In December, an 18-year-old and two 17-year-olds were all arrested by the Pennsylvania State Police after admitting to covering two cars and a residence with slices of cheese. All three of them faced charges of disorderly conduct for the cheesings, which took place on a Saturday night in Girard Township, Pennsylvania.
The cops didn’t say how they identified the teens as suspects, but within two days, the three of them had admitted to the cheese-related vandalism. Meanwhile, the Carrollton Police Department in Carrollton, Texas is currently trying to find the person responsible for… putting sliced cheese all over a car.
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Without eyewitnesses or security footage or a confession from a teenager, the Carrollton cops had to get their crime scene investigator to dust the cheese slices for fingerprints. “The call was, ‘Hey, I’ve got some cheese prints. I heard maybe you could help us out.’ I said, ‘What?’” Parker Powell told WFAA. Although the CPD didn’t specify how many slices were stuck to the car, Powell said that three of them had “really good fingerprints.”
And because they were so proud (???) of Powell’s work, the department posted a photo of the freshly dusted slice on Twitter and Instagram. “YOU LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY,” the caption read. “Today we learned two things: 1) Covering cars in cheese slices is apparently the new trend in criminal mischief. 2) Cheese slices produce GREAT fingerprints.”
The Carrollton Police Department said that technically putting cheese on another person’s car isn’t a crime, but that the victim reported additional damage to his or her vehicle, too. (VICE has reached out to the CPD for comment, to find out when artfully arranging a bunch of Kraft singles crosses the line into criminal activity. We also want to know how many vehicle-cheesings the department is currently investigating. We have not yet received a response.)
The most disturbing sliced cheese-related criminal might be Christopher Pagano, a Norristown, Pennsylvania man who was known as “the Swiss Cheese Pervert.” In 2014, the then-42-year-old exposed himself to several women while holding slices of cheese, asking them if he could pay them to watch him rub the cheese all over his junk.
Pagano pleaded guilty to indecent exposure and harassment charges, and was sentenced to eight years of probation. “I’m not denying that it happened. What I’m saying is how everything was handled is a crime,” Pagano told the Philly Voice last summer.
“Being a jackass and doing inappropriate behavior is not criminal. It’s not appropriate at all, but it’s not criminal. If you’re drunk and say, ‘Hey, you want to blow me?,’ they could say, ‘Get the hell out of here.’ That happened. People thought it was funny. Being an asshole is not a crime.”
Maybe not, but exposing your genitalia to strangers is very much a crime. At least no one had to dust those cheese slices for fingerprints. Or any other prints.
