Cutler still speaks of that shoplifter-in-drag as the strangest criminal she ever—literally—ran into.
The woman had shoplifted women’s clothing from a store in the mall and then assaulted one of the managers.
47
Bad Bribes
A New York cop was working traffic one night when a muscular chap in a small car zipped right through a red light. When the officer pulled the vehicle over and made his approach, the driver immediately identified his occupation. The officer was interested, but not particularly impressed, to learn that the guilty motorist was a masseur. The officer was writing out the ticket when the masseur attempted to bribe the officer by offering him a massage.
He got the ticket anyway—perhaps because the whole experience just rubbed the officer the wrong way.
48
Type Ohhhhhhh!
When Charlie Beavers broke into a plasma center one Saturday night in Pensacola, Florida, he didn’t get much —primarily because he didn’t get too far.
Now, to a normal, rational mind, breaking into a plasma center might not make much sense. But to Charlie, it seemed like a good idea at the time. So after checking out the building, Charlie removed the top from an air vent on the roof and entered feet first. Great, he thought. I’ll just slide down this air vent, steal everything in sight, and make a clean getaway.
His master plan was going flawlessly until the shaft did a nine-foot vertical drop, causing him to lose his grip. Charlie shot down the duct at a high rate of speed. The experience must have seemed like a ride at the fair— but the ride came to a sudden and painful stop.
Charlie’s air shaft ended approximately three feet above a cross beam that separated two offices. And Charlie reached terminal velocity at about the same time he reached the cross beam. With a force hard enough to break through two ceilings (one leg on each side of the beam), he came to a crushing halt.
Charlie’s legs were now in separate rooms. His arms were wedged tightly inside the shaft, straight up over his head. He was snugly straddling a cross beam.
Charlie spent a long weekend waiting for help. It arrived two days later, in the form of the police responding to a “breaking and entering” call. But then the police had to wait for the fire department to come and extricate Charlie from his predicament. As the luckless burglar was led hobbling away, Officer Pete Bell noticed that “part of his anatomy had swollen up to grapefruit size. And being from Florida, we know our grapefruits.”
Beavers was arrested and charged with breaking and entering. Most officers on the scene agreed that Charlie had served his sentence long before the police ever arrived.
Oh, did we mention that it rained all weekend, right down the shaft and onto Charlie’s face?
49
Sticky Situation
Metropolitan Nashville Police Officer Jeb Johnson gave America’s Dumbest Criminals this scoop about an alarming crime:
While browsing at a chic clothier, nineteen-year-old Jonathan Parker decided that he needed three leather jackets in the worst way. The price was a little too steep, though, so Jonathan decided that he would take a “five-finger discount.” That is, he was going to steal them.
Jonathan surveyed the premises and spotted every shoplifter’s nightmare, a sensor alarm in front of the shop’s exit. He knew the merchandise was tagged with magnetic strips, and if he tried to slip out with any tagged merchandise, the sensor would set off a deafening siren.
Undaunted, Jonathan grabbed some jackets that suited his taste and ducked into the nearest dressing room. Thoroughly searching the jackets, our shoplifter found all the magnetic strips and peeled them off. He found them inside sleeves and pockets, under collars and along the waistband. Jonathan was very proud of himself as he flicked the last of the strips onto the floor. He stuffed the jackets under his coat and boldly walked toward the front door.
A second later the loud, piercing scream of the alarm alerted the security guard, who quickly apprehended our thorough young thief. Jonathan was stunned. Hadn’t he searched every inch of those jackets?
The security guard searched the stolen jackets, and he couldn’t find any magnetic strips either. So why had the alarm gone off?
Then the guard looked a little deeper. He looked right into the sole—the sole of Jonathan’s shoe, that is. And there he discovered four or five of the little magnetic strips, which Jonathan had thrown to the floor and then stepped on. The young man was arrested and charged with shoplifting.
Sticky fingers and sticky shoes—they’ll get you every time.
50
Big Brother Is Watching You
Officer Pete Peterson, now an instructor at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Brunswick, Georgia, was working patrol in a much burglarized Illinois neighborhood several years ago. There had been a robbery in the neighborhood and the perpetrator had been arrested, but the police were looking for a possible pickup car. Officer Peterson stopped a vehicle that fit the profile that had been circulated. He asked the driver for his license, and the man quickly complied.
Peterson glanced at the license, did a quiet double-take, then asked the driver to repeat the information on the license. The driver again cooperated. After several minutes of questioning, however, Peterson said, “I don’t think you’re Mark Peterson.”
“What?” the driver protested. “No, that’s me!”
“I don’t think so,” Peterson repeated.
“I don’t know what you’re getting at,” the driver retorted indignantly. “But I can’t stand here all day. I’ve got an appointment.”
For several more minutes he kept insisting the driver’s license was his and that Pete was wasting his time.
Finally, Officer Peterson showed him his name badge. “You see, my name’s Peterson. I’ve got a little brother named Mark, and this is his driver’s license. My folks live at the address listed here. So I’m pretty sure that you stole this license!”
