Not everyone can be a super criminal like Lex Luther or The Joker. In fact, most criminals are pretty stupid, otherwise they would be doing something differently with their lives. Just how stupid are they? Frankly, it's incredible just how moronic they can be and just how moronic the things they do really are. Sometimes, even the police that see them do dumb things are the time are astounded at just how insanely dumb they can be. These are those stories, the ones even the cops would not have believed had they not been there to see it with their own eyes.
Two Crimes, One Dummy
“I took a vehicle burglary report where the victim found a drivers license sitting on her driver seat that the suspect must have left behind. Seems open and shut, but if he had any criminal smarts, he would just say his license was stolen and the thief must have dropped it while breaking into this new victim’s vehicle. Without any other evidence, the case would have gone nowhere.
The very next day, I take a report at a church that was a couple of blocks away from the vehicle burglary. This guy stole the video cameras from the building. He must have thought the footage came with the camera, because when we checked the video, there was a High Def close-up of the suspects face as he removed the camera. Good evidence, sure, but I still didn’t know who the guy was… until I looked at the license I collected the day prior and saw it was the same exact guy.”
This Guy Misjudged A Whole Lot Of Stuff
“Here’s a story from a professor I had who was a retired police detective:
Armed robbery at a dry cleaners in a bad part of town. When the robbery looked away, the cleaner’s owner took the opportunity to grab the weapon and disarm the robber. The robber turned and ran, misjudged where he was, and went through the glass door.
Police arrived on scene and noted, among the shards of broken glass on the cleaners floor, a hunk of something flesh-colored. It turned out to be a piece of a human ear. The detective retrieves the hunk of ear and goes to the county hospital’s emergency room. Shortly after the detective arrives at the ER, a man who matches the robber’s description walks in, holding a towel to the side of his head. The detective asks to look and sees that a hunk of the man’s ear had been cut off. So he holds the piece of ear that he had retrieved from the crime scene, and sure enough, it is a perfect fit!
The detective places the man under arrest and waits while the ER doc sews the hunk back onto the arrestee’s ear. As they are waiting, the detective asks, ‘why on earth did you decide to rob a dry cleaners of all places?’
The arrestee replies, ‘I’ve been watching that dry cleaners for a while. I’m sure they take in a lot of cash. I’ve noticed that there is an armored car there twice a day!’
The detective explains, ‘Yes, the armored car is there every morning to drop off employee’s uniforms for dry cleaning, and returns every afternoon to pick them up after they’ve been cleaned.'”
This What Happens When You Are Total Moron
“A little over a month ago, my apartment was broken into while my boyfriend was still inside. He works nights so at midday he’s still fast asleep and didn’t notice this guy come in and rummage around until he throws the bedroom door open, panics at seeing my boyfriend, and runs off.
My boyfriend looks around the apartment and find that the laptops, tablets and other high-ticket items are still there and he must have run off before getting to all that, but a handful of smaller valuables such as his keys and his wallet were gone. He also did a fair amount of damage rummaging around and spray-painting our walls. Also ate some of our food!
What WAS there, however, were the idiot’s bags.
He’d left his school backpack containing some schoolwork, some of our possessions, his ID, some old school papers with his parents phone numbers on it…
So, already he’s an idiot, and we know who he is. The police are having a laugh with us a little later about it, and as one of them takes my boyfriend’s statement, we hear a knock at the door. I go to answer it as a friend said he was coming over anyway and I find the same guy from the ID outside my door.
He looks at me, then at the police officer behind me (still holding the bags) and asks:
‘Can I have my bags back please?’
After a stunned moment, he’s grabbed by the police officer and my boyfriend confirms that this is the guy. He’s arrested on the spot.
The police said it was the dumbest thing they’d ever seen, like something out of a sit-com. It made local news.”
#FOMO
“I can’t go into too much detail, but a kid (14) shot another kid (15) in the leg after a fight in their apartment complex. The victim is able to describe the weapon that the shooter used in detail. We get get shooter’s name from another kid, who knows him from school, my partner looks up his Instagram and would you believe it, there he is posing with the weapon that had been described to us.
Social media is a treasure trove of wannabe gangsters incriminating themselves.”
Sometimes, Coins Are Like Breadcrumbs
“A teenager gets fired from Red Lobster, then returns to rob the same restaurant that same night. They refuse to give him money from register, so he grabs charity coin box on the counter and then he leaves on bicycle.
I go to find him and see coins scattered about, so I follow the trail off same which leads me to him hiding in bushes at a church. Bicycle was leaning up against the bush he was in.”
