Feckless Criminals

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Here’s an amusing story of a robbery that caught my eye in, The Toledo Blade, our local newspaper, today. And the link is here. It will be available on-line for the next week only.

It appears a man held up a small pizza joint using a “sex toy” as a weapon. He also had his face covered with, what the clerk described as a surgical mask, and wore a green hat. The man escaped on foot with a grand total of $40. Police were summoned and searched the surrounding area. A couple blocks away they found the hat and what he was apparently wearing as a mask, which turns out to be a jockstrap. The police also retrieved $20 of the $40 stolen dollars. Investigations continue.

At the risk of encouraging the posting of Urban Legends, I’d like to hear some other local tales of the feckless criminal element.

Here’s mud in yer eye,
UncleBeer

2

1993 – Testimony in February of an undercover District of Columbia police officer, who “agreed” to murder a woman on contract from her husband but who then saw the husband change his mind: “He realized he still cares for her. So he said he’d rather have her severely beaten.” And in Tampa, Fla., in October, Richard G. Hale testified that the shot he fired into his wife’s forehead, killing her, obviously was accidental: “I wanted to shock her without hurting her. If I wanted to kill her, I would have shot her in the heart.”

1992 – Sean Lee Qualls, 21, walked into 4th District police headquarters in Washington, D.C., in July and asked by name for the officer who had arrested him the day before for disorderly conduct. When the desk officer asked why, Qualls said he wanted to beat the man up. Qualls and his companion then jumped over the front desk and began beating the two desk officers but were soon subdued.

1996 – In Little Rock, Ark., in August, Donterio Beasley, 19, called a police station to say that he was stranded and needed a ride downtown, but the dispatcher told him that was against policy. A few minutes later, Beasley called back to report a suspicious person loitering around a phone booth and gave a description of himself, believing that police would come, give him a ride downtown for questioning, then release him. He was charged with making a false alarm.

1994 – Police arrested James Mullin, 17, in Schaumburg, Ill., in February after he tried to buy beer at Cove Liquor by using a stolen ID card that of “Douglas Sharbaugh.” The man behind the counter at Cove Liquor knew it was stolen because he is Douglas Sharbaugh, who had had his license taken in a truck break-in two months earlier. Mullin fled but left his wallet, which contained his real driver’s license.

All courtesy of Chuck Smith…

  • Rick
3

See Bozo Criminal of the Day for a daily reminder that we need more chlorine in the gene pool. http://www.electricferret.com/bozo/

4

Being a banker, I have seen/heard about many robberies. Here are a couple of classics:

-Man robs bank. Man hails cab for getaway. Police call cab company. Cab company says “Oh, yeah, we took that guy to (address)”. Police go to address, arrest robber, and recover all money except cab fare.

-Man hands teller paper sack with “this is a robbery” note. Teller puts money and dye pack in bag and returns bag to robber. Robber shoves bag down the front of his pants to conceal the evidence. Dye pack goes off in parking lot. Heat, tear gas, and red dye in the crotch must not be pleasent, as indicated by wild gyrations while robber attempts to remove the smoking bag from his pants. All money recovered, robber apprehended in much pain. Caught him red…um…handed, so to speak.

It’s a good thing most bank robbers are stupid or our insurance premiums would be much higher.

The overwhelming majority of people have more than the average (mean) number of legs. – E. Grebenik

5

This link has weird news in general, but includes a number of “stupid criminal” stories.
http://www.newsoftheweird.com/

Shadowfox

Flee at once, all is discovered!

6

Here’s a few:

  1. A couple of guys had heard that if you smear lemon juice on your face, the security cameras won’t be able to get a clear picture of you. So they go into a bank, lemon juice all over their faces, and try to rob it. They were arrested.

  2. A couple of criminals were trying to make their escape (in Baltimore, I think), and they ran into the cast and crew of “Homicide” where they were filming the show on the street. The actors portraying the cops, well, they acted like cops, and were able to hold them till the real cops got there. They were arrested.

  3. These guys take some chains and attach an ATM to their pickup truck. They slam on the gas to get away, and they actually do manage to rip the ATM out and start dragging it down the road. Unfortunately for them, they come up on a red light at a busy intersection, and they slam on the brakes. The truck stops, but the ATM doesn’t, and jams itself up under the truck, lifting its rear wheels off the ground. They were arrested.

7

I’ve heard a version where they weren’t able to get the ATM out of the wall because the bumper fell off the truck… with the license plate still on it :smiley:

Coldfire

"You know how complex women are"

  • Neil Peart, Rush (1993)
8

Nice posts…and of course Chuck Shepherd collects these for News of the Weird. But one thing puzzles me: Unc, why would you want feckful criminals?

9

Damn good point, Poly. I dunno.

10

<small>This story was in the USA Today many months ago. (I noted it because it happened in my hometown.) I don’t have the details, but it isn’t a UL:</small>

Three young thieves held up a bank. The next day, the female of the group took some clothes to the dry cleaner. In one of her pockets was the hold-up note. The police were contacted, and all three were arrested.

<small>Another from the Washington Post:</small>
CALL FOR HELP BACKFIRES ON FAIRFAX CITY MAN

Fairfax City police, responding to a call that someone was yelling for help in a town house parking lot, found a man with his hand wedged under a car's dashboard.
Officers freed the man's hand and determined that he had been trying to steal the car's stereo when he got stuck, according to a police report. The incident occurered early Monday outside the Oxford Row town housed on Rock Garden Drive.
The man was treated for three broken fingers at a local hospital.
Miguel Avalos-Rivero, 28, of the 3700 block of Jermantown Road, was charged with auto tamperine, attempted grand larceny and being drunk in public, police said.

What would Brian Boitano do / If he was here right now /
He’d make a plan and he’d follow through / That’s what Brian Boitano would do.

11

Hey. One of my favorites is a story about a guy who was speeding on a highway. The highway was equipped with radar/speed checking equipment along with cameras. The camera took a photo of him speeding, and the police mailed him the photo, along with an “invoice” for his fine: $140 bucks. What the driver mailed back to the police: a photo of $140. When the police mailed him a photo of a pair of handcuffs, I believe he got the gist and payed the fine.

Hey, if it ain’t broke, give ME a shot at it.

12

About 7 years ago I was working for a painting company on Capitol Hill across the street from my house. We were painting parking garages and would finish up at about 4 AM. While unloading the truck at 4 in the morning, a guy comes up to us offering to sell us a typewriter, telephone answering machine, small color TV, and some other stuff. We declined to purchase anything. The next morning I talked to my Dad who told me that the basement apartment (yes the same one involved in the “2 truths and a lie” thread) had been broken into. What was stolen? “The typewriter, telephone answering machine, small color TV, etc…”

Unfortunately, we had less feck than the criminal did.

13

Here’s some interesting dumb criminal stories: http://www3.tactics.com/Peer_Research/capers.html

14

Poly: Aw, feck 'em. :stuck_out_tongue: