Story Archive

Wrong Number

When a 22-year-old man sent “at least 20” text messages to a 12-year-old girl in tiny Kobuk, Alaska, asking for sex, her mother didn’t think it was safe to call the police: the man was a village police officer — and he was on duty, using his department-issued cell phone to send the messages. She instead called state troopers, who flew in to the town of 140 to arrest Officer Leon Outwater, who had been on the job for just short of a month. His defense? “I was drunk,” he told troopers — while on duty. He has been charged with soliciting first- and second-degree child sexual abuse as an authority figure, and evidence tampering for deleting the messages from his phone. All are felonies. (RC/Anchorage Daily News) ...“I was drunk” — the moral equivalent of “Guilty, your honor.”