Scary Case Of The Munchies
“I’m a 911 Dispatcher in Florida. Sometimes confused or wasted people knock on the wrong door or try to get into a house thinking it’s theirs, but it isn’t. It’s an honest mistake. But the homeowner is rightfully very afraid thinking they are about to be robbed or worse. Well I had this kid, must’ve been in his early 20s and clearly stoned call me going absolutely crazy that someone is trying to kill him and take his property and assault his girlfriend, etc…
I send units code 3 to this guy, thinking it’s a burglary in progress.
Turns out the guy ordered a pizza and forgot about it.
He scared the delivery guy half to death.”
Maybe He Just Wanted To Be Famous
“I’m not a cop myself, but about 10 years ago I got held up and robbed by a group of 3 guys with knives. All they wanted was the money in my wallet, so me, being the smart guy and not wanting to mess with knives, obliged. At the end of the ordeal one of the guys put a knife to my throat and said, ‘If you ever tell the cops my name, I will slice your throat right now.’
So, I went home, called the cops, told them where it happened and gave them the name the guy told me. The name instantly rung a bell with them, since the guy had come into contact with the police in the past. The cops went to the spot where I was robbed and the three morons were laying in ambush, waiting for a new victim to appear. The police instantly identified the guy and he was arrested and that’s about it.
This happened in the Netherlands, so I don’t know his sentence or anything.”
She Told Him The Crime She Was Trying To Commit But Couldn’t
“I went to a domestic violence call where the woman claimed her husband hit her. When I asked her how it happened, she told me he couldn’t provide the kind of life she wanted him to give her. She stated since he had a heart attack and got lupus, he wasn’t working, so she decided she should start inviting some of his friends over to hook up with with her for money. Mind you, she’s telling me, a fully uniformed officer all of this. She says her husband should act as the person who handles the money for her (there’s a term for a guy that does that. It rhymes with ‘limp’). She then calls someone to come over, and tells her husband that after she gets paid for the action, he should hold the guy at knife point and take the rest of his money. She said he refused to help her with this, so they got into an argument. He pushed past her to get out of the apartment. She claimed that was the assault she called me for.
I asked her if she understood she just admitted to planning a felony crime. She looked shocked that planning a robbery was wrong at all, and did not get why I wasn’t arresting her husband for trying to remove himself from her stupid plan to get them both arrested.
The husband is the real hero here. Due to him refusing to be involved in anything, this plan of hers never made it off the ground. If the John had actually been invited over, I could have arrested her for an offense. I did write a report and passed it along to the robbery and vice units, as well as notifying my supervisors. Best I could do that night was separating them. I drove the husband across town to remove him from the situation. The penal code in each State differs slightly on what charges are considered arrestable, while still in the planning stages. This wasn’t something I could arrest on, mainly due to not having a direct victim I could point to. Basically because this was a ‘what if’ scenario it would be the equivalent of me mumbling to myself that I should punch that guy in the face.
If the John had been invited over, and/or I had gotten a name for the possible John, I could have arrested her for it.”
Can’t Teach A Young Buck New Tricks
“Not me, but my buddy, who is a cop and told me about this one kid in particular he dealt with for years.
No cleverness to him at all. Numerous times he walked into his neighbor’s garage in broad daylight and just stole his bike. He constantly stole from stores in plain view, even the occasional minor assault or burglary . He always got caught. Like, he had never gotten away with any of his hundreds of crimes, but because he was a minor there were never any real repercussions.
A few days before he turned 18, my friend and another officer went to his house to basically remind him that if he does anything after his birthday, he will face real punishment as an adult and he’ll get zero breaks. It was like a last ditch effort to be helpful.
Two days after his 18th birthday, he’s caught committing an armed robbery. Now he’s doing a few decades behind bars.”
He Talked Himself Into It!
“Ex police officer here.
I pulled over a dude for having a brake light out. Nothing serious.
I ran his plates and it came back clean and nothing seemed off, until he exclaimed, ‘I haven’t had anything to drink!!’ in an over enthusiastic tone which for some reason he thought this was a good idea. It wasn’t.
He so nearly got away with it (Smirnoff doesn’t smell much and I didn’t pick up on it). I breathalyzer him. The legal limit in England is 35 he blew over 60. Arrested on the spot and his vehicle towed. Idiot.”
Be Careful Who You Break The Law With And Who You Don’t
“I’m not a cop, but I work at a substance testing facility, where we do screenings for offenders. If someone is positive for an arrestable substance, boom, we call the police to take them away and let their parole officer know by a quick phone call. We have no parole officers or police officers working at the facility though, and a lot of people don’t realize this right away. Just to clarify in advance though, I will be using fake names for this.
One day I’m at the front with a coworker and trainee, and a disheveled and frantic man comes busting through the door, trying to peep through the mirrored glass and trying to get attention. I’m just enjoying the show honestly, and then open the window. He bombards me with a barrage of questions, and I ask that he slow down, tell me who he is, why he’s here, and see if I can help him.
