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NARRATOR: This is
an ADC Warning. The crimes you are
about to see are true. Only the names were changed
to protect the ignorant.
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[theme music] DANIEL BUTLER: Tonight on
"American's Dumbest Criminals," you'll see a social
climber who's falling fast,
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a cat's stolen whiskers,
and a major incident with a miniature reenactment. These are just a few of
America's dumbest criminals.
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-Hi, and welcome to the show. I'm Daniel Butler. We've got a lineup
of clumsy crooks,
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funny felons, and
ridiculous robbers. In short, we've got
America's dumbest criminals.
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And here's the first one. Deputy Mark Murphy
of Escambia County tells us about a youth
who was running around.
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-Morning day shift,
and lieutenant asked-- called me by radio and
asked me to check out
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some suspicious vehicles in this
known area for stolen vehicles. Went in there and
found three vehicles.
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And I went ahead and got
out and ran the tag numbers. About a few minutes
later, my lieutenant
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arrived and started
helping me out. We got the juveniles
out of the vehicles and lined them up
against my cruiser.
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At that time, I started
going down the line and started getting
their names one by one.
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And I got to this last guy,
and I started to get his name, he takes off running.
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Well, maybe I just thrown my
pen and paper up in the air and take off after him.
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And as we hit the
edge of the wood line, as I got into the woods, I fell
down because a lot of briers.
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I fell down, and first
thought he was gonna get away. I looked up and he falls down.
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So I jump back up
and start running. Well, then I fell down again. Well, I looked up,
he falls down again.
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Well, I jump back up after him. I then started high-stepping
so I could get over the briers.
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We didn't take 15 steps and
we was back into the clearing just where we almost started
from, just a complete circle.
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Just like a rabbit runs. -Absolute proof that
many dumb criminals tend to run in the
same circle of friends.
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In San Francisco, it
is against the law to wash your car
with your underwear. However, it is legal
to buff your wax
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to a high-gloss sheen
with a gold lame bikini. And now, actual footage of a
case we call Drive In Diamonds.
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Police were called to an
unusual jewelry store heist. What was unusual was
the mode of entry.
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The dumb criminal
drove right in. He was picked up three blocks
away with some tell-tale car
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damage, glass, and
diamonds in the car. A few years back, on one of his
first nights as a policeman,
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rookie Norman Chapman was
forced to arrest a man who was too drunk to get where
he was going and too gone
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to get away. Here's social climber. -I was fairly new on
the police department. I was working a
undercover assignment.
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And then I saw this guy come
walking down the street. Yeah, he was walking,
and then all of a sudden,
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he does one of these things. And this fenced-in construction
yard, something caught his eye.
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So I said, I'm gonna wait till
he gets in this construction yard and I'm gonna
make my first arrest
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for burglary all by myself. Well, he was drunk, see? So he goes ahead and he
tries to climb the gate.
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And the gate was wobbling. So he gets about two foot up the
first time and he falls down.
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He gets up, and he gets about
three quarters of the way up the third time and
he falls off the gate.
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So the third time, he got
all the way to the top. He fell off the top of the gate.
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I said, hey, I gotta go down and
arrest this guy before he hurts himself and I don't [inaudible]
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[laughter] -That was some
pretty fence-y police work there for a rookie officer.
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Coming up on "America's
Dumbest Criminals," an extremely low budget
miniature reenactment.
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-For the criminal, the last
person they want to see is a cop. But let the same
criminal become a victim,
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and he reverts back
to is basic instincts, and like the rest of us in
society, calls the police.
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That's what happens to
the next guy in our story, only he's about to go from
victim to dumb criminal.
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We call this one Never Mind. Two officers were
dispatched to a home to investigate a break-in.
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-Well, it's time. Where you guys been? -Sir, can you calm down? We've got a report
that there was
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a robbery here this evening.
-Well, yeah. I called 10 minutes ago. My god. Everything has been
stolen out of my home.
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-Sir, calm down.
What happened? -I come home from work
just a moment ago. My back door's been kicked in
and all my stuff is missing.
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Everything's gone. The drawers have been
pulled out of my bedroom. My wife's jewelry is missing.
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My CD player, all of my
CDs, my cassette, VCR, my computer terminal, my
bag of dope, my-- my--
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-Dope? -Well-- -Sir, do you know narcotics
are illegal in this state? -Well, yeah, of course they are.
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Sure. Certainly. -So what are you saying, sir? -Well, I'm saying-- -Are you saying that you
had narcotics in your home?
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-No. No, what I'm basically
saying as, um, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And never mind.
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Have a good night, OK? Thank you. DANIEL BUTLER:
Without the narcotics, the officers could
not charge the man.
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You saw it here first. The man called the police
to report that someone had stolen his
stash of marijuana.
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Look no further, folks. There's the missing link on
the chain gang right there. In 1994, 96% of the
national prison population
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was serving sentences
of longer than one year. But 97% of them had mastered
the yo-yo in that first year.
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Now a case that involves two
different types of stolen vehicles with the
same type of driver.
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-I ran up on a Camaro and
a guy on a motorcycle, and they were
trailing one another.
