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NARRATOR: Tonight on
"America's Dumbest Criminals," is this what the
cleaning lady means when
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she says she just
came in to pick up? How can running a stop sign
draw your social life to a halt?
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And would you want to share a
ride downtown with this gal? You've come a long way, baby.
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You've stooped to the ranks of
"America's Dumbest Criminals" [music playing] Now welcome your hosts for ADC,
Daniel Butler and Debbie Alan.
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-Hello. -Did you notice anything
unusual about the opening? -Oh, you mean that all the
previews involved women?
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-Uh huh. What is this? "America's Dumbest
Criminals" or Lilith Fair? --[laughs] That's a question
never ever asked before.
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-Yeah, I don't know that I'm
ready for ladies night, OK? Although I am in touch
with my feminine side.
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-And would that be your
right side or you left side? -I think right. -You need moisturizer
right there. [laughs]
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-[inaudible]. -All right. I think that a ladies night
special is a good idea. Could be like "The View."
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I'll invite several
of my female friends, we'll sit around and talk about
how we feel about the stories.
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-Oh, boy. And we can all wear our jammies
and do each other's hair. [laughs] Yeah.
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-It could work. -Sure. Now I can see it. Tonight a very special
episode of ADC. No.
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I'm not buying this. No way. -You think we should just
keep things the way they are.
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-Hey, if it ain't
broke, don't fix it. That's something my cat
once said I believe.
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-Well, what if we compromise? We'll just have a slight
women's emphasis tonight.
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Sort of estrogen light. [laughs] -OK.
All right. All right. Fine. Deal. You wanna start with
a good girl gone bad?
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-Sure. Here's truly an inside job,
as we find a cleaning lady in the Sheriff's office
who was being far more
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thorough than anyone
imagined, at least until she was caught on camera. -Well, we'd received information
through our fiscal department
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that a number of
the secretaries were experiencing thefts
out of their purses. It wasn't a lot of money, but
it was enough cash to where they
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were concerned that maybe they
had some in house stealing going on and they brought
it to our attention.
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Our, uh, deputies decided
to call in the detectives. They hid a camera. We really had no clue who,
who was doing the stealing.
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Um, but in a matter
of just a few days we caught a cleaning lady
going through the trash
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and also going through purses. -Fine, The word can mean
a penalty to be paid or the state of
feeling very well.
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-Well, trust me. It wasn't the ladder with a guy
who was ordered to pay a fine and then took actions that
left him feeling terrible.
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He's a fine, fine
example of the mischief we collect as something
to remember me by.
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-Had a, uh, subject go into
the bank, rob the bank. Couple of Cowley
County deputies,
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uh, came up on him on a bridge. He hops out, throws the bag
of money off in the bushes.
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And in that gym bag was
cash and some photographs. And we knew the picture was
a picture of this guy's son.
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And myself of a FBI got
in the room with him and, uh, started talking to him. And you could just tell
by the look on this guy's
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face of this is
not working well. He had some legal problems. The judge had told him that he
needed this $800 into the court
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by the close of work day that
day or he was going to jail. And in fact it was by
the close of the work day
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this particular day
of the bank robbery. By golly he was gonna do
it one way or the other.
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[laughs] -It doesn't take
a genius to know that the world is changing. And not necessarily
for the better
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-Well, pretty much all
of it can be traced back to the introduction of Barney. -What?
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-Oh, come on. Do some research, draw
some timelines, Debbie. You'll see. -You can't pin everything
wrong in the world
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on a purple dinosaur? -No, no.
You're right. You're right. No, that would be
completely taking
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the blame off Menudo and MSG. --[laughs] Daniel, this is
supposed to be an introduction
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to a story about carjacking. -Gosh, can't you see how these
things are linked, Debbie?
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-No. -No, I love you, you love
me, it's a purple cult. See how brainwashed everyone is?
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-Can we just roll this story? -You're being deceived, Deb. DEBBIE ALAN (VOICEOVER):
Things look peaceful enough now
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on the street in
Springfield, Oregon. But late last night these
young people got a start.
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-These little kids starting
coming towards the car and I thought
maybe they knew us.
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And he just started
looking in the car. And then he came
up to the window and he held his gun
up to my brother
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and he said, get out of the car. DEBBIE ALAN (VOICEOVER): The
gun made a convincing argument.
