Plymouth cafeteria director charged with ordering lobster, stealing kitchen equipment equipment, for use at his Cape Cod snack shack
VanCott has been employed as the food services director for Plymouth Public Schools since 2003, according to his
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He was first flagged by authorities on May 30 after they received an anonymous tip that someone was stealing food and equipment from Plymouth Community Intermediate School. Since VanCott was the only person authorized to place cafeteria orders, he was quickly identified as the suspect, the statement said.
A review of purchase records revealed premium Angus burgers, hot dogs, lobster, and other items that were never served students or staff, according to the statement—and all of which appear on the Snack Shack's
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Investigators also spoke with cafeteria employees, who said that for years, once a week between Memorial Day and Labor Day, VanCott had them pack bags of deli turkey and ham marked with his initials, for no apparent school use. They also said that he routinely took condiments, snacks, paper goods, coffee and other supplies from the kitchen, according to the statement.
Additionally, VanCott allegedly purchased more than $8,300 worth of kitchen equipment which was not found in the cafeteria or school storage, the statement said. This includes under-counter refrigerators and freezers, a refrigerated sandwich table, convection oven, microwave, bagel warmer, coffee maker and two fry pans.
Surveillance footage from a Saturday allegedly shows him loading one of those under-counter refrigerators onto a town-owned truck and later returning in his personal pickup to transport a second unit. Additional video from the State Police Fusion Center then shows his pickup crossing the Sagamore Bridge with the stolen refrigerator secured in its bed, bound for Cape Cod, the statement said.
The investigation is ongoing.
Rita Chandler can be reached at
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Miami Herald
12 hours ago
- Miami Herald
'None of us ever asked to be part of this kind of club.' Boat-crash families laud new law
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Miami Herald
15 hours ago
- Miami Herald
Causeway cannibal, Versace, Mob hits. See biggest Miami crime through the years
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Yet no one saw the killers enter and the case was unsolved. The murders 'sent the investigation down the drain,' U.S. Customs officials told The Miami News in 1977. Many years later police linked execution-style killer Ricky Cravero to the slayings but no one has paid for the crime. FBI Suniland shootout The bloodiest shootout in the FBI's 107-year history shattered the quiet of an unincorporated South Miami-Dade neighborhood, now Pinecrest, on April 11, 1986, behind the Suniland Shopping Center that fronts South Dixie Highway. FBI agents Benjamin Grogan, 53, and Jerry Dove, 30, died in an exchange of gunfire with Michael Platt and William Matix, heavily armed bank robbery suspects. Platt, the more vicious of the two, would rival The Terminator, the killing machine made famous in the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. Dove fired what should have been a deadly shot into Platt, decimating his right lung. 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'They say Fatty Walsh wants company,' storyteller Linda Spitzer told the Miami Herald in a 2000 article. Don Aronow was rich, handsome and a standout among the powerboat set. U.S. Customs agents were so impressed with his Cigarette boats for their ability to reach speeds that helped them elude easy capture, they commissioned Aronow to build an intercept vessel dubbed Blue Thunder. Problem: The 59-year-old Cigarette boat founder and powerboat racer came to the attention of the wrong people. On Feb. 3, 1987, Aronow died on a dead-end street dubbed Thunderboat Alley, so-named for the Formula, Donzi, Magnum and Cigarette racing boats he sold nearby at his USA Racing office in what is now Aventura. Benjamin Kramer was jailed for ordering the hit, carried out by triggerman Bobby Young for $60,000. Prosecutors argued that Kramer, a rival who owned a casino and raced powerboats, wanted Aronow dead over a business dispute. 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A group of investors, some linked to the Gambino crime family, gathered to buy the fleet but the deal collapsed and Boulis began making plans to regain the company. The move would prove his undoing. Two men pleaded guilty after their original convictions were overturned. Mob hit at steakhouse A member of the Gambino family, Thomas ''The Enforcer'' Altamura, a Mafia hitman, turned up for dinner on a 1967 Halloween night at the popular A Place for Steak restaurant on the 79th Street Causeway in North Bay Village. He would never enjoy his last meal. As Altamura, 53, strolled inside, rival Anthony 'Big Tony' Esperti, 37, a former boxer, rose from his seat at the Harbor Lounge bar and pumped five slugs into Altamura. Big Tony was a big hit with the crime scene investigators. 'What a beautiful hole that is,' the medical examiner was overheard saying when he saw the victim's head wound. Big Tony was sentenced to life for his handiwork and died in 2002. Stanley Cohen socialite murder Stanley Cohen, 52, a successful developer, married his secretary, Joyce McDillon, in 1974. Twelve years later, his wife, by then a cocaine-sniffing socialite, was convicted of hiring three hit men to kill Cohen in the bedroom of their Coconut Grove mansion on South Bayshore Drive. During her trial three years later in 1989, Frank Zuccarello testified, under a grant of immunity, that he, along with two thug pals, Anthony Caracciolo and Tommy Joslin, were hired by Joyce to kill Stanley on March 7, 1986. The wealthy developer, father of former WPLG-Local 10 reporter Gerri Helfman, was found with four bullet wounds to his skull as he slept in the couple's bedroom on a king-sized brass bed. Joyce was convicted of murdering her husband and sentenced to 25 years to life. In 2013, the Florida Parole Commission voted to set a target release date of April 2048. She would be 97. Facebook killer Derek Medina, 31, a Coral Gables High 2001 graduate, lived his life on social media, but few were interested. All of that changed on Aug. 8, 2013, when the South Miami man posted a grisly photo on Facebook: the corpse of his wife, 26-year-old Jennifer Alonso, as she lay slumped on the kitchen floor of the townhouse they shared on the corner of Miller Drive and Ludlam Road. Attached to the ghoulish photo Medina wrote: 'Facebook people you'll see me in the news.' What he did, police say, is murder his wife by firing multiple shots at her at close range after the two quarreled. The image, quickly removed by Facebook, went viral. Medina was charged with first-degree murder. He pleaded not guilty, citing self-defense. A jury is expected to hear a trial later this year. Meantime, Medina's self-published book, How I Saved Someone's Life and Marriage and Family Problems Thru Communication, is currently ranked 6,047,498 on Amazon. FDR assassination attempt Would-be presidential assassin Giuseppe Zangara, a Miami bricklayer, had it in for capitalists after the Great Depression and a 1926 Miami hurricane made finding work nearly impossible. Zangara bought a .32-caliber pistol for $8 at a downtown drugstore and two days later, on Feb. 15, 1933, he made his way to Bayfront Park. There, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was giving a speech to the largest crowd assembled in Miami. Zangara, aiming at Roosevelt, got off five shots but missed his target when a Miami housewife, Lillian Cross, grabbed his arm, and screamed, 'Don't do that!' But a wayward bullet struck Anton J. Cermak, the mayor of Chicago, in the stomach. He died from the wound weeks later on March 6. Justice was swift. Zangara was executed in the electric chair on March 20. He, too, was in a hurry. 'Pusha the button,' were his last words.
