Uncle John's Presents Book of the Dumb 2 (14 page)

We can't exactly say that we're surprised that we found so many examples of dumb people running afoul of the law. Isn't that what the law is for? To catch the dumb and felonious at their own game? (The smart and felonious take a little more work. See your local paper's business section for more details.) So it is with a certain amount of gratification that we provide you with this chapter, which shows you that sometimes the system works!

 

T
ed” was a man undercover.
His beat was his neighborhood in Kinston, North Carolina. His quarry—Sam, his neighbor. Oh, Sam was a bad one, all right, and Ted was ready to haul him to the county jail for his crimes. Ted waited until the moment was right and Sam wouldn't be expecting the arrival of
justice.

Ted waited for the weekend to make his move. Sam was in his yard, washing his tires, when Ted sprang into action and confronted Sam with a big wooden stick and a semiautomatic handgun. Ted informed Sam that he was an undercover agent and that Sam was going down. Even confronted with a stick
and
a gun, though, Sam resisted arrest. But when justice comes calling, you can't reverse the charges! Ted rushed Sam and cuffed him. In no time, Ted got Sam in the back of his car and drove him to the county jail, where he told the authorities that he was charging Sam with various crimes including possession of stolen property and illegal sales of alcohol and lottery tickets.

To which the authorities replied: Hey,
you're
not a cop.
You
can't arrest anyone. But we can arrest
you.
Which is exactly what they did with Ted, charging him with kidnapping, aggravated assault, and possession of a concealed weapon (the gun, we imagine, rather than the stick).

“It was the darnedest thing,” said Joe Grady of the Lenoir County Magistrate's office, who was the one who realized Ted was not, in fact, a licensed dispenser of justice. “I've never seen anything like that before.”

Source: Associated Press

 

Y
ou have to be a pretty bad bank robber
when even the judge sentencing you looks upon you as an object of pity. And that's just how bad a robber “Marvin” from Düsseldorf, Germany, was. Don't believe it? Let us regale you with the tale of his utterly incompetent attempt to boost a bank.

His first error was an early arrival to the bank he was planning to rob. He got there
before
it opened and hung around outside. This is a fine way to look awfully suspicious (and in fact, not arriving early to a bank robbery is an actual Tip for Stupid Criminals, which you'll find on
page 294
). But Marvin didn't go in when they opened the bank. Rather he paced back and forth, Hamlet-like, in front of the bank for three hours, thereby compounding suspicions with his odd behavior.

Finally, Marvin committed himself to a course of action. Bank robbery, here we come! He went into the bank; to mask his identity, he pulled his hat down over his face. Sadly for Marvin, he'd cut eyeholes in the wrong place; now he couldn't see. Apparently frustrated, he ripped the hat off his head—and in the process, gave the bank's security cameras a fine and loving look at his felonious face: the judge at his sentencing would later comment that they were truly “first-class pictures.”

After all this Marvin went to a cashier and threatened her so she would cough up the cash. The threat would have been more persuasive if there had been a gun in his hand;
instead, Marvin had a gun-shaped cigarette lighter. The cashier, who we suspect at this point felt more pity than fear, suggested to Marvin he might want to, you know, leave. Marvin, utterly defeated, tried to do just that, but as he stepped outside, there were the police, to take him into their tender care.

At his hearing, Judge Wolfram Schnorr gave poor Marvin a one-year suspended sentence and the following piece of advice: “You'd be better off giving up robbing banks. You are clearly untalented for the job.” Let's hope for his own sake Marvin takes the judge's advice.

Source: Ananova

 

W
hen you hear stories about 911 calls that have gone wrong,
it's usually because the person calling for assistance isn't quite clear on the concept of 911. They're calling because they've locked themselves out of their car, or they're wanting the cops to arrest their neighbors for playing their music too loud, or maybe because they're just, you know,
lonely.
But for variety's sake, let's tell you a story where the traditional roles are reversed: real emergency with an idiot 911 operator.

Our story unfolds in Fort Worth, Texas, where members of the Diaz family were somewhat alarmed when intruders attempted to break down their door to gain entry into their home. If ever there's a time to call 911, this is probably it. So one of the Diaz family dialed to get police assistance.

