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NARRATOR: Tonight on "America's
Dumbest Criminals," what does it take to attempt to steal
your car from a police lockup?
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It sure isn't brains. A runaway cyclist is all washed
up when he hits the spin cycle.
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And a bail bondsman
who dresses up for a dragnet to catch his man. For these and other stories
that'll curl your hair,
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sit back and be amazed at
"America's Dumbest Criminals." [theme music] Now, welcome your hosts for
"America's Dumbest Criminals,"
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Daniel Butler and Debbie Alan. -Thank you, thank you. Thank you. All right. Question, Debbie.
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-Yeah? -What's your worst experience
in a fast food restaurant? Worst. -Oh. Well it's kind of
gross, but once I
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found ants in my coleslaw. -Ew, ants. -How about you? -No, I had uncles
in my beans once.
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-Oh, Dan. [laughter] -Well I doubt if anybody has had
an experience that even comes
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close to what occurs
when a crook tries to order the restaurant
staff around. And that's coming up
in a little while.
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But first, we turn our attention
toward life on the open road. -Oh, yeah. Every year, we seem to come
across an Evel Knievel wannabe.
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Now based on his
abilities, this fella might want to reconsider
training wheels.
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-Fortunately for us, this
uneasy rider's photofinish was caught on camera. -My partner and I
were-- were working
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radar on the Seabreeze bridge. A motorcycle came across
at 69 to 70 miles per hour
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in a 40 mile per hour zone. So Officer Tarak pulled
out to stop the motorcycle. And the motorcycle
immediately pulled
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over to the side of the road. But he didn't come to a stop. He coasted at about three
to four miles an hour.
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When the light turned green,
he gunned it to take off. He was going to run. Well, there was a little
bit of sand on the bridge,
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because of the beach
being so close. And the motorcycle went right
out from underneath him.
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He almost hit
another motorcycle. And then he went sliding
face first on the pavement.
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As soon as he stopped
sliding, he got up, put his hands behind his back. He knew he was--
he knew he was had.
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-I think it was the great
Greek philosopher, Anonymous, who stated, the
job's not finished
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until the paperwork's done. -Since when is Anonymous
a great Greek philosopher? -Oh, I don't know.
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This was like 1400
A.D., I think. I went to junior college, OK? He was a junior college
philosopher, Anonymous.
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-Well at any rate,
our next crook would have been wise to have
heeded those words of wisdom.
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Instead, he left something
to remember me by. -We responded to a
call, and upon arrival,
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we discovered that the
store had been robbed. CASHIER: May I help you? -Uh, yes you can.
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You can give me all the
money in this register. TOBE GREEN: And instead
of the perpetrator taking
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the money out of
the cash register, he just decided to
take the cash register and run out of the store.
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The funny thing about it,
he lived approximately two or three blocks, in a little
alley behind the store.
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We followed the perpetrator
through the alley after the cash register's
tape reeled off,
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it just led us directly
to his front porch. So in my years of law
enforcement, that's
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the dumbest incident
I can think of. -He was on a roll
there for a minute. You know, there's a surprising
reason why they call
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the police vehicle
lock up, the pound. As we discover in the
surveillance video you're about to see, a gassed
up driver pounds on the gate
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with his car to gain
admittance for his buddies. -As you can imagine, that
is not proper procedure.
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And authorities were
not favorably impressed with his bumper car shenanigans. Here's the first part of
this two part assault.
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DEBBIE ALAN
(VOICEOVER): Your view is the parking lot
outside the police lockup.
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The gate is just to
the left of the camera. The guys in the first
car are waiting patiently
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for the lot manager to return. But not for long. The new car brings passengers
fueled by the fire of youth,
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as well as the
sanity suppressants of alcohol and drugs. They approach the office and
don't like what they find.
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No one's home, and
only a chain link gate separates them from
their impounded automobiles.
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We'll fast forward a bit to
find these geniuses confabbing in their own little late
night Mensa meeting.
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MAN 1: Dang, what should we do? MAN 2: Well, I want my car. MAN 1: Well, I want my car, too.
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MAN 3: I like curly fries. MAN 1: Well, what
if we dug a tunnel, and drove them under the gate?
