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NARRATOR: Tonight on
America's Dumbest Criminals, is there a difference
between a leap
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of faith and taking a dive? Could you be courting
disaster with the person you pick as your
character witness?
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And there may be
some funny business going on right under
this guy's nose. Stick around for all the
hanky panky gone awry
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with the cast of
characters we call America's dumbest criminals. [theme music] NARRATOR: Now, welcome
your hosts for ADC,
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Daniel Butler and Debbie Allen. -Hi. Hi, there. Hi, there. Well, we have got
plenty of lessons
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to learn in tonight's show. For example, if you don't
have something good to say,
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don't say anything at all. -Yep. And an idle mind is
the devil's workshop. -Look before you leap.
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Don't put that in your mouth. You don't know where it's been. -And just be satisfied
with what you have.
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-Well, and the immortal. You can pick your friends
and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick
your friend's nose.
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-I'll just take your
word on that one. Now here's one last phrase. We all know the Boy Scout
motto is two simple words.
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-Find girls. -No! Be prepared. -Well, you obviously
don't know my scout troop. -I guess not.
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-All right, well
let's compromise. How about be prepared
to find girls. -Daniel!
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Never mind. The dad in our first story
wasn't prepared at all when he sauntered
into the woods.
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-No tent, no food, no nothing. -But fortunately, the rescue
team came ready for anything.
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They even had a
helicopter equipped with an infrared camera
that detects heat. -Look for the hot spot
to find the red-faced dad
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who was caught on camera. NARRATOR: We're high above
the woods in Martin county,
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Florida, looking for white
shapes to wave frantically. MAN: Got 'em. Three o'clock.
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NARRATOR: Now wait, wait. Why not pretend
like you didn't see them, and fly off,
just for grins?
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Oh, better idea. Yeah. Buzz them like sheep. Gee, I didn't know Florida
was that close to Chernobyl.
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MAN: It's going to be about
20 yards ahead of you. Just honk your horn. NARRATOR: And then drive off.
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No, just kidding. MAN: I wanted to get the
reunion on tape, here. NARRATOR: Cue the violins.
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Here comes the big moment. No, guys. We're over here. Not that direction. Gosh, no wonder they got lost.
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They can't find their way, and
they're only 5 feet from us. MAN: Coming around the shoulder,
I think they all [inaudible].
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NARRATOR: Oh, sure. Guns they've got, but did dad
remember the toilet paper? No.
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MAN: Oh, there's the guy waving. He's pretty happy. NARRATOR: Well, if he's
happy, we're happy.
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-These days, many
people seem to be living way beyond their means. Researchers tell us that the
typical American household
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is $38,000 in debt. -Well, they're not
counting the house. But there are many
ways to pick up
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some extra cash to
support your lifestyle. You could work a second job,
start an at home business,
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or sell plasma. -Or you can do with
this next fella did. He robbed a bank,
but he just didn't
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get enough to live in the manner
in which he was accustomed. -And that leads us to
Something To Remember Me By.
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-We had an armed robbery
at one of our local banks. The guy completes his
task and leaves the bank.
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Goes over to Greenville, where
he lives at, and decided he was going to purchase
himself a nice Rolex watch.
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-And the lady said that
a guy came in there to purchase a Rolex
watch for $5,175.
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-Got the $5,000 in his
pocket, but doesn't have the change the pay for it. -But wanted a credit application
to fill out for the $175.
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-So he fills out a
credit application with his real money. -She thought it was a little
suspicious, so after he left,
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she called us. It was pretty dumb that
this guy had the money, but used his real
name and address
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on the credit application. -If you're a fan of the
Looney Toon cartoons, you're gonna love
our next story.
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-Our man on the run meets
an end worthy of Daddy Duck or Wile E. Coyote. OK, everybody.
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Prepare to wince. -We got handcuffs on him. -All right. -You tell us, what else
is going on tonight?
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You jumped a bridge, right? NARRATOR: And his jump
of more than 60 feet ended suddenly, in only
six inches of water.
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How'd he get in this
compromising position? Let's back up and have an
officer on the scene brief us.
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-One of our patrol units
pulled him behind a van, ran the license plate number. The van came back stolen.
