This story shows the ingenuity and desperation of a small-time crook: The police arrested Gilbert Alicea for stealing cash from a church's donation box with a stick and double-sided tape. At St. Vincent Ferrer Church on the Upper East Side, Alicea would pretend to pray with a female accomplice, even chatting up priests, but then fished out money with his homemade stealing-money-from-a-church-collection-box gadget. Police from teh 19th Precinct were alerted by a church security guard, and caught Alicea with four special sticks. This sounds like a lot of effort to steal, what, a couple bucks a pop? This device sounds better to fishing out your ID from the sewer.

And in other 19th Precinct news, Star Jones Reynolds' husband, Al Reynolds, was detained at the precinct house for 12 hours after driving without a valid license at 2:40AM. The police pulled him over when he changed lanes without signalling at Third Avenue and East 71st Street. The Post gleefully pointed out that Star didn't show to pick up her husband. What Gothamist is gleeful about is that the police are nabbing those jerks who change lanes without signaling; now, if the cops only cracked down on the jerks who turn without signaling!