The driver just sank. “This has been the worst day for me,” he sighed.
The day got even worse when he heard the jail door slam shut. He had three outstanding felony warrants for his arrest.
DUMB CRIMINAL QUIZ NO. 111
How well do you know the dumb criminal mind?
You’re in Raritan, New Jersey, and you’ve just received a ticket. Now, let’s play the matching game. Match the offense with the penalty.
OFFENSE FINE
a) Littering $500.00
b) D.U.I. $250.00
c) Cursing in Public $25.00
d) Public Display of
Affection Not an Offense
Answers: (a) $25.00 (b) $250.00 (c) $500.00 (d) usually not an offense—depending, we suppose, on how affectionate you get!
51
Going My Way?
It seems that some people go out of their way to get into trouble. That’s more or less what happened the night that Nashville Police Officer Floyd A. Hyde unexpectedly became involved in a high-speed chase.
“I was en route to a personal-injury accident in West Nashville, and to get there I had to enter Interstate 40 from I-440. As I merged, blue lights and sirens going, I fell in behind a gold Pontiac Firebird that suddenly seemed to sprout wings and take off down the interstate. The driver apparently panicked at the sight of me. He accelerated to more than a hundred miles per hour and began passing cars on the shoulder. It was obvious that he thought I was after him and was making a run for it.”
But Hyde couldn’t give chase, despite the driver’s reckless behavior. Injured people always take priority over traffic offenders, so the officer had to stay en route to the accident. But he did try to keep the Firebird in sight as he drove, hoping another nearby unit would be able to step in and stop the speeding vehicle. As it turned out, keeping the Pontiac in sight was not that difficult. Every turn the Pontiac made was the very turn the officer needed to get to the accident scene.
“I saw fire billowing out from underneath that car, with blue smoke and oil going everywhere. H
e’d blown his engine. Now he had to stop.”
Hyde followed the Pontiac all the way to his destination. At that point he found another unit had already arrived at the accident scene. His help wasn’t needed. Now he was free to try to stop the nut in the Firebird, who by this time had developed something new to panic about.
“Just about the time my priorities changed,” Hyde says, “I saw fire billowing out from underneath that car, with blue smoke and oil going everywhere. He’d blown his engine. Now he had to stop.
“After I arrested him, I asked him why he was running. He told me he had a suspended driver’s license. When I told him that I hadn’t been after him in the first place, that I would have simply gone around him if he hadn’t taken off like that, and that I wouldn’t have caught him if he hadn’t made every turn I needed to make—well, he got pretty upset.”
That incident cost the driver of the Firebird plenty—a thousand dollars for the new engine plus the expense of having his car towed—not to mention the charges for driving with a suspended license, attempting to elude, and reckless driving.
52
Asleep at the Wheel
Officer Lynn Flanders of the Escambia County Sheriff’s Department in Pensacola, Florida, was dispatched to a convenience store where a man was exposing himself. Another female officer quickly joined her as backup. They arrived to find the flasher still on the scene—but sound asleep!
“The flasher was seated in his car in front of the store, totally naked, and snoring up a storm. So we knocked on the window and woke him up.”
Flanders then explained to the snoozing streaker that he was under arrest for indecent exposure.
The sleepy-eyed criminal didn’t seem all that perturbed, but he did have one request of his arresting officers: “Can I put my clothes on?”
The officers glanced around the car. The only clothes visible in the car were a pair of scuffed shoes and a wad of dirty socks lying on the passenger-side floorboard.
“Well, sir,” Flanders told him, “you can put your shoes on if you want to, but I honestly don’t think it’ll make much difference!”
“Oh, no, Officer,” the naked man explained earnestly. “My clothes are here. They’re just stuck between the seats here.”
Of course. Isn’t that where we all keep our clothes when we sleep naked at the roadside convenience store?
Always willing to serve the public, the two officers helped the suspect retrieve his clothes and waited for him to dress before escorting the fully clothed and wide-awake flasher to his new temporary home in a holding cell.
53
I Can’t Believe It
Once when Officer Donna McCown was working narcotics in a large southwestern city, her department head assigned her to secure two hundred dollars’ worth of crack cocaine from a known drug dealer who had been arrested several times.
McCown had some concerns about the assignment because, as she remembers it, “I’d been around him before and he should have known who I was.” Not only had she been present in the station when he was being booked; she’d also driven around his neighborhood in a marked car and full uniform. She was afraid he might recognize her. But she didn’t realize just how dumb this guy was.
“We met in a motel room that had already been wired for the meeting,” McCown says. “About ten officers were waiting for me outside. The gentleman showed up as expected, but he seemed a little leery at first. He questioned me as to whether I was a police officer, and I responded that I was not, so we proceeded to do the deal.”
But the dealer’s jumpiness continued, increasing McCown’s concerns. Had he recognized her? Was he laying some sort of trap, waiting for her to give herself away?