‘My name is Troy Baker, yes Troy Baker, AND THIS IS NOT A JOKE! I am looking for Tim Monk’s PO.’
I explain that we don’t have any parole officers working at the facility and he looks absolutely devastated. I tell him he can go downtown and look there.
‘Well, you see, Tim’s been selling dope in my trailer park!’ There was a distinct and pregnant pause before it became all the more bonkers yelling, ‘Yeah, selling DOPE! In MY trailer park! The problem is, HE WON’T SELL TO ME! So, I want to rat him out you see, and that’s why I’m looking for his parole officer!’
I’m trying my hardest to keep a straight face, while my coworkers are howling with laughter behind me. At that point, I tell him to wait a moment and I close the window before I completely break with muffled laughter. I’m sure he could hear, but it was just too absurd. When I reopen the window I’ve got teary eyes, and a red face, and he just looks shocked for a moment.
I tell him he could go to the courthouse to speak with his PO, inform the police, call a WeTip hotline, anything, but we could really do nothing about it since we are just a testing facility. On his way out he mutters, ‘won’t sell to me, I’ll show him!’
I really hope I don’t have to see that guy on one of our programs any time soon, but I’m afraid it may be inevitable. Maybe he was afraid that going to the police directly would get him in trouble too, but other than that I’m not sure why he would come to our facility when we didn’t test the guy he was talking about. Addiction isn’t funny, but stupidity is.”
This Dummy Didn’t Even Know How Old He Was
“So I get a call of a ‘brew run’ (shoplifting) from the local CVS.
I check the area and see two guys matching the description. I detain them and sure enough they had a couple of Coronas and some Jack Daniels. I confirm with CVS they were the suspects, the contraband was their property, and they wanted to press charges. Sounds good. My state requires I take them to the station to book into jail and get fingerprinted, then they are issued a citation and released with a court date a couple months out.
While driving to the station, I ask what they were doing stealing the stuff. One guy says that they are only 20 and since they weren’t old enough to buy it, they just decided to steal it instead. No big deal, young people make stupid mistakes. I get to the jail, book them in and start filling out the citation. The citation requires both birthdate and age. I do the math on the birthday, and sure enough the guy is 21. Meaning he is old enough to buy. I go back into the jail and verify his birthday.
Yup, same one he had listed on his drivers license. I re-do the math out loud. 21-years-old. I ask, ‘How old are you again?’
He replies, ’20 sir.’
I said, ‘you turned 21 last month.’
Again, he is adamant, ‘No I turned 20.’
I had enough, I just left it at that…”
A Woman Packing With No Skills
“Not a cop, but my kid was on a soccer team and I got friendly with another dad who was a cop. One day, after practice, he was dying to tell us a story that happened the previous week.
He and his partner visited an apartment complex where there had been some robberies. The owners asked the police to come speak to the residents about security, and there were about 15 or 18 people in their meeting room.
One middle-aged woman said, in a slurred tone, ‘Well, if I see somebody outside my house, I’m going to get my .45 and shoot him.’ One officer asked, what kind of weapon do you have? She reached into her purse and pulled out this great big .45. He asked, ‘Where did you get that?’
‘My boyfriend gave it to me,’ she responded.
‘Have you ever shot that thing?’ She said no.
The cop asked, ‘Which apartments you do you live in?’
She said, ‘My building faces the grocery store.’
The lead cop said, ‘Ma’am, what’s probably gonna happen is, since you haven’t shot before, you’re gonna shoot, but you’re gonna miss and the weapon is going to kick up and you’re gonna shoot high. And, your bullet is gonna go across the street to the parking lot at the Safeway, and you’re gonna hit somebody putting groceries in their car.’
She was shocked, and sat there with her mouth open. ‘I didn’t know that a bullet could go that far!’
‘Yes ma’am, a bullet from that can probably go a mile.’
Another guy spoke up, ‘Yes ma’am and it will go through walls too.’
Everyone turned around to look at him. He continued: ‘A couple of years ago, I was trying to kill myself, so I sat on the toilet, put a similar weapon up to my head and fired. Just as I did it, I put my head down and missed, but the bullet went through the wall. It scared the poop out of somebody next door taking a shower.'”
Not A Criminal, But Maybe She Should Be
“Ex law enforcement officer here.
So I get a call a couple years ago to a lady who says she is being threatened. I respond to a very rural area and she shows me her cell phone and it is a ‘chain mail’ text from an unknown number.
The message showed a picture of a girl with a gag in her mouth and she is looking at the camera and holding a sign with both hands that said, ‘Help.’ The text of the message stated she was in Amsterdam and she didn’t forward the text to 10 people and ‘look what happened to her.’
