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NARRATOR: Tonight on
"America's Dumbest Criminals." Just how many ways can
you divide the loot
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when you bring everyone
you know on a caper? Why would a team of
savvy police officers
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devise a sting operation to make
crooks sing for their supper? And what would you
do if a customer
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decided to enter
your store this way? You're in hot pursuit
of the answers on "America's
Dumbest Criminals."
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[theme music] NARRATOR: Welcome your hosts for
"America's Dumbest Criminals," Daniel Butler and Debbie Allen.
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-I get a workout
during that song. -Hey, what a show we
have for you tonight. If variety is the spice of
life, and we know it is,
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you've tuned in to
a veritable chili cook-off of video delight. -What was that again?
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-It's a video-- it's
a chili cook-off. -A veritable-- -Chili cook-off
of video delight.
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-Does that make you the Tabasco
sauce in this bowl of chili? -No, I'm the jalapeno.
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You're the Tabasco. -OK. We have stories about a foolish
forger, a pushy purse-napper--
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-Careful how you say that. ---a den of thieves,
and a speeding excuse you just won't believe.
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-Nope. One reason we do
this show, though, is to underscore that
crime is more than wrong.
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OK? It's dumb, and a life of
crime isn't just a bad career choice-- it's a step into
a real cutthroat business.
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Let's get a firsthand account
about our first klutzy criminal from an officer in
Winslow, Arizona.
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[siren wailing] -Well, Debbie and Daniel,
I got a dumb criminal on tape for you.
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So we were dispatched
to a burglary alarm along with some other
officers to a local gas
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station and convenience store. When we arrived there, the
alarm was still going off
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and we found a subject
laying inside the store in a pool of blood. Later, it turns out
that what he had done
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was climbed up on top of the
building with burglary tools and he pried open one of
the ventilation shafts
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and dropped about 20
feet down into the store. Once he got in,
the alarm sounded,
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and he soon realized that
he had nowhere to go, because he forgot to
drop the rope down.
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So he tried to break the windows
and crawl through the bars that were welded onto the windows,
and during that attempt
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at getting out of the window, he
sliced his throat from his ear all the way to the
front of his neck.
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Basically, almost bled to death. That's where we
found him, was laying in his blood in the store.
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DEBBIE: Oh, man! -He was OK. He was OK. You know, I mean,
he lived, but try explaining that injury to
your insurance company.
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You know?
I mean, what? -I cut myself shaving, maybe? I don't know. -What were you using, Deb?
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-I don't think they'd buy it. -No. I don't think so. But our next story
involves jogging, OK?
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-And running from the law. Let's track this story
of a wacko in Waco. -I think that's a
"wake-o" in "Wacko."
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-Well, I was helping
with the Academy, doing the physical training. And on this particular
day, it was my turn
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to take the group that I
had to go out and run around the block, basically, down
outside the police department.
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About halfway
through the jog, when I noticed that I heard
somebody coming up behind me,
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I thought, well,
this is strange. These guys aren't in
that good of shape. I know they can't catch me yet.
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That's what I
thought in my mind. But he got up and he asked
me, well, are you a boxer?
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I said, no. I'm not a boxer. I'm a police officer. I'm training these
guys behind me.
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And he kind of got
quiet for a second. And he asked me, well, how
long have you been doing this?
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Well, just getting started. We're just getting going here. Then he got quiet for a
second, and then he just left.
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But when he left, he
told me, bye, took off, and I noticed he was
wearing blue jeans.
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And I thought, what people
jog in their blue jeans? But he just kept on trucking.
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Well, at the same
time, my partner, who was still with some
of the others in the back,
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he yelled at me. I turned around to
see what was going on. He pointed back
towards the front.
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When I looked back in front of
me, one of our detective cars had pulled up beside the guy
that was jogging with me.
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And when the guy saw
that he was a detective, he took off running. Well, then I'm-- oh, OK!
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Now I know what's going on. So I took off after
the guy, chased him about a half a block.
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Threw him on the ground, and
I just started laying on him. Good thing is, one
of our police cars
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was the first one to get
there, so they knew who I was, and they got him handcuffed
and put him into the car.
