Hooker Escapes Police in New York City in Stolen Police Van
"Added May 13, 2002"


NEW YORK (AP) - A 35-year-old prostitute sometimes 
known as Dimples allegedly slipped out of her handcuffs
after she was arrested, stole a police van and escaped 
to New Jersey.

She dumped the van in Secaucus, N.J., where she was 
rearrested while walking barefoot along Route 3 with a sack 
full of bullets, handcuffs, keys and other police equipment,
officials said.

The latter-day Houdini, who gave her name as Tacoma Hopps, 
initially was picked up Monday at 2:15 a.m. in Manhattan, 
where she allegedly was streetwalking. Police handcuffed her
behind her back and shoved her into a Ford minivan being used
for suspects.

A few minutes later, officers left her alone in the van 
so they could join in another arrest. Then Hopps, who has
a 77-page record dating to 1985, squeezed out of the steel
shackles, jumped in the drivers seat and sped to New Jersey
via the Lincoln Tunnel, police said.

Hopps allegedly ditched the van in Secaucus and started walking
to the residence she had given to New York police, the Royal
Motel, which was offering a $30 special on a room with a
waterbed.

"It was 3:36 a.m., a woman was walking the highway, and she 
wasn't wearing shoes," Secaucus Detective Lt. John Buckley
told the Daily News. "Based upon a police investigation after
that observation, she was arrested.

The van was found a mile away.

Hopps, whose aliases include Dimples, Precious and Linda Cooper,
has been arrested 135 times in the New York area in the last 15 years,
primarily for prostitution. She told investigators she slipped away
from the vice police because she's wanted on a warrant in Georgia
for violating probation.


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