This is a true story according to a recent issue of Road and Track
Magazine:
When a man attempted to siphon gasoline from a motorhome parked on a
Seattle street, he got much more than he bargained for. Police
arrived at the scene to find an ill man curled up next to a
motorhome near spilled sewage. A police spokesman said that the man
admitted to trying to steal gasoline and plugged his hose into the
motorhome`s sewage tank by mistake.
The owner of the vehicle declined to press charges, saying that it
was the best laugh he’d ever had.
SUBJ: Know Your Target
Three guys decided, late one night, to rob a petrol station. Taking
in baseball bats and knives they entered and demanded money from the
station clerk. But they weren’t aware of a couple of rather
important things:
- The clerk was an ex-Israeli.
- The clerk was an ex-Isreali Army officer.
- The clerk was an ex-Isreali unarmed-combat instructor.
Needless to say they ended up in hospital. For a long time. (No charges were
pressed by the petrol station owner, and the police decided that
there wasn’t much point following through.)
SUBJ: Stupidity Squared
A woman was reporting her car as stolen, and mentioned that there
was a car phone in it. The policeman taking the report called the
phone, and told the guy that answered that he had read the ad in the
newspaper and wanted to buy the car.
They arranged to meet, and the thief was arrested.
SUBJ: Calling Cards of the Terminally Stupid
Excerpted from the Waterbury Republican newspaper, 11/4/96
(Waterbury, Connecticut)
PENNSAUKEN, N.J. - A would-be-burglar allegedly left behind just the
ticket for police to nab their man.
It seems Jose Sanchez needed to make sure the door to Hill-Rom Corp.
wouldn’t fully close while he allegedly looted the place, police
said — so he stuck a piece of paper in the door: a traffic ticket
he’d been issued the night before.
Police found the ticket Thursday — with Sanchez’s name and address
on it — in the door at the robbery scene. He’d been issued the
ticket for driving with a cracked windshield.
Sanchez, 31, was arrested at his Camden home and jailed on $5,000
bail. Authorities recovered some of the stolen property at a Camden
tavern.
SUBJ: Officer! Arrest That Man!
Police in Cottonwood(?), Idaho, were amused when they arrived to
write up a burglary, and the homeowner told them that the thief got
his VCR, his bong, and his stash of marijuana. Luckily, however, the
thief had missed his marijuana pipe. The police ticketed the guy for
possession of drug paraphernalia.
SUBJ: Smarter Than The Average Rock
By Maki Becker
Special to the Times
28 August 1996
The way police told it, Southwest Los Angeles home-invasion robbery
suspect Carlos Hawthorne was trying to throw detectives off his
trail.
Hawthorne, 20, was one of two men who allegedly invaded Vanessa
Arlene Sells’ home Sunday, shot her and her daughter, and fled in
their 1992 Lexus.
Police said Hawthorne called them about 7:30 p.m. Monday to report
that he had seen three men running away from a Lexus near the 2500
block of Clyde Avenue in Culver City.
Police officers from the LAPD’s special-problems unit responded to
Hawthorne’s call and spotted the Lexus. Meanwhile, Hawthorne
remained on the phone with a communications operator who was able to
determine where he was calling from: a phone booth at 3560 La
Cienaga Blvd., less than a mile from where the car was found.
The officers found Hawthorne at the phone booth, still talking to
the operator and with the keys to the Lexus in his hand, and
detained him. When they searched his pockets, they found a silver
necklace and a bracelet that matched the description of jewelry that
had been stolen from Sells’ home. They later booked him on charges
of robbery and attempted murder.
SUBJ: Stupidity Update, Take One
45 year-old Amy Brasher was arrested in San Antonio, Texas, after a
mechanic reported to police that 18 packages of marijuana were
packed in the engine compartment of the car which she had brought to
the mechanic for an oil change. According to police, Brasher later
said that she didn’t realize that the mechanic would have to raise
the hood to change the oil.
Portsmouth, R.I. Police charged Gregory Rosa, 25, with a string of
vending machine robberies in January when he (1) fled from police
inexplicably when they spotted him loitering around a vending
machine and (2) later tried to post his $400 bail in coins.
Karen Lee Joachimmi, 20, was arrested in Lake City, Florida for
robbery of a Howard Johnson’s motel. She was armed with only an
electric chain saw, which was not plugged in.
The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a
Burger King in Ypsilanti, Michigan at 7:50am, flashed a gun and
demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn’t
open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered
onion rings, the clerk said they weren’t available for breakfast.
The man, frustrated, walked away.
David Posman, 33, was arrested recently in Providence, R.I, after
allegedly knocking out an armored car driver and stealing the
closest four bags of money. It turned out they contained $800 in
PENNIES, weighed 30 pounds each, and slowed him to a stagger during
his getaway so that police officers easily jumped him from behind.
The Belgium news agency Belga reported in November that a man
suspected of robbing a jewelry store in Liege said he couldn’t have
done it *because he was busy breaking into a school at the same
time.* Police then arrested him for breaking into the school.
Drug-possession defendant Christopher Johns, on trial in March in
Pontiac, Michigan, said he had been searched without a warrant. The
prosecutor said the officer didn’t need a warrant because a “bulge”
in Christopher’s jacket could have been a gun. Nonsense, said
Christopher, who happened to be wearing the same jacket that day in
court. He handed it over so the judge could see it. The judge
discovered a packet of cocaine in the pocket and laughed so hard he
required a five-minute recess to compose himself.
SUBJ: Stupidity Update, Take Two
“Not Two Good at Speling”
Deseret News, January 30, 1989
Clever drug traffickers used a propane tanker truck entering El Paso
from Mexico. They rigged it so propane gas would be released from
all of its valves while the truck concealed 6,240 pounds of
marijuana. They were clever, but not bright. They misspelled the
name of the gas company on the side of the truck.
SUBJ: Careless Robber Leaves Fingerprint
Los Angeles Times, July 27, 1977
Chicago - A man robbing a dry cleaning store blew off part of one
finger with a shotgun, police said.
“This is no toy; the gun is loaded,” the robber said to his victims
Monday in the Pekin Cleaners on Chicago’s south side.
Police said the robber, wearing a red handkerchief over his face and
carrying a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun, then opened the gun to show
it was loaded. When he closed it, the weapon fired, taking off
two-thirds of the little finger of his left hand. After the gun
fired, he took $10 from the cash register and a portable television
set from the counter and fled.
Police said they recovered the tip of the finger and were able to
get a fingerprint. A store employee, Hattie Butler, said she did not
realize the robber had injured himself because he did not show any
signs of pain.
SUBJ: An Important Post Script
Deseret News, November 1985
Oklahoma City - Dennis Newton was on trial for the armed robbery of
a convenience store in a district court this week when he fired his
lawyer. Assistant district attorney Larry Jones said Newton, 47, was doing a
fair job of defending himself until the store manager testified that
Newton was the robber.
Newton jumped up, accused the woman of lying and then said, “I
should of blown you [expletive] head off.”
The defendant paused, then quickly added, “– if I’d been the one
that was there.”
The jury took 20 minutes to convict Hewton and recommend a 30-year
sentence.
SUBJ: Police Computer System Works Well
Deseret News, October 16, 1988
R.C. Gaitlin, 21, walked up to two patrol officers who were showing
their squad car computer equipment to children in a Detroit
neighborhood. When he asked how the system worked, the officers asked
him for a piece of identification. Gaitlin gave them his driver’s
license, they entered it into the computer, and moments later they
arrested Gaitlin because information on the screen showed that Gaitlin
was wanted for a two-year-old armed robbery in St. Louis, Missouri.
Law/Crime, Urban Legends