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And then I-- I thought it was
kind of strange he was running, and I found out he'd
escaped from the courthouse.
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He was getting his
probation revoked, and that's why he bolted out of
there and saw the group of us
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jogging so figured he was going
to blend in with the joggers. Turned out it was
police officers
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he was going to
blend in with, so he ended up getting caught anyway. So it was a bad day for
him, good day for us.
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DEBBIE: I love it. -What are the odds? Come on. Now, that jogger wannabe
isn't the only guy
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who was in the wrong
place at the wrong time. See what happens when
a trio of young thugs
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step from obscurity
right into page one news. -I was working
undercover surveillance,
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and we got information
about a couple of guys doing burglaries. We noticed some guys go
into the jewelry store
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that our guys were
window-shopping in front of, and I have a scanner
in my undercover car.
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And I hear the alert tone. Boop-boop-boop! "Any unit in the vicinity,
a robbery in progress."
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And they give out the address,
and it's the jewelry store that our crooks were
looking in the window of.
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Right about that time, our
crooks start running up the street away from the
store, and I come on the air
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and I tell the other guys,
hey, the jewelry store's being robbed. Those guys we saw go into the
jewelry store are robbing it.
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Well, what we didn't
know is they'd gone in and all three of
them had pulled guns,
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and the one guy took his gun
and hit the glass case trying to get to the jewelry and
the barrel broke off his gun.
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I'm In the meantime,
LAPD shows up, and we end up contacting
them, and they covered the front of the store.
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Well, the getaway car was being
chased by some of our people, and I was going to help them.
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And as I'm driving by the
alley by the back door, here come these three
guys running up the alley.
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I jump out of the car
and I confront them. We end up taking
them into custody. What they didn't realize is
there was a local newspaper
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photographer who was
listening to her scanner, too, and she was taking pictures
of them running out
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the the back door of the
jewelry store, up the alley, and then right into us, where
they were taking into custody.
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These guys were pretty
dumb, walking right into the middle of
a surveillance team.
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[applause] NARRATOR: Hey, here's
another dumb law. In Macon, Georgia, no man can
place his arm around a woman
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without a good and legal reason. [applause] -That's an unusual law. I wonder what constitutes
a legal reason.
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Well, things were definitely
nowhere near that chummy in this week's edition of
America's Dumbest Excuses.
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Listen to this story of
a guy with a lead food and an iron fist. -A gentleman involved
in a traffic accident.
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Officer showed up at the scene,
gave him the witness statement to fill out, and he actually
put in the witness statement,
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I was distracted, I couldn't see
where I was going because I was busy punching my
girlfriend in the face.
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And that's a true story. -OK. Changing the subject now-- have
you ever gone to the circus
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and watched as a
dozen clowns piled out of that little, bitty car? Well, tonight's
Blue Light Special
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is a surveillance video
with similar elements, except it involves 15
clowns and three cars.
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Still, see if things don't
look like a three-ring circus. Check it out. NARRATOR: Hail, hail,
the gang's all here,
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out on the town for a
little late-night shopping when there's no crowd. Well, except for the
one you brought with you
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to rob this Miami
department store. Look at them go! It may bear some similarity
to an Easter egg hunt,
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but this is no day in the park. You're watching 15
thieves go after the most expensive stuff in the store.
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-I have been a cop for 20 years. I don't ever recall anything
of that nature in Miami Beach
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before. NARRATOR: After
grabbing their goods, they were convened to
beat a hasty retreat.
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Obviously, these people
knew what they were doing. Or did they? Apparently, they'd spent so much
time planning their plundering
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that no one worked
out their getaway. When the cops arrived,
it's bumper car time.
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Seven members were
apprehended on the spot, and others were picked up later. No word on whether they
posed in the booking room
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for a group photo. -Oh, brother. And that's our den of thieves. OK, you've heard that too many
cooks can spoil the broth.
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Well, now you're about to see
an ingenious solution cooked up by police officers dealing
with too many crooks.
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See if you don't
agree that this sting operation is mmm-mmm-good. -One time the weather
was bad outside.
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It was snowing, and we didn't
feel like leaving the office to try to arrest anybody that
day unless it was a sure thing.
