Cops: Dad tried to swap baby for beer.....Sick !!

Cops: Dad tries to trade baby for beer or drugs

Employee outside Mass. convenience store notifies police


CHICOPEE, Mass. - A Massachusetts man offered to trade his 3-month-old daughter to an employee at a gas station and convenience store in exchange for beer, or perhaps crack cocaine, police say.

Matthew Brace, 24, of Northampton allegedly made the offer on Monday in what Chicopee Police Chief John Ferraro Jr. called "a new low."

"It’s not a joke; this is very serious,” Ferraro said Tuesday, according to The Republican.

Ferraro told the newspaper that Brace and his girlfriend, who has not been charged, encountered an employee outside a gas station and convenience store in Chicopee.

When the employee asked the couple about the age of their baby, Brace allegedly put his 3-month old daughter and her stroller into the employee’s truck.

“For two 40s, you can have her,” Brace told the employee, according to Ferraro’s account.

The chief added that “40” is slang for both beer sold in a 40-ounce bottle and crack cocaine. Investigators are not sure whether Brace meant beer or crack, he said.

The man called police. The couple was later found at a nearby motel, where Brace was trying to hide the stroller behind a trash bin, police said.

State child welfare officials took the baby into custody.

Brace was not arrested but will be summoned to court to face a charge of reckless endangerment of a child, police said. A phone number for him could not immediately be found.

The child's mother, who was in the store at the time buying cigarettes, has not been charged.

Sounds like the guy was just joking around and the gas station guy needs to loosen up.

What kind of beer was it?:toast:

that kid's got a real chance in life....

Jake T. said:

Sounds like the guy was just joking around and the gas station guy needs to loosen up.

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people are so uptight these days. Dude probably has no personality or has a piss poor understanding of humor. That coupled with working the graveyard at a gas station, the joke is on him

hno:

now it was not beer but really crack...
http://boston.com/community/blogs/gatekeeper/2010/05/the_baby_for_beer_offer_an_inn.html

By now you’ve probably read or heard about the man who offered to trade his baby for two forty-ounce bottles of beer at a Chicopee, Mass., gas station Monday night. A Google News search as late as Thursday afternoon turned up 424 stories about it; people on Twitter are still talking about it.

Turns out the beer part isn’t true. The man offered to trade his baby for crack cocaine.

So why didn’t the baby-for-beer story die? Because beer is trivial, beer is ordinary, and beer — as any who has watched “The Simpsons” knows — is funny. Crack cocaine is deadly, crack cocaine is strange, and crack cocaine is depressing.

The baby-for-beer story shot around the Internet because — and this isn’t nice to say but it’s true — people found it amusing. They found it ha-ha funny.

WGGB-TV, Channel 40 in Springfield, broke the story on Monday night. It’s updated story on Tuesday morning began with this first paragraph:

A man who may have been homeless but with a previous address in Northampton has been brought to a Springfield hospital after allegedly trying to trade a baby girl for alcohol Monday.

Masslive.com, the website of the Springfield Republican, posted the story at 9:30 Tuesday morning:

Chicopee police are charging the father of a 3-month old baby girl with apparently trying to give the child away to a man he met at a Burnett Road truck stop in exchange for some beer.

The story was updated 20 minutes later and paraphrased Chicopee Police Chief John Ferraro Jr. saying forty “is slang for beer sold in a 40-ounce bottle.”

Boston.com had the beer-for-baby story early Tuesday morning, too.

Chicopee police say a man faces a child endangerment charge after allegedly offering to swap his 3-month-old daughter for a pair of 40-ounce beers.

Then, at a few minutes past 11 in the morning, after Globe reporter Shana Wickett interviewed Chicopee Deputy Police Chief William Jebb, Boston.com posted a story stating the man “wanted crack cocaine.”

Police originally had said Brace had allegedly attempted to exchange the baby for two 40-ounce beers, but Jebb said further investigation revealed otherwise.

The Chicopee police were backing off the beer-for-baby story.

At almost the same time, Masslive.com posted an updated story with the headline “Chicopee police not sure whether Matthew Brace was trying to sell baby for beer or cocaine.” The story reported the Chicopee Police Chief John Ferraro Jr. told the paper in a new interview that forty is “slang for both beer sold in a 40-ounce bottle and crack cocaine. Investigators are not sure whether Brace meant beer or crack, he said.”

The reporters and editors were doing their job: Updating the story as they received new information from their source, the Chicopee Police Department.

But the baby-for-beer story lived on long into the day at AOL News, a website called True Crime, the Conservative Fun House blog and many, many others. Even on Thursday morning, two days after the baby-for-beer story had been refuted, the Fox affiliate WTXF-TV in Philadelphia posted a story to its website with the headline “Cops: Dad Sells Baby For Two Beers.”

Emotional distance allows people to find crime stories funny. A bakery is robbed at gunpoint and we joke the “thief got away with a lot of dough.” It’s not funny — especially not the gun — to the baker, the baker's family, and the baker's neighbors and customers.

Emotional distance is a built-in feature of the Internet. It's easy to find the baby-for-beer story funny, slap a wry headline on it, and post it to a website when you're sitting alone somewhere in front of a computer screen. Once you've posted it, you move on to the next amusing story. Unless you're close to the story somehow, you see no reason to keep track of the story and update it as new information becomes available.

When it turns out the updated story is much more grim and much less amusing than the original story, even at a great emotional distance, there's no penalty if you just keep posting and tweeting the original story. It's a funnier story, after all.

damn, i've had a dude offer me a shitload of foodstamps in trade for me getting him a 12 pack, but never had a baby offered to me.

This is disgusting. That child was worth a case, at least.

Sounds like Doberman, where has he been lately?

Sounds like business as usual in someplace like Mexico.

Jesus Christopher said:

As far as business in Mexico is concerned, you shouldn't comment. We aren't talking about crossing the border and picking up young prostitutes or buying drugs. When conversation gets to those areas, i'll be sure you let you know, i would hate for you to miss a chance of actually providing some useful insight on something.

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Coming from a probable ghost, who cares what you think. Finally, Mexico is a 3rd world country that is so corrupt on every level that anyone from there shouldn't comment.

Hell, they would be a 4th world country if it were possible.

Thanks again for commenting ghost.

He's Gone.....:howdy:

who was it?

bigbet1234 said:

who was it?

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A Headache. @)

Betallsports said:

He's Gone.....:howdy:

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Was I right about him being a ghost?

fair enough....lol

yes mr. ego, you were@)

texansfan said:

Was I right about him being a ghost?

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texansfan said:

Was I right about him being a ghost?

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Could be a Ghost, but No IP match

bigbet1234 said:

yes mr. ego, you were@)

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Thanks...<><> Send me a cheesecake!<<