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Now, he was attempting
to stop the van. The van then fled and led
loose on a high speed pursuit.
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During this time the pursuit
came behind a Isuzu Trooper, which also started
speeding away in an attempt
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to evade our officers. The Isuzu Trooper
went northbound on Watt Avenue,
stopped on a bridge.
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The driver got out,
laid on the ground. The passenger jumped
over the bridge, thinking it was not
far down, when instead,
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the drop was about
50 or 60 feet. Landed down in the river
and broke both of his legs.
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If they had pulled
over originally, they never would
have been stopped. So in this case we
got two for one.
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NARRATOR: In
Prunedale, California, it's illegal to install two
bathtubs in the same house.
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-And with a name
like Prunedale, I wonder if they allow two
toilets under one roof?
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I sure hope so. Well, each week this
show demonstrates that police officers truly
have a great sense of humor,
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but law enforcement
is serious business. Those who try to get off
the hook by joking around
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may discover that it's
the folks with the badges who have the last laugh. Here's America's
Dumbest Excuses.
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-You know, this deputy sheriff,
he saw a guy up there did a minor traffic violation,
tail light out, or something,
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and so he tried
to pull him over. And the guy would not pull over. And I mean, he chased
him for a couple miles,
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and finally when he did get
him over, he walked up to him, and he said, you know, this
had better be real good.
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And the guy said, well, officer,
he said, not too long ago, my wife ran away with
a cop, and I thought
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that was him trying
to bring her back. -Remember the old
TV show "Lassie?" And that guy, Timmy?
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Timmy was always getting
stuck in a well, or in a cave. What was with that kid? And he'd always send
Lassie for help.
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She'd run home
and start barking, and the adults would ask,
which one this time, girl?
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The well or the cave? Then they'd go running
to get the kid out. Well, all right.
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Tonight we've got a story
of a crook looking for help. Maybe he should have looked
for a well-groomed collie
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instead of who he found. Here's our Blue Light Special. -We had a chance
to meet a guy that
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wanted to rob a bank
down at Pinellas Park. So he reached out to us to
help him do the bank robbery.
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We set him up in a motel room,
and he brought all his guns in, brought his mask
in, and showed us,
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told us how he was
going to do it, and wanted us to help him do it. After that, every little
meeting in the hotel room,
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we went out and took a ride. And he took us to a bank down
there, the First Union Bank,
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and we'd go around it,
he'd talk about how we were going to do it. When he came back
to the motel room,
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we already had our
guys inside there. He had to get the
guns on, and stuff. He had a rude awakening
when he went back inside.
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They knocked him down
and took his guns away. -Former president Ronald
Reagan is quoted as saying,
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you can tell a lot about
a fella's character by the way he eats jelly beans. Well, there are no jelly
beans in this story,
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but beans are
spilled, and a lesson is learned about the
importance of prudently
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picking your
character witnesses. Take a look. -We had one of our
local transvestite
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walk up and say, your honor! -No, I wasn't
loitering [inaudible]. Me and my friend Shaniqua
here, we were at home.
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-And he says, oh, really? Do you have a witness
to prove this? -Yeah, I can prove it.
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Shaniqua, come here. I can prove I was at home. -And the transvestite walked up
there, and when he walked up,
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the officer says,
excuse me, your honor, I need to whisper something
to you real quick.
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And he whispered something,
and they said, sir, I hate to tell you
this, but we have
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19 warrants for your arrest. And they both went to jail. -Here's the Dennis
Rodman of journalism,
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Daniel with ADC Headlines. -OK. A thief caused a major
brouhaha as he robbed a convenience store
in Monroe, Louisiana.
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His weapon of choice? A cup of coffee. And I think we all know
how scary convenience
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store coffee can be. He threw it at the
store clerk, grabbed some cash from the
register, and ran.
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15 minutes later he was captured
with grounds for his arrest. If you're a police officer,
it's hard to leave your work
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at the office--
especially when it practically comes
knocking on your door. A purse snatcher
dashed several blocks
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from the scene of
the crime, approached an out of uniform officer
who was standing outside
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of his apartment, and pleaded,
you've got to hide me! The cops are looking for me!
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Well, the officer was obliged
to take time off from his day off and arrest the man.
