What's the dumbest crime you ever witnessed or were a victim of?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I was investigating a stabbing at work.

“Who stabbed you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know his name? Okay, what did he look like?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was he covering his face?”
“I didn’t look at him.”
“You didn’t look at him? Somebody stabbed you three times in the stomach and you didn’t think you should take a look to see what was going on?”

But he was more convincing than the guy who had a balloon of cocaine up his ass but told me the cocaine didn’t belong to him and he didn’t know how it got there.

22

I witnessed a fight between two buskers (street musicians) over a ‘territory’ in a subway station. The younger guy grabbed the older guy’s trumpet and smashed it, then took off running and got on a train. He was later arrested and plead guilty (I was on hand as a witness, but never called to testify).

It was particularly stupid because by starting a fight with multiple witnesses, he lost the ‘territory’ by having to flee, and probably lost busking income that day.

23

Didn’t witness this but I believe it’s true: A friend’s car broke down, had it towed to a nearby garage. They didn’t diagnose the problem correctly and spent a day and half before simply replacing a coil. When he came to pick it up they wanted to charge him $400+ because of all the time they spent on it, he refused, they wouldn’t let him have his car, so he called the state police. An officer arrived and instructed the garage owner he could only demand the book value for replacing the coil to return the car and if he felt more was owed he’d have to take it to court. The garage owner said fine, accepted a credit card for the $120 or whatever it was, and then told my friend “If I ever see you again I’ll break your arm”, right in front of the trooper, who cuffed him on the spot.

24

My wife’s apartment was broken into before we were married, but all they stole was a can of frozen orange juice. The police thought it might be because some people keep valuables in the freezer. But in this case it was just orange juice.

Regards,
Shodan

25

I take the 5th!

26

My house was burgled when I was a senior in high school. The burglars managed to get the only things in the house worth any money - my mom’s diamond ring and my dad’s vintage baseball card collection. But they also stole my new Airwalk sneakers, which weren’t KMart shoes but it’s not like they were Jordans. They cost me about $60 and I loved them and was devastated about it. Oh also about having my home invaded.

My best friend and I sat in the hallway at lunch every day for a week hoping to see my shoes walk by. They never did.

27

A fifth goes well with orange juice. :smiley:

28

In 2001, I was commuting from suburban Chicago to downtown, using the CTA Blue Line, and would park my car in a lot at the station. I came back to my car one evening, to find the left rear passenger window smashed in. The only thing that was missing from the car was about $2 in change, which had been sitting in a cupholder.

I called the local police, and the responding officer told me that such break-ins were common in that lot. He said that the perpetrator(s) were nearly always looking for CDs, which they would then try to sell while riding on the train. My CD case was still in the car; I have to guess that the person didn’t think that CDs by Electric Light Orchestra, Yes, and Queen would sell well. :smiley:

29

We came back from vacation one summer to find that our detached garage had been broken into. Of all of the things in there (power saws, a small farm tractor, riding lawn mower, weed whacker, front end loader, rolling tool boxes, etc), the only things missing were four ducks from the deep freezer and a case of beer from the fridge.

30

I pulled a girl over for speeding and she gave a false name. I think this the only time I arrested someone for obstructing when they had no reason to lie. Her license was valid. No warrants. Nothing. The worst she would have gotten was a ticket and she might not have be given that. She was from a family that taught their kids to lie to police before they could walk. Basically the TV show Shameless.

Your posting privileges are under review.

31

My grandmother used to grow poppies in her front yard. Some genius decided that he could make opium and dug up all her poppies one night.

My other grandmother had a nutty next door neighbor who had a barbed wire cactus in her front yard. One night, some of the local high school guys decided to rope it from the back of someone’s pick up. My granddad heard them and they drove off before they could do more than bend one of the arms. (It was a saguaro barbed wire cactus)

About two weeks later they tried it again, only this time when they drove off they left the roper behind. Seems Mrs. Pearce decided that it would be too easy to steal her cactus, so she had it set in cement. The guys couldn’t see the change in the dark. When they hit the gas, instead of pulling up the cactus, it pulled the guy with the rope clean out of the truck.

So I didn’t really witness either crime, but I saw the hole in one yard and a the bent cactus in the other.

32

Golf Clap

33

Two items, vehicle-related:

In my working-on-drilling-rig days, I left my car in the company parking lot in Denver to go out to the field. When I came back a few days later, someone had broken a window to (apparently) take the volume control and tuning knobs off the stereo.

During my living-in-Paris days, I once watched a couple of guys screech to a halt in front of my place and leap out of their vehicles to argue some point of traffic etiquette. The discussion grew more and more heated until one driver aimed a kick at the other’s front fender, caving it in. This prompted the other guy to retaliate by kicking a huge dent in his opponent’s door. This tit-for-tat continued for a while, until the fight just sort of petered out and both finally drove off, having done thousands of Euros-worth of damage to their cars.