Unfortunately, the 911 operator didn't seem particularly inclined to get the police headed in the Diazs' direction. Instead, she asked them, “OK, who were they? Because strangers don't just come bang down your door with knives,” and, “Do you have a brother or father there who they were looking for?” Usually, the operator doesn't try to discern a perpetrator's motives when someone calls for help; one would hope that he or she would just send the police and let the people in the blue uniforms sort it out. But, for some dumb reason, Ms. 911 Operator didn't this time. Instead, she kept them on the line until the Diazs' unidentified door smackers appeared to disperse, refused to pass along information to the police, and suggested to the Diazs that if the bad folks showed up again, they should call back
then.

Well, another member of the Diaz family did call 911 back about 20 minutes later and luckily found an intelligent operator this time who passed the information on to the police.
That
finally prompted a police visit, followed by a police investigation, of which the preliminary results revealed—surprise!—that the 911 operator who answered the phone the first time wasn't doing her job.

We imagine the next phone call the Diazs will be making is to the lawyers.

Source:
WFAA.com

 

H
ere was “Jeff's” problem.
Though he was in Massachusetts, he wanted to go to Cape Verde, the tiny island country off the coast of Senegal, Africa, where he had relatives. There was also the matter of the warrants for his arrest, which we suspect heightened his urge to get away from it all. Alas, being homeless, it was economically beyond his means—it's not as if there are any cheap, direct flights to Cape Verde from Logan International Airport. So Jeff hit upon a plan: why pay for the cost of a plane ticket when he could just
mail
himself to Cape Verde?

Sure, stuffing one's self into a cargo crate might be uncomfortable. But Jeff could prepare himself with a stock of water and food—and a little container or two for the end products of those provisions. He'd be cramped, but he'd end up in Cape Verde. In all, a fine plan. Jeff stuffed himself in a four-by-four foot crate with his supplies (a bag of potato chips, a loaf of bread, a bottle of water, and a bottle for waste) and had some friends seal him up and drop him off at a shipping company in Fall River.

And now—you
knew
it was coming—the flaw in the plan. Clearly, given Jeff's rather small supply of food and drink, he was expecting his crate to be whisked away in a day, maybe two, tops. But the intricacies of maritime shipping were working against our pal Jeff. In fact, there was a two-week wait for the boat to Cape Verde. And then it would be another two weeks for the boat to arrive in Cape Verde. So Jeff would get to
Cape Verde, he'd just be dead when he arrived. And wouldn't that be a delightful surprise for the relatives?

Fortunately for Jeff, a few days into his crating, one of his friends came to his or her senses, realized that stuffing a human being into a shipping crate was utterly insane, and called the police, who dispatched officers and dogs to the scene. The shipping company manager was incredulous (“I thought it was a joke,” he told the
Providence Journal.
“Someone got inside a box and tried to ship himself? Come on”). Sure enough, the dogs sniffed out the exhausted, dehydrated and only semi-coherent Jeff, who was then uncrated, arrested, and sent to the hospital.

Next time? Fed Ex for sure.

Source:
Boston Globe, Providence Journal

 

S
had” walked into the Naples,
Florida, Wal-Mart one day in search of new clothes and some garbage bags. It wasn't what Shad bought that caught the Wal-Mart workers' attention; after all, Wal-Mart has a wide selection of each item. No, it was the small fact that while Shad was shopping for these items, he just happened to be covered in blood.

Let's do the math here: Blood-soaked Wal-Mart customer + shopping for new clothes + shopping for garbage bags = Deeply suspicious Wal-Mart employees. And rightly so. The fact Shad paid for his purchases with a bloody $100 bill probably didn't do much to ease what suspicions these good folks had.

So after Shad had purchased his things and drove off in a pickup, the employees called the police, who picked up Shad later in the day (after he tried evading arrest, of course). The blood? It probably had something to do with body of a sometime friend of Shad's that the police found. Shad was charged with second-degree murder.

The moral of the story: when you're covered in blood, it's probably not the best time to go shopping.

Source: Associated Press

 

C
all us cynical,
but all our faith in psychics went out the window when Miss Cleo got busted for fraud. Merely the bust itself was elegant proof of the lack of psychic ability; after all, if she was psychic, how could she
not
know the Feds were on her tail?

But it does seem like some people haven't learned to doubt the powers of psychics, which can be a good thing, especially when those people are drug dealers. One Brooklyn, New York, gang hired “Rosa,” to tell them whether certain drug deals were going to go down well. But it seems Rosa wasn't so psychic that she could tell her bosses that their little crew was, in fact, being scoped out by the cops, who in June 2004 slapped down a massive, 133-count indictment against fifteen people, including members of the alleged drug crew. Now, honestly, if a psychic can't see
that
coming, what good is she?