no specific diagnoses in his public records.
Hamilton County Chief Deputy Sheriff Sean Donovan started in 1981 and said Crabtree was considered an "old-timer" at the jail then. "I could never talk to him and I can talk to anybody," he said.
Demasi said Crabtree once tried to kill a police officer. "He's been a menace for years," he said. "He is a dangerous person."
Two years ago after Crabtree's friend, John Earls was killed while sleeping in a Dumpster, Crabtree rented an apartment in Westwood. That proved too far away from his Downtown comfort zone and he moved into a Downtown rooming house earlier this year.
Tonya Jallow, who works at the FreeStore Food Bank, helps Crabtree manage the $817 he gets every month from Social Security. She pays his $360-a-month rent, sets up accounts at clothing stores so he can buy clothes and gives him a weekly $25 stipend.
"Bennie is special," she said. "But he likes to go places he's not supposed to go."
Crabtree is supposed to see Jallow twice a week. He stops by daily.
She said Crabtree is lonely. "He doesn't have anybody," she said. "I honestly think he just has the Freestore and the jail."
Jallow said she always hopes his most recent arrest is his last arrest. "It's very frustrating," she said. "Just when I think he'll do something, he gets locked up again."
Via : http://www.mansfieldnewsjournal.com/article/20090816/UPDATES01/90816007
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