Police in Chicago uncover nearly 1,000 pot plants in city

CHICAGO –  Police in Chicago became farmers for a day Wednesday as they began to chop down a  marijuana farm as big as two football fields found in the city.

The farm, which contains about 1,500 plants and could have netted $7-10 million, was spotted by a police officer and county sheriff's deputy in a helicopter as they headed back to their hangar, MyFoxChicago.com reports.

No arrests had been made as of Wednesday, and police were still trying to determine who owns the property that housed the grow site on the city's far South Side. But police said they were hopeful that because of the size of the operation, informants or others might provide tips about those involved, including a man seen running from the area as the helicopter swooped low.

James O'Grady, the commander of the department's narcotics division, tells The Associated Press they've never seen anything like it before, in part because Chicago's harsh winters mean growers have a lot less time to plant, grow and harvest marijuana than their counterparts in less inclement places such as California and Mexico. The bumper crop was likely planted in spring, O'Grady said.

Add to that the urban sprawl: there are few spots in Chicago where such an operation could go unnoticed because of all the buildings, roads and residents. The growers took pains to ensure their crop was largely hidden by a canopy of trees and surrounding vegetation.

"Somebody put a lot of thought into it," O'Grady said. "But they probably didn't anticipate the helicopter."

Chicago Police Officer Stan Kuprianczyk, a pilot, said police helicopters flew "over it all the time," to and from their hangar, without spying the grow site. Yet somehow, a number of factors came together to allow Cook County Sheriff's Deputy Edward Graney to spot the plants.

"We had the right altitude, the right angle, the right sunlight, and I happened to be glancing down," said Graney. He said he initially spotted five plants or so through the trees before he asked Kuprianczyk to circle around for a closer look.

"We just happened to be right over a small hole in the trees and we looked down," Kuprianczyk said.

They also happened to have the right training, Graney said, explaining that just a few weeks earlier a much smaller operation in suburban Chicago prompted them to fly over and videotape the scene so they might be able to recognize marijuana if they ever saw it from the air again.

So, by the time Graney spotted the marijuana plants, which are a much brighter shade of green than the surrounding vegetation, he had a pretty good idea what he was looking at.

Superintendent Garry McCarthy, whose officers are more used to intercepting shipments of marijuana grown elsewhere or discovering hydroponic growing operations inside buildings, said the discovery of the marijuana is significant in a larger fight against street violence.

Those involved with narcotics, whether it is marijuana, heroin or cocaine, purchase firearms with their profits and have shown they're willing to use them to protect their business, he said.

"That's where the violence comes in, the competition for the markets," he said.

Click for more from MyFoxChicago.com.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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Police search woods for New York man, 73, wanted in murder of daughter-in-law

A search is ongoing for an elderly New York man wanted for allegedly shooting his daughter-in-law to death early Monday, relatives and police told FoxNews.com.

Eugene Palmer, 73, of Haverstraw, admitted to relatives that he killed Tammy Palmer, 39, after shooting her at about 7:40 a.m. Monday, minutes after putting her two children on a school bus, according to Tammy Palmer’s father, John Pannirello.

“He admitted it, he admitted it to his sister,” Pannirello told FoxNews.com. “He said, ‘I just shot Tammy.’”

Palmer reportedly then told his sister, Elaine Babcock, who could not be reached for comment, to “give [him] an hour to get away” before calling police to report the crime. Babcock told The Journal News she then called 911 and went to Palmer’s home, where police investigators had already found her body.

“He admitted it, he admitted it to his sister. He said, ‘I just shot Tammy.’”

- John Pannirello

Palmer, a retired truck driver and seasoned outdoorsman, is now being sought by police and may be hiding out in the woods near Willow Grove Road or in nearby Harriman State Park, a vast wooded area, police and relatives told FoxNews.com.

“They think he’s up in Harriman, they’re all out looking for him,” Pannirello said. “But he’s a woodsman and he has plenty of guns.”

Babcock said her brother, who left money to pay property taxes before fleeing, was caught in the middle of domestic problems between Tammy Palmer and his son, John, who had been estranged after 17 years of marriage.

“She was aggravating the crap out of him, tormenting him,” Babcock told The Journal News. “They were pushing each other’s buttons. One or the other is going to snap. He’s the one that obviously snapped.”

Haverstraw Police Chief Charles Miller, who did not return a call seeking comment Tuesday, has said Miller fled in his green 1996 Dodge Ram pickup truck — likely toward the 46,000-acre state park — and has been labeled as possibly armed and dangerous in an arrest bulletin.

Tammy Palmer’s cause of death had not yet been determined of as midday Tuesday, according to the Rockland Medical Examiner’s Office. Calls seeking additional comment from the district attorney’s office were not immediately returned.

Palmer lived with her two children, John, 12, and Rosemarie, 16, in separate homes on the same parcel of land as her father-in-law. She had obtained an order of protection against Palmer’s son, barring him from the property, Pannirello said.