I explained to the lady that it was a hoax and explained what a chain mail message was. She refused to believe me and became argumentative. When I offered to contact Interpol for her, she did not know what that was, that wasn’t good enough, and just kept saying that girl needed help. I asked her if she knew the girl and she said no and she believed the girl tried to send her the message using any made up numbers she could instead of contacting anybody she knew. My reasoning was once again shot down, and she said again that the girl needed her help. I remember driving away and the lady screaming at me that I needed to ‘help that girl!’
I responded with a single ‘no’ over my P.A as I quickly sped away.”
No One Was Budging
“When it comes to stupid calls, the list is extensive. There’s the mother who called because her 6 and 8-year-old sons were fighting over Pokémon cards. There’s the lady who called to report feral cats in her home, which turned out to be two kittens that were less than a month old. There’s the guy who called to report that the ducks in the pond behind his home were snoring and keeping him awake (admittedly, that was my top winner for a long time). But I feel like early last year, a new winner arose to accept the stupidest call I’ve ever been to.
The call, which was initially reported by a third party, came out as a disorderly conduct in a parking lot. Two men were outside of their vehicles, arguing with each other. Then, while I was on my way, one of the involved parties called and said that a person was blocking him in. That’s not too uncommon. Many people make many bad decisions. I think blocking someone in is pretty high up there on the bad decision scale. But I’ve seen it. Someone takes your parking space (which really brings up the argument, what makes a parking space ‘yours?’), and the offended person blocks them in.
As I’m driving, I’m speculating on the possible options I could be facing on my arrival. I pull in to the parking lot. It’s a grocery store parking lot in an L-shaped strip mall with numerous smaller business on each side. The parking lot is sizable with lanes adjacent to parking stalls, along with the access ‘roads’ that run through the lot to allow ingress and egress.
Fairly close to the center of the lot I see them. A Corvette and a lifted pickup truck. It’s what is basically a T-shaped intersection in the parking lot. The wider lane is running north/south, from the public roadway to the front of the storefronts. The smaller lane T’s off of that to the west, and eastbound cars have a stop sign. Now, understand that traffic law doesn’t exist on private property (at last in my state, or any state I’ve ever heard of). The only thing we enforce are drinking and driving, reckless driving, or hit and run. That’s it. Stop signs on private lots are merely suggestions.
The Corvette is on the east/west roadway, facing east, about 15’ back from the Stop sign. The truck is primarily on the north/south roadway, in the midst of a right turn on to the east/west. My first assumption is that it was a private property collision, and the drivers both got upset and started arguing. But as I exit my patrol car, neither seem to have damage.
I contact the first driver of the truck. He tells me that he’s headed toward the grocery store. He starts to turn right toward the parking area. His truck is so large, and the roadway so small, that in order to negotiate the turn he takes up both lanes of traffic of the roadway he’s turning on to. As he’s turning, the driver of the Corvette comes up from the west, and refuses to yield while he finishes his turn. He stops, in the eastbound lane, and refuses to back up. I clarify that there was no collision.
I contact the driver of the Corvette. He tells me that he’s trying to leave the lot. He is driving eastbound through the parking lot toward the larger road that takes him to the exit. As he approaches the Stop sign, the driver of the truck comes whipping around the corner and in to his lane. The driver of the truck refuses to yield to him, and refuses to back up. I clarify that there was no collision.
In speaking to them further, I learn that this hadn’t just occurred either. The traffic snafu occurred, and initially both driver’s remained in their cars, trying to win the standoff. Approximately 10 minutes later (yes, you read that right), the wife of the truck driver gets bored, and exits the truck to enter the grocery store. Give or take 10 minutes after that, both driver’s exit and begin to argue with each other over who needs to back up to yield to the other. At that point, someone called the police, and it took me just over 5 minutes to get there. So here we are, playing Billy Goats Gruff for nearly 30 minutes. And to top it all off, neither vehicle was ‘blocked in.’ Either driver could have reversed out of the situation and gone on their way. But that’s not how you win a junk-measuring contest, now is it?
Upon realizing that the only crime that was being committed was that both of these guys could possibly reproduce, I did the following: I clarified that absolutely no crime was being committed. I pointed out that the situation was so ridiculous that even the one guy’s wife wanted out of it. I told them both that I’ve met kindergartners with more maturity and they deserved every minute of wasted time they were spending here, but I wouldn’t be a part of it. I suggested that that they should find reverse, unless they were too childish to understand how cars worked. Then I turned and laughed out loud all the way back to my patrol car. I left and went to Starbucks.
To this day, I still can’t fathom two middle aged men stopped in a parking lot for 30 minutes because each one felt they had a perceived right of way that doesn’t even exist.”