Not Ready for Crime Time : Highlights of the ‘Dumb Crook News’

FROM THE MOVIES, we are all familiar with bungling detectives such as “The Pink Panther’s” Inspector Clouseau. It is reassuring, though, to discover that criminals can be stupid, too.

A colleague has given me a column from the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer that chronicles some of the pratfalls experienced by criminals in the pursuit of their profession.

The anecdotes are gathered under the headline “Dumb Crook News,” which evidently is an occasional feature of Out Front, a column written by Doug Robarchek.

“Here are the answers to the two most-asked questions about ‘Dumb Crook News,’ ” Robarchek writes. “Yes, these are true stories, and, no, I don’t know how anybody can be so stupid.”

In San Diego, he reports, robbery victims inspected a lineup of five men (with the real suspect in the middle). Each was ordered to step forward and say, “Give me all your money--and I need some change in quarters and dimes.”

The first two men got it right. The third man stepped up and said, “That isn’t what I said.”

Somebody grabbed a woman’s purse in a Salisbury, N. C., department store and ran. A security officer captured a suspect and brought him back to face the victim. Before the woman could be identified as the victim, the suspect said, “Lady, tell them I’m not the one who stole your purse.”

In Delaware, Jeffrey Johnson represented himself at his trial for robbing a woman at a gas station. In cross-examining a detective, he said, “Why are you talking about some witness, man? There was only me and her in the store.”

In Brooklyn, a man held up a bank and got $2,100. In trying to escape, he was mugged. So he called the police, admitted to the holdup and said the mugger jumped out of a car, stole the $2,100 and drove off.

The mugger escaped. But the bank robber was charged with robbery, possessing stolen property and criminal possession of a gun.

In Raleigh, N. C., a young man was charged with bank robbery, and his girl friend showed up with $7,200 in cash to bail him out. The money was in small bills--just like the bank loot. The woman was arrested for possession of stolen property.

The farmhouse of James Bannon, executive deputy police chief of Detroit, was burglarized. Bannon went to court for a suspect’s hearing. Asked if he recognized the suspect, Bannon said, “No, but I recognize my boots.” The suspect was wearing them.

A Chicago man stole a pair of sneakers from a shoe store and wore them to court for his sentencing on an unrelated charge of purse snatching. The man was a suspect in the shoe-store theft, but prosecutors didn’t expect him to help by wearing the evidence.

A young woman who was installing dry wall in the home of a Long Beach police detective fell under suspicion when the detective’s wife’s earrings vanished. Called to the police station, the suspect arrived with the stolen earrings in her ears.

More unlucky than stupid was the man who tried to rob a New York bank on an FBI payday. When he asked the teller to hand over his money, he heard several guns clicking behind him.

Robarchek places one dumb crook in the Moronic Vandal category. In Texas City, Tex., this young man was leaning out the window of a speeding car, smashing mailboxes with a baseball bat.

“But--oops--” Robarchek wrote, “he forgot to pull his head in and smashed one mailbox with it.” The accident was fatal.

On trial in a Tampa court for stealing a 1988 Lincoln, the defendant was caught driving a stolen 1981 Mercedes while the court was recessed for lunch. When spotted, he crashed the Mercedes into a tree.

Burglars broke into a small-town post office, taking radios, a public-address system and other things. They also found a camera, which they used to take pictures of one another sitting behind the manager’s desk. Too bad. They left the camera with its exposed film behind.

When a young woman was jailed on a charge of shoplifting, her boyfriend tried to bail her out. As collateral, he offered the bondsman several of the dresses she had stolen. The bondsman said he would have to call a friend to appraise the garments. The friend was Police Detective Dave Spagnola. End of story.

Perhaps the dumbest crook of all was a young man who escaped from the Maryland House of Correction and went to his mother’s house.

When police arrived, he answered the door. He told them, “My name’s not Earl Latham. It’s Earl Smith.” The cops asked him to spell his last name. He couldn’t.

A crook who can’t spell Smith would be well advised to find a more legitimate line of work.