Palmer endured the imperfect living situation to best provide for her children and the family’s dog, her father said.

“She had nowhere else to go,” he said. “It was a mess; it was so bad. Thank god she put the kids on the bus that morning. After that, she went to hang some clothes and he came down with a gun.”

Palmer’s mother, Violet Pannirello, said her daughter suffered through an “abusive” marriage and painfully tried to save the relationship by losing nearly 200 pounds.

“She wasn’t happy for a long, long time,” Violet Pannirello told FoxNews.com. “She had been abused and knocked down by his family.”

Pannirello said her daughter had feared the worst but knew no way out of her living situation.

“She was afraid for her life,” she said. “He was always a very difficult man to get along with. I don’t think any woman was good enough for his son.”

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Suspect arrested in deaths of US couple on Caribbean island

PHILIPSBURG, St. Maarten –  St. Maarten police on Sunday arrested a suspect in the slayings of a South Carolina couple whose slashed bodies were found in their beachfront condominium on the tiny Dutch Caribbean territory.

Police spokesman Ricardo Henson said the male suspect was arrested before dawn Sunday and has not been charged yet.

Citing the territory's privacy rules, Henson declined to give further details about the suspect, saying police will issue a statement "as soon as more information can be divulged."

The bodies of Michael and Thelma King were found Friday in their condominium at the Ocean Club Resort on St. Maarten, a 16-square-mile territory with about 50,000 inhabitants that shares a small island with the French dependency of St. Martin.

Chief Prosecutor Hans Mos said both Americans appeared to have suffered fatal stab wounds. The woman was found tied to a chair, and the man was lying on the floor, partially over an overturned chair. Both were in their 50s.

Autopsies were expected to be conducted Monday, according to Mos. Relatives of the slain couple have arrived in the territory.

Friends say the Kings were part-time residents of St. Maarten and owned several homes. They also owned a condominium in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.

Terry Tamblyn, a resident of South Carolina's coastal city of Isle of Palms, told The Post and Courier newspaper that King was a retired insurance executive who later started a successful printing business that he sold. He said King also owned a couple of restaurants on St. Maarten.

Local restaurant owner Topper Daboul has told The Associated Press that he and Michael King were building a rum factory together on the territory.

Daboul said he last saw King on Wednesday afternoon and "some other friends had drinks with them that night." He said he wasn't able to reach the Kings on the phone Thursday so he drove to their house the next day and banged on the door. He said he asked a person on the premises to climb over a fence to see if anyone was in the house. Daboul said the person reported a lifeless man leaning over a chair inside the house.

Shortly after the slayings were announced, the St. Maarten government said "every government resource is being brought into play to investigate and solve this case." Prime Minister Sarah Wescot-Williams said she was "shocked" by the murders.

Police said roughly 25 officers were part of the investigative team.

The St. Maarten Hospitality & Trade Association said it's outraged by the murders, which "pains everyone in the community deeply."

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Sudan rejects US request to send Marines to secure embassy

Sudan has rejected an offer by the United States to send Marines to increase security at the U.S. embassy in Khartoum, amid protesters and police clashing.

The announcement Saturday follows the United States saying it was sending Marines to Sudan to bolster security at the embassy, where Sudanese police reportedly fired on protestors trying to scale the compound walls.

“Sudan is able to protect the diplomatic missions in Khartoum and the state is committed to protecting its guests in the diplomatic corps,'' Foreign Minister Ali Ahmed Karti told the state news agency SUNA, which Reuters reported Saturday.

As a result, the deployment has been delayed and possibly curtailed, said a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to disclose details on the troop movement.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Sudan's government "has recommitted itself both publicly and privately to continue to protect our mission," as obligated under the Vienna Convention.

"We have requested additional security precautions as a result of … damage to our embassy,” she said. “We are continuing to monitor the situation closely to ensure we have what we need to protect our people and facility."

The State Department ordered the departure of all family members and non-essential U.S. government personnel from posts in Sudan and Tunisia and issued travel warnings to the two countries due to security concerns over anti-American violence.

The department said while Sudan's government has taken steps to limit the activities of terrorist groups, some remain there and have threatened to attack Western interests. The terrorist threat level remains critical.

The State Department said the airport in Tunis was open and it encouraged all U.S. citizens to depart by commercial air. It said Americans in Tunisia should use extreme caution and avoid demonstrations.

Demonstrators in Sudan stormed the German Embassy before moving on in buses to the U.S. Embassy, where police also reportedly used tear gas to stop them from scaling the walls. The protests reportedly are related to demonstrations across the Muslim world against an anti-Islam film.

The Marine unit, known as a fleet anti-terrorism security team, was to be sent as a precautionary measure, officials said.

Similar teams were sent to Libya on Wednesday after the attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, and to Yemen on Friday.

The Marines are in Yemen to deal with the aftermath of another attack on the U.S. Embassy in the capital city of Sanaa. They arrived in addition to an earlier contingent dispatched to Tripoli. 