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One of the detectives
stayed in the office and was making
phone calls to see if he could find
someone at home.
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The first call he made,
he got the suspect he was looking for on the phone. -Hello?
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DANIEL PUKACH: Doing
some quick thinking, he told the suspect that
he was from a radio station
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and if he could hum the
Campbell's Soup jingle, that he could win a case
of soup of his choice.
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He then asked the suspect
what his favorite soup was, and the suspect told him
it was chicken noodle.
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He then told the suspect
to sing the Campbell's Soup jingle, which the suspect did.
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-Mmm-mmm-good. Mmm-mmm-good. Campbell's soups
are really good. -With that, we told
him that we would
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be right out to deliver
his case of soup. We drove out to the suspect's
house, and when we pulled up,
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we opened the trunk. The suspect came out to collect
his soup, and he was arrested.
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He did have his soup
later that night, and it was in the county jail. Mmm-mmm-good.
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-Coming up later,
an undesired level of convenience in a
convenience store. But first, with news that
would make even Jerry Springer
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a little bit queasy--
and that's going some-- here's Daniel
with ADC Headlines. -All right.
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A guy just had a gut feeling
that customs officials were going to search his bag
and find the little stash
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of marijuana he
was transporting. So, he grabbed someone else's
bag off the luggage carousel
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and proceeded through customs. When officials
opened that suitcase, they found several
pounds of cocaine.
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OK. What are the odds? And you thought getting
stuck with a little layover was a hassle.
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He got 20 years, I think. An intoxicated robber
in Ionia, Michigan, threatened to call police when
two service station attendants
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failed to hand over their cash. They refused, thus
forcing his hand. So he made good on his threat
and was promptly arrested
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by the police
officers he summoned. Go figure. A National League umpire was
charged with stealing 4,180
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baseball cards from a store
in Bakersfield, California. When asked his
motive by police, he
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said, well, to
collect and trade. Now, here's an
expression he might understand-- you're
out of there.
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And speaking of "you're
out of there," finally, a pair of nervous robbers
entered a Michigan record
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store vigorously
waving handguns. The first shouted,
"Nobody move!" And when his partner
moved, he shot it him.
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True story. That closes the file on
ADC Headline News, ripped from somewhere near the back
of your local newspaper.
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Debbie? -Somewhere in the
very back, huh? OK. Something to think about. When you're driving, your
right foot has two choices--
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right?-- at any given moment. The brake will keep
you from harm's way. That other pedal makes
things fall down and go boom.
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DEBBIE (VOICEOVER): We all
know that accidents happen. Having a little fender-bender
doesn't make you a criminal,
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but what if you cause
wholesale destruction to a retail
establishment by creating
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your own drive-through? That's adding a little
too much convenience to your local convenience store.
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-It sounded like a bomb
going off, literally. It scared me to death,
it kind of shook me up,
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and then, all of a
sudden, I felt-- I felt, like, little sprays
of glass come at me.
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And that's about all. DEBBIE (VOICEOVER):
Still, it could have just been an honest mistake-- unless
he caused this much destruction
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and left the scene
so fast that he left rubber on the
linoleum floor. Now, that's a crime.
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And destroying the
Slurpee machine? Well, that's just a shame. [applause] -Don't you just hate
it when frozen beverage
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machines are innocent victims? Doggonit. Well, we all know
that forgery is wrong,
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but the particular
case of forgery allowed this crook
to sign his life away by signing
someone else's name.
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We go to Redondo
Beach, California, where Service Specialist
Nancy Krajcik will dot every I
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and cross every T for
this episode I'm Where? You're Who? -We impounded an
individual's car
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because the driver had a
suspended driver's license. A couple days later, the
husband of this individual
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came to the front counter
of the police department and provided me
with a form signed
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by a judge releasing
the impound of his car. In looking at this form,
I noticed a couple things.
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First of all, most of the form
was filled out in black ink, but the judge's signature
was in blue ink.
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I told the individual at the
front counter, have a seat or come back later. I need to verify this
signature or the validity
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of this document with the court. And he said, OK, fine. I'll come back later. So, in the meantime,
I call the court.
