NBC station WCMH of Columbus reports:

[Officer Bobby] Hartless was waiting for a FedEx delivery at his home Tuesday, Jan. 3. He was not on duty that day.

Hartless missed the doorbell and tried to flag down the driver.

He contacted FedEx and was told the package wouldn’t be delivered that day.

Hartless allegedly made threats against FedEx, including the threat of suing if he didn’t get his package, [Newark police Sgt. Scott] Snow confirmed.

He also allegedly said if FedEx drivers were to be involved in a crash or were speeding, they would be ticketed, Snow confirmed.

You can read the full WCMH story here.

This is not the first time Hartless, 37, has been placed on leave for conduct violations. In 2010, he was suspended for three weeks without pay after a fight with his teenage daughter, records show.

The Columbus Dispatch reported at the time that Hartless could have been charged with domestic violence, but medical evidence didn’t support all of his daughter’s allegations.

Authorities believe Michael Ward concealed this .38-caliber revolver by hiding it where the sun don't shine. (WITN-TV)

A man pulled who was pulled over for a traffic violation in North Carolina was found this week with a gun in his jail cell — a big gun that authorities believe he hid in his rectum.

Deputies said the man — who claimed he was disabled and couldn’t walk — was searched and strip-searched both at a hosital and at the Onslow County, N.C., jail before he was placed into a holding cell. Jailers even made him perform what they call a “squat and cough” procedure.

No gun.

Only later did the .38-caliber revolver — 10 inches long, with a 4½-inch barrel — turn up.

Ward was taken back to the hospital Friday for examination of “possible injuries that may have occurred” to his rectum.

Full story (M. Alex Johnson/msnbc.com with WITN-TV and WNCN-TV)

The man, Chris Martin Allen, was found lying in the corner of a parking lot in Howell, about 30 miles east of Lansing. The arrow was protruding from the left of his chest, and a crossbow was found next to his body, police said.

The police report said investigators considered Allen’s death a homicide, but Police Chief George Basar told NBC station WILX of Lansing that suicide couldn’t be ruled out.

“It’s physically possible,” Basar said. “We have discussed that, and it’s physically possible.”

Full story (Alex Johnson/msnbc.com)

Washington State Patrol

“Since my commute was so bad, I started thinking,” says Stime, “Blow up doll, Mannequin?”

He took home a skeleton in a sweatshirt, and the rest was history.

“I had to see if it could be my carpool buddy,” says Stime, who admits using it up until he was pulled over December 20th for aggressive driving. …

When troopers stopped the driver, they found the fake passenger wearing a seat belt.

The trooper said, “Are you kidding me? No officer, I’m not kidding,” said Stime. “He pretty much told me congratulations, you’re gonna get your picture taken.”

Full story (KING-TV of Seattle)

Here’s the key passage:

In July, the mother of Barnes’ young daughter said in court papers seeking a protection order that he “has possible PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) issues.” News organizations — including msnbc.com— noted the court filings and reported that Lewis-McChord is considered one of the most troubled bases in the U.S. military, with an alarming record of violent incidents and suicides among veterans returning from Iraq.

But as more has been learned about Barnes, it appears that his troubles may have had little to do with his service in Iraq or his having been stationed at Lewis-McChord.

Military records show that Barnes served in a headquarters communications job in Iraq. A spokesman at Lewis-McChord told The Seattle Times there was no record of Barnes’ having received a Combat Action Badge, indicating he probably never came under fire in Iraq.

There are also hints that Barnes was already disturbed before he entered the Army. Growing up in Riverside County, Calif., he was sent to a community day school for expelled and troubled students as a teenager, the Press-Enterprise newspaper reported.

A reconstruction of Barnes’ life since his discharge by The Seattle Times indicates that Barnes’ erratic post-discharge behavior didn’t seriously begin until this summer, when his relationship with his ex-girlfriend collapsed.

It’s fair to call this a walkback, a journalism term for a story that retreats from news, analysis or implications of a story published earlier.

Here’s why it happened, and why I initiated the follow-up story — it wasn’t assigned to me:

The first story wasn’t wrong. It doesn’t explicitly say that Barnes’ service in Iraq or his time at Lewis-McChord created the conditions that led him to allegedly go off on a shooting spree.

But the implication is certainly there. Barnes’ behavior did fit a statistically significant pattern observed among soldiers returning from Iraq to Lewis-McChord, where PTSD has become an important issue. This was especially significant in the context of his ex-girlfriend’s sworn statement in Pierce County Superior Court documents that he did, indeed, have PTSD and was suicidal.

After that story was published, Brandon Friedman, the well-known military author, objected to the piece in a series of tweets. Friedman was trying to make a larger point about linking PTSD to misconduct by soldiers, concerned that the story fed into public perception of the “crazy vet.”