“This looks like good crack,” she said as loudly as she dared. This was the signal to her backup that the dealer had sold her the dope. But had she said it too loud? Something was clearly wrong, because the dealer grew more fidgety than ever. “Yeah, sure,” he muttered, his eyes darting around the room as he stowed away his two hundred dollars. “Listen, I gotta go now. Got an appointment on the other side of town.”
It turned out she needn’t have worried about the dealer recognizing her. He had other things on his mind.
Tests revealed there was hardly any crack in the concoction he sold her. It had been cut with all sorts of weird stuff, but mostly a sugar substitute. It wasn’t real cocaine. It wasn’t even real sugar. The man had been so embarrassed about the quality of his product and so worried that she would realize how bad it was that he had barely glanced at her.
“I can’t believe you did that to me,” the dealer blurted when McCown and her colleagues arrested him and confiscated his car—rather, his girlfriend’s car.
“I can’t believe you didn’t know me!” she retorted. “And I can’t believe you’re selling Equal for $850 an ounce. It’s a lot cheaper at the grocery store!”
54
Hop in Back
Officer Lynn Flanders, our Florida friend, had a strange experience with a drunk driver one evening.
“I was pulling over a speeder one night when he put the car in park and jumped into the backseat,” she said. “I didn’t know if he was going for a weapon or not, so I called for backup.
“In the minute or two that I waited for backup, the couple in the car seemed to be having a fight. They were arguing so loudly I could hear them from my squad car.”
When Flanders’s backup arrived after a few minutes, she cautiously approached the car she had stopped and peered in the window. A woman sat in the passenger seat with her arms crossed and a furious look on her face.
Flanders asked the woman what she was doing.
“I don’t know, Officer,” she responded. “Why don’t you ask the rocket scientist in the back?”
She gestured toward the disheveled-looking man in the backseat, who looked back with bloodshot eyes.
“Hey, I don’t know what’s going on,” he said with slightly slurred speech and an air of aggrieved innocence. “I’ve been asleep back here the whole time. Just woke up a minute ago.”
“He didn’t say that the woman had been driving,” Flanders recalls. “If he had, I believe she would have been much harder on him than the courts. So he just went with the ghost-driver theory.
“We ran a check and found out he had several warrants on him. He was arrested for D.U.I.”
And poof! Suddenly, he disappeared into the criminal justice system.
55
Good Thinking
To police officers accustomed to hearing outrageous lies and absurd alibis, a truly honest answer can feel like a breath of fresh air—even if that breath has a distinct smell of alcohol. Captain Don Parker of Pensacola, Florida, received such an answer late one night when he stopped a woman he suspected of driving under the influence.
“By the time I got out of my patrol car,” Parker says, “she was already out of her car, staggering back and forth, and obviously very upset with me.”
“Why are you stopping me, Officer?” the obviously intoxicated woman drawled before Parker could say a word.
“Well, ma’am, you were weaving all over the road,” Parker explained. “And you didn’t have your headlights on.”
“Oh, I can explain,” she replied smartly. “You see, I’ve been drinking all night, and I’m very drunk.”
Parker merely nodded.
“Considering my condition,” she finished with unerring and incriminating logic, “I think I’m doing very well.”
He had to agree, even as he took her in.
“Oh, I can explain. You see, I’ve been drinking all night, and I’m very drunk. . . . Considering my condition, I think I’m doing very well.”
56
Read My List
Her second day on the job, a rookie undercover officer in Florida was assigned to purchase some prescription drugs from a known pill dealer. She was given a list of pills to buy and the quantity needed for a good “bust.”
“I wasn’t familiar with any
of them at the time,” she remembers. “I had to write down the names of all the drugs and take the list with me.”
When the officer arrived at the “Pill Palace” with her shopping list, she began placing her order. “You’d think the dealer might have been a little suspicious since I couldn’t tell her what I wanted without consulting my list. I was awful . . . I kept mispronouncing the drugs’ names, and she would even correct me.”
The suspect sold the officer $250 worth of stolen pills and was arrested moments later.
“I saw her later at the station and heard her asking if anyone had an aspirin. Ironic, isn’t it? She had every pill you could imagine, but didn’t have an aspirin!”
57
If You Can’t Beat ’Em . . .
Several years ago in Arkansas, a man robbed a pharmacy clerk at knife point. A few days later, the clerk picked the man out of a photo lineup and pressed charges against him. When the case went to trial, however, the man was nowhere to be found. He had fled the state, and officials had no clue where. They knew he came from New York City, but couldn’t be sure that was where he had gone, and they didn’t know where in New York to look. They really didn’t have much hope of catching him.
Then they got the break they needed to find their criminal. Sure enough, the suspect had returned to New York and had applied for a job. Federal authorities were alerted when the man’s prints were sent to Washington, D.C., as part of a standard check required for that particular job application. The man was soon arrested, charged, and convicted.
Oh, and he didn’t get the job he applied for—that of police officer.
America's Dumbest Criminals Page 6