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MAN 2: We ain't got no shovels. MAN 1: Well, what
if we tied helium balloons, and floated them over?
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MAN 2: Well, we
ain't go no string. MAN 3: I like curly fries. MAN 1: Hey, you could just
drive your car through the gate.
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MAN 2: Yeah, yeah, they'd
never figure it out. It'd, it'd be like
a hit and run.
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MAN 1: Yeah. MAN 2: This is brilliant. MAN 1: Yeah. I'm gonna do it. MAN 2: Yeah.
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MAN 3: Then can we go
get some curly fries? DEBBIE ALAN
(VOICEOVER): Stay tuned for the high-impact
conclusion a little later.
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NARRATOR: In Alabama, it's
illegal to sell, buy, possess, or train a bear
for bear wrestling.
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-OK. Hey, when you think of the
phrase, great expectations, does Dickens come to mind?
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Well, it doesn't come
into play into this story, unless the officer
wondered why in the dickens
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the motorist he
stopped would deliver a line worthy of
America's dumbest excuses.
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-One night I was
north of Alamogordo working traffic, running radar. I'd written quite a few
citations for speed.
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I pulled over a real young
couple from-- come to find out he was a GI from
Holloman Air Force Base.
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Very seldom do I ask anybody
why they were speeding, but for some reason,
I asked this young GI.
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I said, how come
you're running so fast? And he said, well, I've got to
get my wife to the hospital.
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And I said, well
what's wrong with her? He said, well, she's pregnant. And I poked my head in the
window and I looked at her.
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Her tummy was very flat. And I said, well how
far along is she? And he looked at his watch and
said, oh, about two hours now.
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-OK. A little premature excuse there. Our blue light
special tonight could almost be a blue-plate special.
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A robber thought he'd have
easy pickins when he held up a fast food chicken restaurant.
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But when the thief
tried to pluck the cash, he almost gets
tarred and feathered.
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To paraphrase the Bible,
vengeance is mine, saith the lard. Before you do it,
crisco-changeo,
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let's roll the tape. DANIEL BUTLER (VOICEOVER):
Had a bad plan you thought you'd
hatch, now you're
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getting clawed for
some chicken scratch. Tried to get away,
but get nowhere. Stopped in a hurry with
the swing of a chair.
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You must be a chicken, because
you're just plain fried. Now take a hit, do
your other side.
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Here's what you get
for being a jerk, going to show you
some fancy footwork. You better get going,
you better move quick,
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or I'll whoop up on you
with a big long stick. Get your wits about you,
and you'd best move away.
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Bet you're gonna live
to regret this day. Listen to the caller, now
you know, we're all done,
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here's your order to go. -Ouch. I bet he wished he'd gone
through the drive-thru.
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And that's in contrast to the
fellow who decided to drive through the gate at the police
lockup, as we saw earlier.
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Well, when we left,
the driver was being cheered on by his friend. And here's a play by play
of what happened next.
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DEBBIE ALAN (VOICEOVER): The
driver's got his signals. He's kicking up a little dust.
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OK. Here's the windup. And the follow-through. Crash. Don't think he got
a solid lick on it,
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just deflected off
his license plate. Here he comes again. Boom. That's it. The gate is out of there.
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A grand slam. Looks like his buddies
are trying to steal. There they go, one
right after another.
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Looks like they're
all headed home. And maybe just in time, because
the lot manager returns,
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and doesn't think much
of their foul play. Of course he takes
it all in stride, because he has
the license number
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of every car, plus
this tell-all video. -And now for a man that fits
serious news like Roger Ebert
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fits speedos, here's
Daniel with ABC headlines. -There's a visual image. A pharmacist in Ohio didn't
want the hassle of checking
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a prescription for a caller,
so he said he was being robbed. But crying wolf was not so foxy.
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The caller immediately phoned
police, who rushed to the scene to find a druggist who felt just
awful about being such a pill.
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He had stolen credit
cards, so he figured he'd impress his gang
member buddies by renting
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a limousine to cruise Hollywood. Just one problem though--
the owner of the limo company
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discovered the card was
stolen, and alerted police. A police officer assumed
the role of limousine driver
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and proceeded to chauffeur
the privileged party right to police headquarters where
formal charges were filed.
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Never mess with an
enterprising nine-year-old. That's what two teenagers
learned when they robbed
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the little boy's
lemonade stand of $6. He gave police a good
description of the culprits
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and they were
quickly apprehended. When a local radio station
championed his cause,
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the boy raked in over $500
in less than two hours. Now that's turning a
lemon into lemonade.
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And that closes the
file on ABC headlines, news ripped from
somewhere near the back
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of your local newspaper. Debbie? -A mistaken identity
is nothing new. Shakespeare used it
as a plot device.
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It's been a clever trick
in dozens of movies. But it's not so clever here. And maybe that's
because a poor Joe
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Blow mistook his own identity. Its tonight's embarrassing
Special Delivery. -This man came to court one day,
and he was highly intoxicated,
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and he plead guilty to giving a
false name to a police officer. Well, he couldn't pay his
fines, so we put him in jail the
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serve his time. After a couple of days,
we checked the photograph. It didn't look like a bit like
the man that we had in jail.
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So we went into the jail,
and we asked him who he was. And he admitted that he
was the cousin to the man
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that he plead guilty for, and
that he was so intoxicated that he must've accidentally
plead guilty for the guy.
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And we asked him, we said,
you know, why did you, why did you stay in jail? And he said he felt like
we wouldn't believe him.
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We charged him with
criminal impersonation, and he plead guilty to that,
and we gave him time served.
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So basically, he sat in jail
for four days for his cousin for absolutely no reason at all.
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-You know no one ever said
the life of a bails bondsman was glamorous, although Joey
Barnum, no relation to PT,
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has hobnobbed with plenty
of stars in his day. Not only is it not
glamorous, in this case,
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it's downright homely. Here's a man who
will do absolutely anything to get his man.
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-Sitting in this office one
night about 9 or 10 o'clock, and I get a phone call.
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And it's a guy I
bailed out before. He said, Joey, he
says, I owe you one. He says, you know that
guy you're looking for,
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$25,000 bail who
jumped bail on you? I said, yeah, yeah. He said, well, he's
down at this bar.
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He says, and if you get
down there, you know, you might be able
to get the guy. But be careful, because
the guy's packing a gun.
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He knows what you look like. So two weeks prior to
this, my wife and I had a Halloween party.
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So I dressed in drag. I went in the back, jumped in my
car, and I go down to this bar.
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As I walk in, sure
enough the guy was sitting there spending
money like a drunken sailor.
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But I walked in, and I squeezed
in between him and another guy. Now, I must've
looked pretty good,
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because the guy
bought me a drink. So, anyway, I'm drinking. I'm drinking my drink.
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And I'm nervous. How am I going to do this? You know, I know the
guy's packing a gun.
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All of a sudden,
the door opens up. Who walks in but my wife? She didn't trust me.
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-Joseph, what are you
doing in those clothes? JOEY BARNUM: I said, oh, my
God, if I'm gonna make my move,
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I'd better do it now. So I dumped my drink
in the guy's lap. He jumps up. I hit him with a left
hook and a right cross.
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As he was going down, even
the bartender said, holy cow, can that broad punch. So, I put the handcuffs on.
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I jump on him. I put the handcuffs on him. And, uh, just then
I get a beep-- I get a beep on my beeper.
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So I go to the phone. And the guy says, Joey, he
says, my son is over here in the Alhambra
police department.
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He says, can you come
over and get him out? I says, yeah. I says, it'll be about 45
minutes before I can get there.
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He says, Joey, he
says, by the way, he says what do you look like? I says, I'll be
wearing a red dress.
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DANIEL BUTLER (VOICEOVER):
Now let's look back at one of ABC's greatest hits. From the ABC security
cam vault, no cops here.
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This is actual hidden
surveillance footage of an undercover officer
buying cocaine in a motel room.
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The man you'll see in
the ball cap is a dealer. And what did they watch on
TV while doing a dope deal?
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Well, every dope deal
begins with small talk and shooting the breeze. And in no time at
all, the dealer
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is ready to risk 20 years
in prison for $1,600. -All right, they're
going out to the car
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to pick it up and
bring it back in. DANIEL BUTLER (VOICEOVER):
Now the one thing
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that always takes the most
time in every dope deal is counting the money. Finally, the deal is done.