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In real estate,
three things matter-- location, location,
and location. That can also be true
of apprehending crooks,
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as an escapee from a
Montana prison discovered. While waiting in line at a
Seattle Mariners ballgame,
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he heard someone call his
name and turned around. There stood the vacationing
assistant warden of the prison.
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And as you might expect,
the stunned escapee forfeited his free agent status. And that closes the
file on ADC Headlines,
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news ripped from
somewhere near the back of your local newspaper. Debbie? -How much trouble can one
person get into in an hour?
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Well, here's the
case that would leave time management experts in awe. Experience the efficiency
and incompetency
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of tonight's Special Delivery. -One day I was
driving down the road, and some guy started backing
his car out of the parking spot.
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And when I realized he was
backing out a little bit too far, it was
too late by then.
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He backed into the
side of my car. So I stopped my car, and
I walked up to the driver,
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and I told the
driver I need to see his licence and registration. He got a little
bit nervous, and he
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gave me his driver's license. I saw his driver's licenses was
just issued on that same day.
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And he told me that
he just got done taking his driver's
test an hour ago. So I said, boy, your day's
not going too well, is it?
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He said no, it's not. I said, well, come on back to my
car, and let's talk about this.
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He came back to my car, and when
I asked him for the insurance information, he said he
didn't know where he c it at.
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So I told him, that's fine. I'll just go up to your car and
see if I can find it for you.
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And as I walked up
to the car, I noticed he had dropped his shirt. So I picked his
shirt up, and out
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fell a big back in marijuana. So I started my accident
report, and then I read the vehicle
registration, and the vehicle
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came back stolen. Talk about a bad day. First day as his
driver's license, he backs into a police
car, gets caught
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with a big bag of marijuana,
and in a stolen car. -It is not often that a
well-heeled gentlemen such as I
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have the opportunity
to use the term booger in a program
seen around the world. Why I was picked I cannot
say, but I do know that
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the utterance of that
one word-- booger-- sets the stage for
the barbaric story about to be flicked your way.
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Observe. -Sitting on a bench, I'm
talking to another officer. I see this guy walking
down the hallway,
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and the next thing you know is
he takes his right index finger and puts it in his nose.
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The guy's picking
his nose, and he's looking-- looking at
me right in the eye. Now as he gets closer, he pulls
his finger out of his nose.
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As he walks by, he
wipes his finger-- -Booger. -A booger on my boot, and
I realize that this guy
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needs to have a
little talking to. -I don't think he
was mad, he was just shocked somebody would
do something like that.
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-So I stood up, and
I told him to stop, and he turned around and
said hey, what's going on?
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You don't have a right
to tell me to stop. -I looked over, and I noticed
Officer Nelson had a subject
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detained, and sitting
down in hiccups. -I explained to him that
this guy just put a booger
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on my boot, and we
looked at each other like, this is not happening. You know, we expect to
have people yell at us,
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scream at us, and call
us all kinds of names, but I don't think there's ever
been a case where a guy has put
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a booger on a police
officer's boot. NARRATOR: Now let's look back
at one of ADC's Greatest Hits.
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Evidently the guy
rolled out of bed one evening and decided that he
wanted to go out for a drive.
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He went to the
Baltimore Municipal Lot, broke into one of their vacant
buses, and away he went.
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MAN: Has hit several
citizens' vehicles, and is still continuing
southbound on GW Parkway.
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NARRATOR: At one point there
were as many as 50 police cars involved in the chase, which
followed the ghost driver
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for about 40 miles
until he finally crashed into a guardrail just
outside of Washington, DC.
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[shouting] MAN: OK, the bus
has just crashed. We're approximately
two miles southbound.
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We're south of Route 610. The bus has crashed. Get over. We need clear, in
case the guy bails.
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-Well, a couple of years ago, on
a routine patrol with Corporal Simon, we had stopped at an
intersection at 263 and 202,
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and we were stopped
at a stop sign. We noticed a car go by,
and the people in the car
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took one look at us, and they
floored the car and took off. We suspected something,
so we took off in pursuit.
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About two blocks down the
street they made a turn into a private driveway, and
they all bailed out of the car
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and started running. And we pulled in right after
them and jumped out of the car,
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and ran one down. Corporal Simon had run
the tag on the vehicle, questioned him, and found
out that it had been stolen.