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And I knew both of
these individuals because they'd stolen
cars and what have before.
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And I knew neither one
of them owned a vehicle. So I turned my police vehicle
around and went behind them.
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And they took off and tried
to attempt to elude me. So the guy on a motorcycle wound
up falling on the motorcycle.
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-You all right? -Yeah. -All right, come on. Let's get you up. Where's [inaudible] Camaro at?
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-Huh? -Where's your friend
in the Camaro? -I'm all right. -Where's your friend
in the Camaro?
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-I don't know what you're
talking about, man. -No, I saw you riding. Where's your friend at?
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-I don't know nothing
about no Camaro. -Come on, let's walk back here. -I knew that his friend
didn't own a Camaro.
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So he said he didn't know
where his friend was going. I proceeded to go
where I thought
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the guy may have
went in the Camaro. So as I proceeded to go
where I thought he went,
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all of a sudden this guy
come walking back toward me. And I was like, now that's dumb.
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Now he didn't think
I realized that was him in the in that Camaro? So anyway, I ended up putting
him in the police car.
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And I asked him,
where was the Camaro? And he went on to
say, what Camaro? I don't know nothing
about no Camaro.
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And then why you
coming back this way? I was just walking from
over at my sister's house.
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So I said, OK, fine. So I continued to drive around
the block looking for this car.
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And I guess after riding five
minutes, I found the Camaro. And I said, remember you said
you didn't have no Camaro?
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What is this? Well, you know, wouldn't
you try to get away, also? Man, you was so dumb, why
would you even come back?
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Well, I wanted to that
y'all had catched my friend. -Both men were arrested and
charged with grand theft auto.
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Now actual footage of a
case we call The Cat's Meow. This is a famous cat sculpture.
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It was on display in the
Fort Lauderdale Art Museum. One day, the museum's
curators discovered
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the cat's whiskers were missing. Two of them had been stolen. So the Fort Lauderdale
Police Department
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had to bring out the K-9 unit. Not the drug-sniffing dog,
not the bomb-sniffing dog,
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but the cat-sniffing dog
to retrieve the whiskers. You know, many times a
burglar pulls off the heist
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and, because he wasn't
caught on the spot, believes he's
gotten away with it. Like this next guy.
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He robbed a place
and soon discovered that he'd left more than
just the scene of the crime.
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Here a fool and his
tools are soon parted. -At that time, I
was east precinct, and one of the guys that worked
this precinct out north came
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over to my channel
and they said-- MALE VOICE OVER WALKIE-TALKIE:
Uh, do you remember Roy?
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-Yeah, what do you have? MALE VOICE OVER
WALKIE-TALKIE: Apparently he stole a pile of tools
down at the Sears
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and left his driver's license. We just need somebody
to go and pick him up. [laughing]
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MALE VOICE OVER WALKIE-TALKIE:
Subject's address is 6-- OFFICER MCINTOSH: And they
said, well, wait a minute,
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let's get his address for you. And I said, well, I
know where he lives. So I rolled up to his
house and I said, Roy,
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lemme see your driver's license. He patted his pocket and
he said, I ain't got it.
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And I said-- -Well, you got a sander we
could borrow in the car? -Oh boy. -And he just lowered his eyes
like that and went like that.
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[laughter] -Because he knew he was had. DANIEL BUTLER:
Definitely a candidate for the witless
protection program.
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In Oklahoma, It used to be
against the law for three or more dogs to stand together.
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Here 17 puppies stage
a protest of the law. Coming up, the
amazingly lifelike miniature reenactment
of tie tack terror.
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It's low budget. [theme music] -Next up, we've got some
muggers for you to laugh at.
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They rob a couple
on the walk and then find themselves unable to run. David Jones of the Wilton Manors
Police Department tells us why.
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-We responded to a strong-arm
robbery which just occurred, which is an attack
by someone forcibly
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to steal from somebody else. And we got a general
brief description of who we were looking for.
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And just as we were arriving
into the area, we see the car, we see these guys, and we
cut them all off right there.
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And the guy's were like amazed
at how could anybody get there that fast when it
turns out they robbed
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the people in the back
parking lot, and by the time they got around to the
front, got in their car,
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and started leaving,
there we were. What we had to tell
them was they parked in the front parking lot
of our police station,
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so it was like no
way to get away. [laughter] -I see the big letters
of the police building.
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I mean, how could
you not see it? That's where the
pulled in and they look both ways, right in
front of them, "Police."
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DANIEL BUTLER: Sure,
they were really dumb. But nice hat. ADC quiz number 808--
In Tennessee, there once
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was a law that said if
a woman was driving, her husband had to walk ahead
of her waving-- A, an insurance
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policy; B, a red flag; or C,
a white flag of surrender? The correct answer
was B, a red flag.
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If she'd had more
than five accidents, though, she also had to be
accompanied by a brass band.
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Now actual footage of a very
difficult way to wash your car. Two teenagers stole a car.
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The police spotted
them and gave chase. In the high speed
chase that ensued, the two teenagers lost
control and rammed
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their car into a motel laundry. The kids were not
seriously injured, but they were
obviously confused just
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about how you
launder stolen goods. And the police
immediately hung them out to dry for creating
drive-thru laundry.