2 days ago
Trump vowed to deport the 'worst of the worst' -- but new data shows a shift to also arresting non-criminals
President Donald Trump campaigned for president on the promise of mass deportations that targeted criminals -- and while ICE agents have arrested over 38,000 migrants with criminal convictions, new data shows a recent shift toward also arresting those who have not been accused of crimes. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has arrested an increasing number of migrants with no criminal convictions, according to an ABC News analysis of Immigration and Customs Enforcement data. The numbers, which were obtained through a public records lawsuit and released by the Deportation Data Project at the University of California Berkeley, give the first real glimpse of how Trump's immigration enforcement policy is playing out in the streets. Over the first five months of the Trump administration, ICE has arrested over 95,000 individuals, according to data analyzed by ABC's owned television stations' data team. At the start of the administration, ICE tended to target migrants with pending or criminal convictions. From Inauguration Day to May 4, 2025, 44% of those arrested had a criminal conviction, while 34% of those arrested had pending charges and 23% had no criminal history, according to the data. But beginning May 25, the data appears to show there was a shift in enforcement -- with individuals with criminal convictions making up only 30% of those arrested. Those arrested with pending criminal charges accounted for 26% of the individuals arrested and 44% had no criminal history. "It looks like there's been a shift from about Memorial Day this year up until now, to an increasing number of people who have been detained who have no criminal charges," said Austin Kocher, a professor at Syracuse University who reviewed the data. "We hear a lot about the administration deporting the worst of the worst. And as far as we can tell from all available data up to this point, the data has not really supported that," Kocher said. The data is largely divided into three groups of individuals: those who have criminal convictions, those with pending charges, and those who may be facing civil immigration charges, labeled as "other immigration violators." However, the data provides no indication of what kind of crimes the individuals may be accused or convicted of. In Los Angeles, where ICE raids recently sparked large demonstrations, and in the New York City area, almost 60% of those arrested by ICE in the first ten days of June had no criminal convictions nor any pending criminal charges, according to the data. Asked about the shift, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told ABC News, "We are not going to disclose law enforcement sensitive intelligence and methods. 70% of the arrests ICE made were of criminal illegal aliens." "We are continuing to go after the worst of the worst -- including gang members, pedophiles, and rapists," McLaughlin said. "Under Secretary [Kristi] Noem, we are delivering on President Trump's and the American people's mandate to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens and make America safe." The majority of administration's migrant arrests have taken place in Texas, the state with the longest southern border. But the data also shows that enforcement has largely shifted away from apprehensions at the southern border to apprehensions in the interior of the country. John Sandweg, the former acting director of ICE under President Barack Obama, told ABC News that the shift in enforcement is not a surprise, considering that illegal border crossings are down dramatically. "For the last probably 15 years at least, the majority of ICE arrests, people booked into ICE custody or ICE apprehensions, were individuals apprehended at the border. But now, the administration is very sensitive to the numbers and has started putting ICE under pressure," Sandweg said, referring to Trump's call for more migrants to be deported. "The problem is that you are now engaged in operations that are, frankly, more likely to find non-criminals than criminals," Sandweg said. As ABC News previously reported, ICE's latest tactic has been arresting individuals at immigration courts. In most cases, when a deportation case is dismissed, it is a positive outcome for a migrant, attorneys told ABC News -- but according to immigration attorneys and advocates, immigration enforcement officers have been waiting in immigration court buildings and coordinating with DHS lawyers to arrest migrants promptly after their cases are dismissed, after which the migrants are placed into expedited removal proceedings without allowing them to fight their case. "If there's anything that says this isn't about serious criminal enforcement, it's this wholesale dismissal of cases of the people who are showing up in immigration court," Sandweg said. "I mean, you want to find the place where you're least likely to find dangerous criminals -- it's the people who show up for their immigration court hearings." Sandweg said these new types of enforcement, including courthouse arrests, are being made in an effort to achieve quotas set by the Trump administration. "It's another way to just quickly make some arrests," Sandweg said. The administration, meanwhile, says it's continuing its efforts to target accused criminals. At a press conference on Friday, Attorney General Pam Bondi said federal authorities have arrested 2,711 alleged multinational gang members since Trump re-took office in January. "You should all feel safer that President Trump can deport all of these gangs and not one district court judge can think they're emperor over this Trump administration and his executive powers," she said.