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So we transported the
subject back to the station, and I drove the stolen
car back to the station.
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So here I am driving the
stolen vehicle down the road, I'm in full uniform, and
there's a hitchhiker in view.
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He's got a red bandana
around his head, and I recognized the
bandana from the three
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that jumped out of the car. So I slowed down to pick
him up, and reached over and scratched my arm to
hide the police patch.
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And he motioned to the bushes,
and two other gentlemen came out of the bushes
and got into the car.
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Made a u-turn in the
car and floored it so they didn't jump
out, and in the interim
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I said to them, hey, fellas,
you recognize the car? And one of them in the
back says oh, [bleep].
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When we got back to the
station, brought them inside. As soon as we opened the door,
Corporal Simon recognized them
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and says, boy, you guys
must be pretty stupid. NARRATOR: In Wisconsin,
butter substitutes
00:15:55
are not allowed
in state prisons. -The call involved a neighbor
complaining of a car going
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around in circles in this
cul-de-sac for about an hour. He didn't hit
anything, but then he
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turned-- he stopped
the car, backed up, turned around, and went
back the other way.
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My partner and I,
we drove down there. When we get there,
there's no car. There was skidmarks
and acceleration marks,
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and all the marks in
the world that you could see in this cul-de-sac, all
going around in circles.
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I said, well, what
happened to the car? And the guy says, he
went down that driveway.
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And this guy is off
perpendicular from these skid marks. He's high center on
this mound of dirt.
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When I opened the door, the
guy said, can I help you? I said, no, sir. Valet parking.
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Can I help you? And he says oh, yeah, great. Hey, just park it anywhere. He turns it off and
hands me the keys.
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He is just way drunk. Just drunk. -What about the valet? -Oh, don't worry about if, man.
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It's on me this time, OK? -Oh. All right. -The guy said he was
caught in traffic.
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Just caught in traffic
for the longest time, and finally took an
off ramp, and then he
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got caught between
two brown trucks. And I go hey, partner,
you're under arrest for DUI.
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-Just when I thought we couldn't
get any fouler than the story on boogers, along comes
something equally distasteful.
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-He means that quite
literally, folks. Here comes a gut-wrenching
tale of severe justice
00:17:27
that could only
belong in the segment we call We're Not
Making This Up. -This guy's laying
in bed one night,
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he hears some commotion
out in his driveway. He owns a great big motor home. He gets out and he
looks, and he sees
00:17:42
a guy siphoning gas
out of his motor home. So he puts on his pants
and his tennis shoes,
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he runs out and
hollers at the guy who's siphoning gas
out of the tank. -Hey! Hey!
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Hey! -The guy that's stealing,
or doing the siphoning takes off running. This guy chases him, and
he gets about a block.
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The guy that's
being pursued just stops and starts
puking everywhere. They take back off again,
and the guy chases him
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another block or
so, and this guy stops, pukes, and keeps going. But the guy never can catch
the guy after two blocks.
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But the guy he's chasing has
stopped and thrown up twice. He thinks, well, I'm rid of him.
00:18:16
So he walks back
to his motor home to check out how much
gas he had stolen, and he noticed the
gas tank was not open.
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The guy had stuck a hose
down in the holding tank, and had been sucking raw
sewer out of his motor home.
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-Jeez. All righty. All right, Deb, how
does it feel to be part of the
queasiest show on TV?
00:18:44
-Ask me when my
stomach settles, OK? -Well, all right. We're all out of body
functions-- I mean stories,
00:18:49
so I think we'd better go. -But we will be back
again next week. -With a whole show on sea
sickness aboard prison ships.
00:18:56
-We will not. -No, just kidding. But hey, if you'd like
to look us up on the web,
00:19:01
surf on over to
www.dumbcrimes.com. -We'd like to thank
the officers who helped us with tonight's show.
00:19:07
-And for all the people
in law enforcement who keep this crazy world a
little saner for all of us.
00:19:13
-As always, we
hope that we've all learned from others' mistakes. -But if you haven't, we
just might see you next week
00:19:18
on America's Dumbest Criminals. -Bye, bye.