No funny news reports from Florida - it has to be something you were involved with.
In my case, about six years ago, somebody stole the venetian blinds from my windows.
By “dumbest crime”, do you mean dumbest perpetrator of a crime, or dumbest example of something that legislators in their infinite wisdom have criminalized?
I was in a buffet once that had a sign saying “state law requires diners to take a clean plate each trip to the buffet”. I saw a guy refill his dirty plate, and I called the TIPS hotline to report it, but the police did not seem interested. I suspect that in actual fac,t he state law only requires the restaurant to post tht sign.
I live in an area of very small towns, but the municipalities all have interconnected governments.
Some stupid criminal stole a bunch of cash money in one town and went into the next town two blocks away, thinking the cops couldn’t catch him there.
Something something mattress tags. You’ve all been great, don’t forget to tip your servers.
Someone once broke into (as in opened the unlocked door) a friend’s car while we were at the mall and stole a little crudely sculpted figure I made out of Blue Tack on the drive over and set on his dashboard. You could see the clean spots from where his feet were but he was mysteriously gone.
I was standing in the street, having parked and exited my car when I was clipped by a senior citizen riding a moped. A little more than my dignity was hurt as the impact bounced me off my closed car door and I sprained my wrist while breaking my fall. I broke a nail and ruined my hose, so property damage was also involved.
Technically this was a hit-and-run as the old coot never slowed down or bothered to see if I was ok. After some thought on the matter, I decided against filing a police report. The reason, I am sure, is obvious.
Someone broke into my truck while I was at work one night and stole a reusable supermarket shopping bag. Cash value 49 cents. Nothing else was taken. Truck was not damaged.
One cold February day, a guy and his dog broke into my Boss’s 2000 Mercedes Benz, and stayed there until the cops arrived. I had to tell the 911 operator three times what happened before she got it.
The cops took the guy away for a mental evaluation. I don’t know what happened to the dog.
Back in the 70s, I was a deputy sheriff. One of the other deputies made a traffic stop and the guy ran. The chase came into my area, so I joined in. We finally caught him and asked him why he ran. He said that he thought he had a warrant out for failure to appear - for a previous traffic violation. He didn’t.
His stupidity got him a felony evading charge and I don’t know how many other traffic citations.
I left my car unlocked one night. The next morning, I found the glove-box open and a few things out of place. The only thing I noticed missing was a flashlight.
I use the flashlight so rarely that the batteries are usually dead when I do need it. I am surprised that it was even worth stealing.
It’s obvious. He was on his way to break in somewhere else and realized he forgot a bag to put the loot in.
Most trivial irritating crime.
My friend had an old beat up pickup truck…old enough that it only had lap belts, manual windows and an ALL METAL dash…some local criminal broke in and stole the ass tray with all the spare change…my friend wasn’t pissed that the change got stolen…hey, if you need $3 worth of pennies and nickels have at it…he was pissed that said criminal ALSO took the ash tray…
Oh, and someone stole my underwear at the beach once…
If hearing the news reports on the radio counts, way back when I lived in Warren, Ohio, there was a robbery at a convenience store in the very early AM after the first snowfall of the year. The cops didn’t immediately follow the tracks, because if of the directions you could go exiting the store, three of them would get you onto a main road or highway within three blocks.
But after they had all the paperwork done, they had to be complete. They followed the tracks one block this way, then another block that way - and found the car parked in the tracks with the crooks inside, counting out their money.
More personally, I forgot to lock the car once and someone stole the change in the dash and the bathing suit from my gym bag. If they hadn’t also spread things from the glove compartment over the seat, I probably wouldn’t have known.
Didn’t happen to me, personally, but was relayed to me by the receptionist at my dentist’s office.
One of the patients at the office walked in the front door, nodded to the receptionist, picked up the wooden magazine rack and about 20 out-of-date magazines, walked out, put it in his car and drove off. There was nothing special about the magazine rack; it wasn’t an antique or an art piece.
The receptionist was flabbergasted (excuse me … “gobsmacked” for those Dopers more used to reading British papers) and thought it was a practical joke. She recognized the patient and waited for the guy to come back in and laugh about it, but he didn’t. She told the dentist about it later, asking him if he knew what was going on, but he had no clue.
They got a call a little while later from a pawn shop, asking if they really wanted to sell the magazine rack. Apparently, the man went to the pawn shop with the rack and the magazines, and tried to pawn it. One of the employees saw his dentist’s name on the magazine label and called the office.
The police were called and they arrested the man and the magazine rack was eventually returned. I believe the incident was eventually marked up as a “medication” problem, but I don’t know whether it was “forgot to take the meds” or “needed to stop drinking the bong water”.
My mother was hit by a car that ran a stop sign. The guy got out and ran. Police show up and take a report and call for a tow truck for the now abandoned car. While waiting for the tow truck, the officer gets a call on his radio, the now wrecked car was just reported stolen.
The guys wife shows up a few minutes later and verifies it’s her husband’s car. The officer asks her to describe her husband. She describes the guy my mother and my aunt, she was a passenger in my mother’s car, saw running from the car.
I arrived shortly after this and my mother and aunt tell me what happened. I also happen to be driving a tow truck so I could tow my mother’s car. The officer asks me if I would back my wrecker up to the other car. As soon as I do, the guy that was driving it when it hit my mother jumps out of his wife’s car to protest his car being towed. The officer cuffed and stuffed the guy, another wrecker showed up to haul away his car and I tow my mother’s car home.
When I was in Junior High, someone stole my gym shoes. They weren’t some fancy designer brand - it was 1968 and I don’t think there was any such thing as designer sneakers back then. I was majorly pissed because it was the first day I’d worn them, but we were doing floor exercise and they didn’t want anyone wearing shoes on the mats. After class, I went to retrieve them and they were gone.
Someone took the ashtray and about $3 in change from my car. They didn’t bother to look in the unlocked glove compartment where there was a bag with $20 of quarters in it for use at the air pumps and vacuums.
Looking for office space some years back I got to go into the Baseball Card warehouse. Boxes and boxes of every baseball card ever printed. The realtor pointed out the new security system installed after a recent break in. The cops found the perpetrators by following the trail of discarded cards back to the juveniles home down the street.
Back in my college days I was the 6am-9am bartender at a joint near campus (Pitt); this is late 70s. All the regulars (say 20-40 or so most mornings by 8) were off-duty cops and janitors and pretty much everyone was armed. This kid, say a couple years younger than I was, walked past the door one direction, came back the opposite direction, came back a third time, grabbed the door, flung it open, pulled out a sawed-off single-shot shotgun and yelled “THIS IS A STICK------SHIT!!!” as he looked down a rather impressive assortment of barrels. He couldn’t drop his gun fast enough. Some of the people/customers didn’t even stop drinking – just had drawn and aimed towards the door. The cops debated a while who would cuff and handle the paperwork but I stopped the debate by calling the on-duty cops and letting them have it.
Someone stole the $6 bougainvillea I had just planted in our front flower bed (our house was right up next to the sidewalk with just a small bed for a “front yard”). The really ironic thing is that those plants don’t have a very strong root ball and the thief probably killed it by digging it up that way.
I guess you could say he had issues.
mmm
Back around 1990-ish, my pickup truck was broken into in the apartment complex parking lot. I had a boom box and a dozen CDs sitting on the passenger seat but they ignored it to steal this little noise maker thing that looked like a radar detector. Stupid thing only made raygun and machine gun sounds and cost maybe $6.