I disagreed with Friedman, because I believed — and I still believe — that the story was accurate and fair in light of what we could dig up at the time. But I got in touch with Friedman and included comment from him because I thought it was valuable context for a debate I shouldn’t adjudicate.

The important part of that is “in light of what we could dig up at the time.” Since then, we’ve learned more about Barnes, and it suggests that his big troubles began with the breakup of his relationship with his ex-girlfriend last year — well after his discharge in 2009.

Developing stories are just that: developing. They change as new information is learned. In the old days, newspapers I worked for would have done a second-day story that made no mention of the previous day’s reporting, on the theory that today’s report is now the “official” one.

I think that’s dismissive of the reader, and it’s silly, to boot, because five seconds spent on Google will find the earlier story and allow readers to compare the two.

In many respects, I’m still an old newspaper dinosaur. I don’t (yet) buy the abandon-objectivity transparency mantra of many media writers, because that makes it too easy to slide into abandoning impartiality. Like the perfect omelet, objectivity probably is impossible, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth struggling for.

But I do enthusiastically embrace the show-your-work transparency ethic. I trust the reader to recognize that information grows over time, changing the fundamental nature of a story.

Publishing today’s walkback isn’t a way to say I got it wrong yesterday. I didn’t. It’s a way of saying I continued reporting afterward, here’s what I learned, and here’s what it means now.

I’d be interested in your thoughts. Comments are open.

Leon Hendrix of NBC station WOOD-TV of Grand Rapids, Mich., spoke to one of the possible victims.

Update: Smith’s attorney says he plans on “exploring all options” in defending Smith, saying specifically, “I am concerned about his mental health.”

Over at msnbc.com, I have the bizarre story of a Michigan man with HIV who’s been charged with sex crimes after he told police he intentonally set out to kill as many people as he could by having sex with them.

According to documents on file with Grand Rapids 61st District Court, Smith claimed to have had sex with “thousands” of partners, intending to kill them by infecting them with HIV. Some of those people are from outside the Grand Rapids area, including people Smith met over the Internet, he told police, according to documents.

Smith faces separate preliminary hearings on the two charges on Jan. 4 and Jan. 9. He remains in the Kent County Jail in lieu of $100,000 bond. Smith’s attorney did not answer calls seeking comment.

The Kent County Health Department issued an alert Tuesday warning that “hundreds of people may have been exposed to HIV,” urging potential victims to come forward and encouraging everyone who may have concerns to be tested for HIV.

One of the two women police have identified so far as potential victims told our colleagues at WOOD-TV that ”he hits drifters.”

“”He hits people who are young. He hits young women, and from what I understand, he hits men, too. Those are his targets,”  she says. (You can watch the WOOD report above.)

Full story (M. Alex Johnson/msnbc.com)

By M. Alex Johnson, msnbc.com

An animal control officer shot and killed a bull Thursday after it escaped on its way to a Maryland meat processing plant, charged a sheriff’s deputy and damaged a patrol car, authorities said.

The bull escaped Thursday morning in Mount Airy, Md., about 50 miles north of Washington, as it was being led from a truck into the plant, said Brian Horton, a spokesman for the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office.

According to the sheriff’s incident report, the bull broke free, charged a bystander and ran off in the general direction of a day care center. Deputies followed him into a nearby field, where he then charged one of the deputies.

“Fearing for their safety, a deputy discharged two rounds from a shotgun, striking the bull, and causing him to retreat into a wooded area,” the report said. A county animal control officer then finished him off with two more shots.

Besides the bull, the only casualty was the taillight on a deputy’s cruiser, which the bull slammed into as he eluded attempts to corral him. The body of the bull — presumably no longer fit for human consumption as it was by then lead-contaminated — was released back to its owner.

WOWT-TV

A shoplifting suspect who picked Wednesday night to try and steal a DVD player didn’t realize it was also Shop With A Cop Night at the Gretna, NE. Walmart.

More than 24 Sarpy County Sheriff’s Department deputies were in the store at the time. …

“It really set the tone for the weekend coming up for us, for Christmas and what Christmas is supposed to be about,” said Sarpy County Lt. Kevin Griger.

Full story (WOWT-TV of Omaha, Neb.)

Two 14-year-old boys were arrested Saturday night for breaking into a Chinese restaurant and cooking chicken gizzards, police said.

“I guess they couldn’t find any money so they decided to cook some food,” Gainesville Police Lt. Jorge Campos said.

Full story (Gainesville, Fla., Sun)

Mekeeda Austin has warned Father Christmas that he will be ‘killed’ if he fails to deliver at least two of her long list of gifts – including a BlackBerry smartphone and ‘the real-life Justin Bieber’.

The 13-year-old goes even further and threatens to ‘hunt down’ Old Nick’s reindeer so she can ‘cook them and serve their meat to homeless people on Xmas day’.

Full story (MetroUK)