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Now a case where the criminal
calls a very wrong number. -At the time, my job was to
contact people and, you know,
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try to buy or sell drugs
in an undercover capacity. Well this time, I
had been in contact
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with this guy who was looking
to buy some crack cocaine. So I was posing as a seller
of crack cocaine for this guy.
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He contacted me a
couple of times. I had some drinks with him. He was trying to buy
a certain amount,
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and we were kind of arguing
on how he was going to buy. Well during our contacts,
he would-- I would call him.
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Well, on one occasion, we were
nearing the time where I would sell the crack cocaine to him,
so I gave him my pager number
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and he was to call
me whenever he was ready to buy the cocaine. Well, the page numbers
of our police department,
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they're all in a
row, so my number was right next to
the number which is a call out-- a
SWAT call out number.
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So whenever you
dial this number, every SWAT member of the police
department gets the page.
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[phone ringing] -Hello? Well, this guy had written
the number down incorrectly that I gave him and
had inadvertently
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wrote down the SWAT
call out number. So whenever he was
about due to call me, sure enough, I got the page
because I'm on the SWAT team
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also. Unbeknownst to me,
he had activated the SWAT team basically. He called that number.
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Every SWAT member of
the police department called that number,
identifying themselves
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as Sergeant Johnson,
Pensacola Police Department. You paged me. Officer Johnson, Officer Smith--
everyone called this guy.
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And so I call-- I
recognized the call and it was at the right time. So I called and he just
picked up and hang up.
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He was obviously
scared to death. So the next day, I contacted him
again thinking no one would be
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stupid enough to
call me after this. But he did call me, and we met. And after some discussion,
I persuaded him
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that the pager company
had made a mistake and put my number next to a
police department's number,
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and that there was
no way that I was a police officer
and all this stuff. So I ended up selling
crack cocaine to him.
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We ended up arresting the guy. And come to find out, he
was a law school graduate.
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[theme music] -What can you say? It was his call. Now we take you inside the court
room for a trial and error.
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Let's hear how a robber ran
into a convenience store and let the clerk's
fingers do the walking.
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-Now Mr. Reed, what did you
do when the defendant ran into the store, demanding money
and threatening your life?
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-Well, I reminded him,
like on television, a condemned man always
get one last phone call.
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-And what did he say to that? -He said, OK. -And what did you do? -I called the police
and they arrested him.
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[theme music] DANIEL BUTLER: The interstate
was slick with rain when Sergeant Johnny
Cooley was working
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several multiple car accidents. But what happened
next was even scarier. -I'm sitting there working a
wreck with about three or four
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cars piled up,
twisted every which way and we got the road blocked. In the extreme left-hand
lane next to the rail,
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there was about just enough for
a car might a truck to clear, go through there. There was a truck driver driving
a tractor trailer out of Texas.
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He rounded that curve
17th Street, wide open. Didn't realize that everything
was blocked ahead of him
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there was a multiple car wreck. He gets on his brakes. You know, I hear him sliding
and I turn around and look.
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He's coming directly toward me. His truck jackknifes. When his truck jackknifes,
he straightened it up
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And he went right between-- I
stepped up on the rail, which is a little cement
thing like this.
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He went between the
wrecked automobiles and me. And he brushed my
tie tack on my tie.
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I was leaned up. I was looking over
the-- over the rail. And it's 65 feet down. DANIEL BUTLER: We wanted to
do a full-scale reenactment
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of Sergeant Cooley's
dramatic story, but it wasn't in the budget. So we now present an
extremely low-budget
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miniature reenactment. MALE VOICE: Uh-oh. What's that ahead? It's a car accident.
[semi truck horn blowing]
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MALE VOICE: There's
a cop in the road. [semi truck horn blowing] [brakes screeching]
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-He made it through there. But then when we
straightened up, then he hit his breaks again
because the road was completely
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blocked up here
with another wreck. So he jackknifes a second time. And this time, the
clams the rail.
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he goes over the rail, which
is like, six-- you know, four or five feet high. He goes over the rail,
and the whole tractor
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is just dangling in the air. [brakes screeching] MALE VOICE: Oh no. Another accident.
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Oh my god. No brakes. (YELLING) Help me. -So you know, I regained
my composure and I--
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[laughter] -I walk up there, and
this guy-- you know, he cracks the door
open on his cab,
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the cab of his tractor trailer. And he says, uh-- he
says, officer, he says, you know, I hate
to ask you this,
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but I know you're real
busy and everything, but do you think
you could possibly get me out of this truck?
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[laughter] DANIEL BUTLER: In Maryland,
it used to be against the law to seat lions in the theater.
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But dogs could play
on playgrounds. You know, we couldn't
have done this show without the cooperation
of the men and women
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of law enforcement
across America. We'd like to thank them for
their time, their dedication,
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and for making our
lives a lot safer. And we learn that cops
are just people, too,
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with just one
exception-- they're willing to lay down
their lives for us. [theme music]
00:18:36
[theme music]