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But the undercover
officer decides to give the dealer one last tip. -[inaudible].
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NARRATOR: In Oregon,
it's illegal to use canned corn as bait for fishing. -Oh, a while ago, I was
working at the station.
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And I got a phone call one
morning from a burglary victim at an apartment house.
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He asked me if I would
come out and talk to him about the burglary. Now listen, he says.
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You know, he says, I had
$1,000 cash that was stolen. It was on top of a wooden-- of
my dresser, in a wooden box.
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And we were playing
poker the night before, and I had a few friends over. And this one particular guy who
lives in the apartment complex,
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he kept looking up at that box. And I think maybe he might
know what happened to it,
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or maybe he's the
guy that took it. So I do a little homework. And I run and find out that
he had a recent misdemeanor
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theft-- arrest in Logan City. So I check the file, and
I found, if you will, the fingerprint card for the
gentlemen, similar to this one.
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I went and I took
the fingerprint card. And I went over and placed
it on a Xerox machine,
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and ran off a copy. Then I took the copy, and I cut
out a hole of the center of one
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of the fingerprints. Took that and put it on
the back of a 3x5 card, and therefore having a
copy of a fingerprint.
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So I call the gentleman up and
ask him if he would come in. And he says, well sure,
yes, I'd heard about that.
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It was a terrible thing. So he comes into the station. I need to talk to you
about this burglary here.
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I said basically, I said,
just to cut to the chase, I need to get the
guy's money back.
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And I understand you're probably
the one responsible for it. And he goes, no, I don't
know anything about the case.
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And I said, well,
you-- unfortunately you probably do
have an involvement. And he says, well,
what do you mean?
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I said, well, I said, you
know that fingerprints don't lie, right? And he goes, that's right.
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I said, well I want
to show you something. And I took the card, and I
said, this is the fingerprint
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that I lifted from the scene. Pulled up the card, and I said,
and this is a fingerprint card
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from when you were arrested
for your shoplift a while ago. Now, I'm going to
show you something.
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I put them down on the table,
and I pulled out the magnifying glass, and I said, I want
you to see this point.
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And I designated
point A to point B-- the scar, the
mark, the ridges. And I said, yes, but
that's not my finger.
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I said, I can swear to God
that is your fingerprint. I said, can you
bring the money in?
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And he says, well I've
only got $700 left. I said, well go get
it and bring it back.
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And he says, I don't
understand this. I wore gloves. But uh, he never knew how
we basically pulled it off.
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-Ah, me. Well, you've heard the
expression, it's a small world. I know you have, Debbie.
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But in this case,
it's a small pizza, with pepperoni and
mushrooms, I think. -Confused?
00:17:44
Well, take a look and see
how delivering the goods puts a pizza guy on the
doorstep of destiny.
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-It's a thick and chewy example
of "We're not making this up." -I received a call that a local
pizza delivery man delivered
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a pizza to one of our
apartment complexes, and the people who he
delivered the pizza
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to paid for the pizza with
his own personal checks that were stolen a couple
weeks prior to this call.
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He showed me the check
that they gave him. They signed his name. It was his own, personal
checks that were stolen.
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I mean, once in a
lifetime opportunity that that ever happens. He had the address from
where he delivered the pizza.
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So me and my partner
went back up there. They didn't, in fact,
steal the checks,
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but they got it
from somebody else, knowing that they
weren't good checks. It was funny, because
the guy's name was Tom,
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and a woman signed the check. I locked them up, and
they got convicted for passing bad checks.
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To top it all off, they included
a tip on his own bad check. -The tip, the tip,
the tip, that was it.
00:18:56
Well that's all from us for now. -If you've got a
lead on a story, or you just can't wait till next
week for more state-of-the-art
00:19:02
stupidity, visit our website
at www.dumbcrimes.com. -We want to thank
you for joining us,
00:19:09
and extend our gratitude
to the law enforcement officers who make
the show possible.
00:19:14
Every day, they lay
their lives on the line to keep us safe
from the stupidity of would-be criminals.
00:19:19
-As always, we
hope that we've all learned from others' mistakes. -But if you haven't, we
just might see you next week
00:19:25
on "America's
Dumbest Criminals." -Goodbye. [music playing]