34

I join the clap.

We’re not, uh, not talking about skinnydipping in a privately-owned lake late at night, right? Because I know nothing about that.

My roommate once had someone break into his car and steal his running shoes. They left their beat up crappy old sneakers behind in their place, which somehow didn’t make him feel any better.

35

Sounds like the work of pirates. Those guys are always having problems with scurvy.

36

One of my first burglary calls as a young police officer was a person who walked through 4 inches of freshly fallen snow to their neighbors house, used his own hammer on the window next to the back door to gain entry and took the neighbor’s TV and beer.
He left the hammer behind, which had his initials carved into it, just like every other tool he owned.

Now I know you are all thinking…how am I not working in some high profile, cushy sleuthing job? But I confess, the homeowner had it figured out by the time I got there, but was smart enough to not disturb anything.
I walked next door and talked to the suspect, who, upon seeing that he had been outwitted by not only this young sherlock in uniform, but mother nature and the neighbor, he immediately gave me a full confession. Of course I arrested him and he was bonded out before I had even finished the report.
Two weeks later, the homeowner came in and dropped all charges. It seems the neighbor bought him twice the beer he took, returned the TV and fixed the window, apologized profusely and promised to cut his grass, fix whatever needed fixing etc if he would drop the charges.

I checked later on that summer and found that the suspect had followed through with all of his promises and he and the victim were best of friends now.

37

Many years ago when I was a bank teller, one of the other tellers got robbed by a man who pretended to have a gun in his pocket. He timed it perfectly so he walked out of the bank, across the street, and got on a bus.
The dumb part was that he was a customer and we all knew who he was. The police got his name and address off his file and went to his house and arrested him.

When I lived in the city some dumb ass drug dealers decided to print up coupons for their customers. Buy four of anything and get the fifth one free. They put their name, address, and telephone number on the front of the coupons and drew a map on the back.

Friend’s son, and I don’t know if my friend was more embarrassed that his son committed a crime, or that he committed such a stupid one.
His son, nephew, and two of their friends decided to rob a pizza delivery guy. They used a cell phone to order the pizza and gave an address about two blocks away. They went and stood in front of that house and waited for the delivery man to show up. When he showed up one of the guys pulled a gun on him and took the pizzas and his cash - $25. The police were called and the dog basically followed the smell of the food to my friend’s house, where the dumb asses were eating the pizzas. That is when they found out the nephew had lied about getting $25, it was really $125. The four of them spent 2+ years in jail for $31.25 and a pizza.

Two guys I knew… I don’t know if this counts.
They were into crack and thought they were slick. The cut the corners off a $50 bill and glued them onto $1 bills. Then they’d head downtown to buy crack. They’d fold the bills so the dealer could see only the corner with the 50 on it, so they’d get $50 worth of crack for a $1. I told them they’d get away with it exactly twice. The first time the dealer didn’t notice until they were pulling away. He shouted and chased them but they were in a car and got away. The second time they went to a different corner. The third time, as I predicted, the dealers were waiting for them. Those two were very lucky they got out of there in one piece. Incredibly stupid to mess with drug dealers.

38

This reminded me of another story:

When my now-brother-in-law was single, he lived in an apartment building about a block from the Austin Avenue entrance ramp to the Eisenhower Expressway in Chicago. He had an older car, which he parked in a small parking lot behind his apartment.

He was awakened at 3 a.m. by his phone ringing. He answered it, and was greeted by an officer from the Illinois State Police.

“Mr. [Name], are you aware of the current whereabouts of your car?”

BIL looked out the window of his apartment, and saw an empty space where he’d parked his car.

“No, sir, I’m not. It’s not where I parked it last night.”

“We just found your car, abandoned, on the shoulder of the Eisenhower. Mr. [Name], I need to ask…do you own a shotgun?”

“Ummm…no, sir. Why?”

“We found a shotgun in the back seat of your car.”

“Well, that’s definitely not mine.”

“We suspected that it wasn’t.”

It appeared that the thief had hotwired the car, but it then broke down a few miles later, and the thief likely then just walked away from it, not wanting to be seen walking along the shoulder of the Ike, carrying a shotgun.

When my BIL got the car back, he discovered that the thief had opened the trunk of the car at some point, and, while he’d left the shotgun, he had stolen the contents of the trunk, consisting of a leather jacket and a large bottle of Tide laundry detergent.

39

The dog was taken for a mental evaluation, too.

40

Someone smashed my car window in order to steal my stereo.

Only, my car was unlocked. They could have just opened the door. They didn’t even try it, or maybe they just wanted to smash something. (Have had days like that myself.)