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-Actually, we were laughing at
him, I think, at that point. We were, it was funny
because we're, we're
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looking at the car, right? And my cousin's
on the cellphone. We're looking at the car and
all of a sudden, it stops.
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And he gets out of
the car starts running and we're thinking, what? -Gears ground, but there
was no get away, at least
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not with the car
because the car jacker couldn't drive a stick shift. Stripped of his bravado the
big bad hombre got out and ran.
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-He was little. He was like 14 years old. So I couldn't even
believe we were getting car jacked
by a 14-year-old.
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DEBBIE ALAN (VOICEOVER):
A mechanical miracle saved by a manual
transmission that
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really came through
in the clutch. NARRATOR: In Borger, Texas
it's illegal to throw confetti,
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rubber balls, feather
dusters, whips, riding crops, or
firecrackers of any kind.
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-Kind of makes you
wonder what parades used to be like in
Borger, doesn't it? Well, getting a ticket is
no cause for celebration,
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but our next law
breaker had extra reason to be nervous when
the sirens sounded.
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It's our latest addition to
America's dumbest excuses. -I was working patrol
on a Saturday afternoon
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and this jeep just rolled
right through the stop sign. So I conducted a traffic
stop on the vehicle
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and made contact with a young
lady who was the driver. It's always very
common for us to ask,
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you know, do you know
why I pulled you over. Most of the time they know why. They made a mistake
and they'll tell you.
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Well, I was waiting
for the excuse period to come where she was to
tell me something like,
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well, I'm late for
work and that's why I went through the stop sign
or I didn't see the stop sign,
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but instead she says, -Because these plates don't
belong on this vehicle. -Well, actually, no.
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It's for the stop
sign violation. But we'll talk about
the other thing later. So that was kind
of a shock to me,
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not quite the answer I expected. So we went and did some, uh,
further investigation on that.
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And turns out that the
vehicle that she was driving was a stolen vehicle. It's not exactly
the way expected
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that traffic stop to turn out. -You know those old TV
shows, the police officers
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reminded those they arrested
to come along peaceably. When they don't offer a
reminder, things turn ugly.
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In fact, they bear a
striking resemblance to our blue light special. -Stopped this speeder.
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Determined that looked like
she had been drinking alcohol. So we put her through
the field sobriety test.
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And, uh, made the
determination that she was in fact driving
while intoxicated. So we locked her up four DWI.
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At the time we didn't
have a jail cell. We just had a, uh, what
we called the holding
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chair with handcuffs
attached to it. So we placed her in the
chair and my partner was, uh,
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coming over to start the process
for the breathalyzer machine. And she actually
attempted to trip him
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and I guess you she
had no idea that she was being taped at the time. She actually lunged out of the
chair and tried to get at us.
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The handcuffs were bolted to
the floor from underneath. And, uh, then it comes
up through the chair,
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so there was no way of
her, of her getting loose. We gave her all her paperwork.
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She crumbled them up
and threw them at as and continued to, you
know, end that for us.
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And, you know, try to get at
us across, across the desk. She, it was just
like a caged animal.
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-What's bigger than a bread
box, smaller than a closet, and a pretty lousy place
for a fugitive to hide?
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Here comes the answer. -Got a call of a
burglary in progress. I roll up on the house.
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I'm searching the
exterior of the house. And I hear the sliding
door that I just pass open.
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I run over to the other side. And the male jumps the
fence, starts running. I go out after him
and we chase him down.
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He runs into his house. So we're sitting at
his house, you know, trying to get him to come out.
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We can hear him making all
sorts of noises in there. His mother finally arrives.
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We ask his mother
if we can go in. So we go in the house and
we're searching the house.
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-Not the answer I expected. So we went and did some, uh,
further investigation on that.
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And it turns out that the
vehicle that she was driving was a stolen vehicle. Not exactly the way I expected
that traffic stop to turn out.
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-You know those old TV
shows, the police officers reminded those they arrested
to come along peaceably.
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When they don't offer a
reminder, things turn ugly. In fact, they bear a
striking resemblance
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to our blue light special. -Stopped this speeder. Determined that it looked like
she had been drinking alcohol.
