TF Archives

Most Wanted Village People cop caught

Author: Jonty Skrufff
Friday, April 7, 2006

Disco superstar turned ‘most wanted’ FBI fugitive Victor Willis was behind bars this week after cops nabbed the bail jumper in a routine traffic stop in San Francisco.

The former Village People star, who appeared in the group as the cop, co-wrote and performed some of the ‘70s pop group’s biggest hits, including In The Navy and YMCA, though found himself in serious trouble in July 2005 when he was busted in possession of a loaded gun and crack cocaine. Already on probation, he missed two sentencing hearings, reportedly once because he had a dentist appointment, at which point he ended up on the run and on America’s Most Wanted fugitive list.

San Francisco prosecutor Morley Pitt, who told Reuters he remains a fan of Willis’s biggest hit YMCA, said the law-breaking actor cop now faces up to five years in jail.

"It's just sad that his life has spiralled down to the point where in all likelihood he's going to go to prison," the district attorney added, "You never like to see anybody go to prison, let alone somebody who is 54 years old."

Willis’s fall from grace came almost thirty years after the Village People took disco to the very top of America’s pop charts with a recipe of incredibly catchy, ridiculously camp gay anthems that bizarrely alienated gays as much as they captivated straights, according to disco historian Peter Shapiro.

“The irony was that Village People were practically personae non gratae in the gay clubs,” he wrote in his recent history of club culture book Turn the Beat Around.

“Instead, the Village People got most of their plays at aerobics classes for senior citizens, at barbecues by car mechanics who thought YMCA was about playing basketball, at strait-laced high school proms in Kansas and at children’s playgroups.”

In a further irony, LA cops admitted this week that they’re having so many problems recruiting officers they’ve abandoned their zero tolerance policy on drug use.

"We no longer say if you've smoked marijuana five times, you can't be in the LAPD,” recruitment Commander Kenneth Garner told the Washington Post.

“If we did that, I'd be sitting in this office by myself.”

www.skrufff.com 
Tags