Two would-be burglars were captured on a surveillance camera trying to break into a coffee stand recently.

The owner of Caveman Coffee has posted the footage on YouTube and is asking anyone with information about the attempted break-in to call Tacoma-Pierce County Crime Stoppers at 253-591-5959.

The Caveman Coffee stand is located at 176th Street East and 66th Avenue East.

The burglars tried and tried but were not successful in getting into the stand.

Tacoma police are looking for help identifying a man suspected of doing a "smash and grab" theft earlier this week at the Tacoma Target store.

Surveillance video shows the man entering the store, South 23rd Street and Union Avenue, just after 9 a.m. Monday.

He walked down an aisle of the electronics department, smashed a glass display case and grabbed several iPods. He left the store without paying, police reported.

Police describe the thief as a white or light-skinned black man, 35 to 45 years old, 5 feet 9 and 170 pounds. He had a slender build and dark hair. He wore eyeglasses, black leather jacket, blue jeans, black boots and a black stocking cap.

Tacoma-Pierce County Crime Stoppers is offering up to $1,000 for information leading to an arrest and charges filed in the case. Tipsters may remain anonymous.

Reach Crime Stoppers at 253-591-5959.

Lakewood police have released surveillance footage of a takeover-style robbery at a sports bar last week.

You can find the footage here on our news partner's, KIRO TV, Web site.

One person was grazed with a bullet during the robbery Nov, 14 at Oh! Gallaghers Sports Pub.

No arrests have been reported.

Here are some extended interviews with three McNeil Island inmates talking about why they have declared multiple faiths. They accompany a story in Wednesday's paper.

Readers may remember McNeil's chaplain, Father Tom Suss, who resigned earlier this year because a new rule allowing multiple faiths created the possibility of seemingly contradictory combinations, such as Catholic/pagan.

You can follow this link to an audio slideshow giving an overview of the story.

Arlen Lopez, Catholic/Pentacostal

Mark Misiak, Buddhist/Wiccan

Maceo "Mace" Wiles, Catholic/Protestant

The link above goes to a follow-up story about Suss' resignation. You can read my original story after the jump.

=> Read more!

About once a week or so I check YouTube for new Tacoma-related content.

This video, which was posted today, purports to capture Tacoma rapper "K Sleezy" shooting a rapid-fire smiley face into a tree. Of course the unblemished tree isn't shown beforehand.

The description that accompanies the video says K Sleezy is merely "showin ya'll how we get down in Tacoma Washington." Mr. Sleezy's MySpace page refers to him as a "Gangsta Rapper/Pimp."

(Warning: the video contains bad language.)

Also: does anyone recognize the locale where this was shot? It looks like it might be a public park.

Patience is not always virtuous.

Last summer thieves skimmed debit card information from a South Hill gas station. Then, nearly a year later, over the July 4th weekend, they withdrew tens of thousands of dollars from Pierce County residents’ bank accounts, Pierce County Sheriff’s officials said.

By waiting, the thieves can be pretty sure surveillance videos showing them will have been erased and by making ATM withdraws over a holiday weekend, it takes the banks an extra day to realize something is amiss, Pierce County Sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said.

Detectives have identified about 75 victims, including cases reported to Tacoma Police, and expect many more may be out there, he said. Some victims lost several hundred dollars, others lost thousands.

[The story continues after the jump -- I'm also posting some video about credit card skimming.]

=> Read more!

I uploaded audio from Tuesday's Tacoma City Council meeting to YouTube so that you can hear Robert "The Travller" Hill's comments that got him kicked out of the meeting. Mayor Bill Baarsma gives him two warnings and tells Hill he's "being disruptive to the orderly conduct of the council meeting." When Hill presses on with his schtick of pretending to be phoning in instead of standing in the Council chambers, he gets the boot.

Hill's campaign for Pierce County sheriff recently ended when he was convicted of forgery. On Friday, Pierce County filed court paperwork seeking to strip Hill's name from the ballot.

Hill is also known for bringing fake guns to public meetings and agitating on behalf of masturbation.

I've run across some news stories about the hallucinogenic plant salvia divinorum in the last couple days and thought I'd post something here.

The common herb, which is part of the mint family, is illegal in several states but (as far as I've been able to tell), is legal in Washington.

According to sagewisdom.org, a site devoted to the drug:

Louisiana, Missouri, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Delaware, Maine, North Dakota, Illinois, Kansas, Virginia, and Florida are the only states in the USA that currently have state-wide laws prohibiting possession of Salvia divinorum.

It's becoming increasingly popular with teens and seems to be relatively easy to obtain. A quick search on YouTube will show you what I mean.

Here's a video that shows one teen falling down and gasping like a fish after smoking it.

Another Sunday shift with not a whole lot going on police-wise.

There was a report of a kid getting put into a trunk on Pacific Avenue, but Pierce County Sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer said they only got one call on it and no one has reported a child missing.

So, here's some footage of a car that plowed into a South Tacoma house I found on the You Tubes -- I blogged it when it first happened.