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So we put her through
the field sobriety test. And, uh, made a
determination that she
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was in fact driving
while intoxicated. So we locked her up four DWI. At the time we didn't
have a jail cell.
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We just had, uh, what
we called the holding chair with handcuffs
attached to it.
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So we placed her in the chair. And my partner was
coming over to start the process for the
breathalyzer machine.
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And she actually
attempted to trip him. And I guess she had
no idea that, that was being taped at the
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-There's a man who does
for journalism what the iceberg did for the Titanic. Here's Daniel with
ADC headlines.
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-A thief in Anchorage
learned the hard way that it pays to
do your paperwork. He grabbed the cash register
from an adult bookstore
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and ran, but the register tape
began unfurling as he fled. Police simply followed
the paper trail until they
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found their man
three blocks away. See now this is why you should
always keep your receipts, OK?
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He didn't have a green thumb,
but he had sticky fingers. I'm talking about a newspaper
delivery man in Tennessee who
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had more than his eye on
some potted plants adorning the front of several
businesses and homes.
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He snapped them up as
he made his rounds, unaware that security cameras
we're snapping his picture.
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The evidence took him
out of circulation until we posted a $4,000 bond. OK. A couple of Florida bandits
made the wrong thing go boom
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in an explosive
attempt at robbing what they believed to be
a bank's night depository.
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Instead, they deposited
dynamite in the drop vault of the
neighboring car wash. One kaboom later
the boys realized
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they felt the impact
of their mistake. Right there not only was the
paper money blown to bits,
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they were seriously
wounded by coins that came at them with
the force of buck shot.
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Ow! Quarter! And that closes the
file on ADC headlines, news ripped from
somewhere near the back
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of your local newspaper. Jedmeister. -Chivalry isn't
dead, but there's a guy in Atlantic Beach,
North Carolina who
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wishes he hadn't
minded his manners. He politely provides us
with our special delivery.
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-Uh, we have a gentleman
that, uh, is from here. All the officers
here know the guy.
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We've all had circumstances
and incidents with him. About the entire
time we've known him
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he's had very long
hair that's ran down to the lower
part of his back. Short time later,
you know, we we
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him again in his, his
hair is, is short. He walks up and says,
hey, buddy, what'd you do?
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You cut your hair. Where'd it all go? And he says, yeah, I cut it. And he goes to pull his
hat off and a bag of dope
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falls out of his hat and
lands at the [inaudible] feet. His statement was, you're not
gonna charge me with that,
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are you? And that's the long
and short of it. -OK. Legend has it that Jesse James
ducked into a cave in Kentucky
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whenever the law
came looking for him. That grand tradition is
being carried on with none
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of his grandeur as we'll
see when we catch up with a batty renegade in
Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico.
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Spelunking, anyone? -We had someone that
came in and, uh, thought he'd have a grand old time
exploring the cave drunk.
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So he came on down in the
cave with his buddies. -And he decided he wanted
to get ahead of his buddies
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and get off trail and
jump out and scare them. -What he didn't
know is that we only
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have one way in one and
one way out of this place. And the way he went
was not the way out.
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-He go a little
further off trail than he should have and wound up
down the dark area of the cave
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so he, uh, used his Bic
lighter to go a little further. -Into the dark,
through some ponds
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with his bottle and cigarettes. -When the lighter got
too hot for him to hold he just decided to sit
down and drink his booze
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and smoke a few cigarettes. And he wound up passed
out on the trail. -Drunk. His pants were wet from
trying to swim out of here.
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As the guided tour
approached that area they turned the lights
on and there he was just
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passed out in the
middle of the trail. -Yeah, I asked him if
he'd been drinking.
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And he says, oh,
I'm always drinking. NARRATOR: Now let's look back
at one ADC's greatest hits.
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-And, you know, it never ceases
to amaze me of the things that, uh, that happen.
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We had this particular call
involving this young female who's was visiting
a friend's house.
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She wanted to originally
borrow some clothes. And I guess, uh, that, uh,
while she had an opportunity
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to enter this
friend's, uh, bedroom, she observed some jewelry
and decided that, uh, she
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wanted to make that
jewelry her own. However, her friend,
uh, had enough smarts to realize immediately that,
uh, the jewelry was missing.