Pentagon spokesman George Little told Fox News the team being dispatched to Yemen also is a "precautionary measure." 

Little repeated Saturday that a Marine platoon has been deployed to Tripoli but corrected his statement Thursday that a Marine security detachment was at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli on the day of the attack in Benghazi.

“I wanted to correct the record as soon as I learned that my statement was inaccurate,” he said. “I apologize for this error and any confusion it may have caused.”

Protestors reportedly jumped over U.S. Embassy walls in both Sudan and Tunisia. At least three people have been reported dead and another 28 have been wounded during the Tunisia attack. And protesters set fire to trees and broke windows inside the U.S. Embassy compound in Tunis, according to Reuters. 

A senior U.S. official told Fox News that Tunisian security forces "have responded effectively" so far to the incident. 

That is just a snapshot of the violent unrest playing out Friday, in the widest protests yet across the Muslim world. 

The day of protests, which spread to around 20 countries, started small and mostly peacefully in countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The most violent demonstrations took place in the Middle East. In many places, only a few hundred took to the streets, mostly ultraconservative Islamists -- but the mood was often furious.

One protester was killed in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli in clashes with security forces, after a crowd of protesters set fire to a KFC and a Hardee's restaurant. Protesters hurled stones and glass at police in a furious melee that left 25 people wounded, 18 of them police. 

Security forces in Egypt and Yemen fired tear gas and clashed with protesters to keep them away from U.S. embassies. And Germany's Foreign Minister says the country's embassy in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum was set partially on fire.

A senior State Department official said Friday that the administration has stood up a 24-hour "monitoring team to insure appropriate coordination." The official said the team is working with missions around the world "to protect American citizens." 

The intense demonstrations, purportedly by people upset over an anti-Islam film, follow warnings by the State Department that the protests could spread across the region. The department, on its Twitter account, cautioned Thursday of sustained protests in Egypt, Oman and Jordan, among other places. 

The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI also issued a joint intelligence bulletin warning that the violent outrage aimed at U.S. embassies could be spread to America by extremist groups.   

In a statement to Fox News, a DHS official said that there is no specific, credible information at this time to indicate that the attacks have increased the threat of violent reaction in the U.S., but it will continue to identify potential threats and take appropriate measures. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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End of Watch Review

The police drama End of Watch is the hardest, most honest buddy cop movie you'll ever see. It’s grounded in the everyday relationships of and the very real feelings between cops. It is a film about family; we rely on the police and they in turn rely on each other.

As the story unfolds, we ride along with two beat cops in South Central L.A., Officers Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Michael Pena). They are good cops doing a difficult job. They spend their shifts looking for drugs, guns, and money. They deal with gangs daily, encountering the absolute worst the job has to offer. As Zavala points out, they see more action in a given month than lots of cops do in their entire career. They are forced to make hard decisions regularly, and while their choices may sometimes be questionable we still know they are good men.

The plot revolves around escalating gang tension and a rising Mexican cartel in South Central. This is a character study, though, as filmmaker David Ayer (writer of Training Day) aims to get the story of L.A. cops “right.” He does this by following distinct episodes in these officers’ lives, both in the line of fire and during quieter moments on the job. The story moves in deliberate beats: action, reprieve, action, reprieve. The stakes here are life and death, but these heroes are seen as more than just a Shield. While their work may inform how they see themselves, they are truly defined by their relationships, most significantly to one another.

The cops deal with scumbags and gangsters in the action scenes, but it’s the quieter times with them in their patrol car that are the most fun to watch. These characters are utterly engrossing and their relationship is the film’s core driving force. Gyllenhaal and Pena give fantastic, wholly authentic performances, and the naturalness of their friendship is a joy to behold. Supporting players, notably Anna Kendrick as Officer Taylor's girlfriend Janet, play just as real. There is an intimacy and chemistry between this cast that shines throughout the entire film.

Ayer presents much of the movie in the rawest manner possible and from the points of view of the officers and gang members via shaky cam. We watch through dashboard and surveillance cameras as the action and quieter scenes reveal themselves. It’s not entirely a “found footage” film, but there is an immediacy and freedom in the scenes where this technique is employed. Unfortunately, some of these deeply emotional, camcorder-shot scenes jarringly cut to glossier, more traditionally filmed ones, causing stylistic inconsistencies that hurt the movie. It’s only thanks to the strength of the characters and the cast that the viewer isn’t totally pulled out of the film by these sudden stylistic shifts.

The movie’s insular story may take place over the course of a few months, but it still has a “one crazy day in the life” quality to it. The cops pay lip service to the fact that most of the calls they go on are simple domestic disputes or other mundane police work, but in fact every single action scene depicts insanely tense, life or death situations. You have to remind yourself of the passage of time between events otherwise the story’s believability will suffer.

This is a film propelled by the strength of its characters and how they relate to each other and their world. You can't help but care for them because the movie is so full of heart. End of Watch makes an impact, stressing the important need to recognize that there are real people out there who risk their personal safety for all of us each and every day.

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