This Federal Case Is A Pisser

MAY 27--Along with prosecuting terrorists, racketeers, and drug traffickers, the Department of Justice is seeking to combat another kind of pernicious criminality: felony elevator urination. A Michigan man was actually named yesterday in a U.S. District Court complaint charging him with urinating in the freight elevator of an Internal Revenue Service building in Detroit. According to the document, Michael Hicks relieved himself in the lift 'on numerous occasions' in late-2007 (to catch the urinator, a federal agent installed surveillance cameras in two freight elevators). When confronted by a investigator, Hicks, then an IRS contract employee, 'admitted to frequently urinating' in one of the elevators. 'He stated he did this because he felt he could get away with it,' wrote Special Agent Delmaria Scott in the complaint, a copy of which you'll find here. 'Hicks' urination caused the IRS to incur a deep cleaning expense of $4626.25 within and underneath freight elevator #1,' reported Scott. Hicks, who was charged with damaging government property, faces a maximum of ten years in prison. Had the urination damage not exceeded $1000, Hicks, upon conviction, would have been looking at no more than a year in the can. (3 pages)