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And, uh, would not let
this particular female out of her sight. This victim insisted that
she would not go anywhere
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and contacted the police. And she continued to
deny any knowledge of the missing jewelry.
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The jewelry consisted
of, uh, five rings along with a diamond necklace. She was transported to, to
our police headquarters here.
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And, uh, you know the detectives
started questioning her. And, uh, she continued to deny.
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She says, I know nothing
of this missing jewelry. You, you know, you got me wrong.
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I, I didn't take this jewelry. And I guess she realized
that, uh, we, you know, we weren't gonna let
her go that easy.
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We continued to question
her for a few more moments and finally she blurted out,
I swallowed the jewelry.
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So we took her down to
Mountainside Hospital and we told the, uh,
the intern down there
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that, uh, we had a subject
in custody that allegedly had swallowed a large
amount of jewelry.
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In fact, it was, it was
worth in excess of $2,500. And we decided
to, uh, x-ray her.
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Upon running the x-ray
and then developing the x-ray low and behold right
there in her large intestine
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was this nice beautiful jewelry
all bunched up in, in knots. And, uh, it was really visible.
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And it was quite,
uh, quite hilarious. To be quite honest
with you, we did, we were able to recover one
of the rings which she passed,
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uh, but I can't tell you what
happened to, uh, all the rest of the jewelry. In Nicholas County,
Virginia it's
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illegal for members
of the clergy to tell jokes or humorous
stories from the pulpit
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during a church service. -One of the problems that
we have in Redondo Beach is for the last 10 years is
a day laborer problem where
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people congregate on
corners, uh, they drink beer, they stand and
loiter, and people
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get very upset about
having people just standing around
their neighborhood. So what we decided
to do was a sting.
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We went out to a local,
um, rental place, and, and rented some trucks. And we had people dress
up as contractors,
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put tools in the back
of, of the trucks, and went out to
do our own hiring. To try to give people
a chance what we did
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is we went to the newspaper
and had them publish an article several weeks before
warning everyone
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that we were going to
be doing an enforcement effort in this area. So we arrested
this one contractor
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who picked up
several day laborers. He told us that his wife
had read the article
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in the newspaper and had told
him, don't go out there again and hire any laborers, that
you shouldn't do that anymore.
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He said, well, what's
gonna happen from here? So we told him we're
gonna book you here,
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we're gonna send you
down to the jail. We asked him who
he wanted to call. And his answer was, not my wife.
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His wife was very
adamant that he was not to go back and hire any
of these day laborers.
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-Law enforcement officers
along the Mexican border face the extra challenge of
keeping both illegal aliens
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and illegal drugs from
making their way north. -And just when they
think they've seen
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it all along comes a new
one for the record books. -Watch as bad luck
strikes a blow
00:18:02
for justice in Yuma, Arizona. -Here's we're not
making this up. -Our officers assist
the US Customs on,
00:18:12
uh, port details down
in, uh, San Luis, where, uh, they inspect the
vehicles that are coming
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back and forth
across the border. Two weeks ago we had a
car go through the, uh,
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the port on the
northbound lanes. And while they're standing
there talking to this guy,
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he starts to get a flat tire
and the air starts coming out. Got to looking at it and see
if they could help him out
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and they notice it's got a
weird smell coming from it and it ends, it's marijuana.
00:18:35
This poor guy had come through
the port of entry into the US from Mexico, gets a flat
tire, air's coming out,
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and wind up finding marijuana
in each one of the tires that he had. He was probably on
the verge of getting
00:18:46
let go until that tire
went flat. [laughs] -That's clever. -You know, that puts a
new spin on pot holes.
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-Oh, let's just say goodbye. -Yeah, no matter where you are,
you're driving on the grass.
00:18:59
-Let it go, Daniel. -OK, but before we go,
we'd like to say thanks to the officers who
helped us tonight.
00:19:05
Theirs is a tough and
sometimes dangerous profession and they seldom get the
credit they deserve.
00:19:10
-If you've got a lead
on a story or you just want to drop us a note,
visit our website.
00:19:14
The address is
www.dumbcrimes.com. -As always, we
hope that we've all learned from others mistakes.
00:19:21
-But if you haven't, we
just might see you next week on "America's
Dumbest Criminals."
00:19:25
-Bye bye. [applause] [music playing]