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The court checks with the judge. Judge says, no, I
never signed that. Have an officer come in-- fill
out a crime report for forgery.
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This individual calls
me back on the phone, and I said, I just
called the court,
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and they said, yes, they gave
you a bunch of paperwork. So come on back down to
the police department.
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Sure enough, about 15
minutes later, the guy comes to the front
counter knowing that he forged a
name on the document.
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Says, I'm here to get my car. I said, OK. Hold on. So we had an officer go out
and arrest him for forgery.
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-Have a nice day. [applause] -Not. We just love it when the crooks
make it easy for the police.
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OK. How do you take one prime
and turn it into two? Let's go to Ocala,
Florida and hear
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how a purse snatcher
doubled his trouble. -This story was just
too fun to pass up.
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We do so many crime
stories, that this one came as comic relief and was
a lot of fun to go out and do.
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What happened was, a lady
had just moved to Ocala. She had only been
here maybe a week.
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Her whole entire
home was in boxes, so there was a TV, a
stereo-- a thief's dream.
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Everything you could possibly
want was right there. This thief happens to crawl in
and passes up all the goodies,
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and in turn takes her purse. Then a week later, she
kind of thought maybe she misplaced her
purse, but wasn't sure.
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Finally got the feeling, yeah,
something probably happened. That same day, her
telephone rang,
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and it happened to be the thief. He says to her, lady,
I think I probably have something that
you probably want.
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And she said, well, if you have
my purse, you're exactly right. I'd like to have that back.
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So he wheels and deals
and says, well, I know exactly what
you're worth, lady. I have your purse.
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I've gone through it. How about I'll sell
it back to you? -Well, this was a fanny pack.
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It wasn't even a real purse. -Well, she only had
some loose change and canceled all her
credit cards, so she said,
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it's really not that much to me. And he said, hey, lady,
who do you think I am? I'm not up here
just playing around.
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You need your purse back. I'll give you time
to think about it. By this time, she's
already called the cops.
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He calls back and says, lady,
I've been thinking about it, and I'll give your purse
back to you for $200.
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So they set up this meeting
to meet at a church, and a Marin County
sheriff's deputy
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had dressed up in her clothing. -And he took the
bag, and he shuffled and walked, just like I walked.
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-And he's walking across the
lawn, and in the darkness, I looked out the
window and I said,
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boy, Mom, this guy's good. He looks just like
you from the rear. -Dropped off the money and
gets back to the house.
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Well, the thief
had called again, saying that he did not
see the money this time.
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Not only did he
not see the money, but he also did not hear
the sheriff's helicopter
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hovering up above and past the
K9 Unit and past two cop cars. And the whole entire time
that he's calling this lady,
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she's star 69ing. So, the third time that he calls
her and says he doesn't see the money, the sheriffs already
know where he's calling from.
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Well, this guy was so stupid
that he even took the purse. Instead of just dropping
it out the window,
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he lobbed it over the root. It turns out this guy-- this
wasn't his first failed attempt
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at stealing a purse and
trying to sell it back. He has an 18-page-long
rap sheet and tons
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of botched burglaries
and robberies. [applause] -You got to hand it
to our next crook.
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He tried to be flexible
when his victim had no money to hand over. -Yeah, well, and it was
his "I'll work with you"
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attitude that earned him a spot
in We're Not Making This Up. -Really? -Nope. -About a year ago, we got a call
about a robbery that had just
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occurred at a personnel service. And we arrived and
people were running around excitedly
at the business.
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We made contact with
them and they told us that a guy who had come
in about a month previous
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and had signed up to be a
temporary employee with them had failed his testing,
had done very poorly.
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They were unable to place him. He returns on this day armed,
confronts a bunch of the people
00:18:51
in the business there, orders
them all in the back room, has one of the secretaries
tie them up with cable ties,
00:18:57
and then has the
manager go to his office and asks him to write
a bunch of checks.
00:19:02
Make them for $1,700.30. So the manager
writes his name down and asks if he spelled it right,
being that they knew who he was
00:19:09
from their records, and
writes him the two checks. Well, he takes the manager back
and ties him up with the cable
00:19:17
ties and fires a
round from his gun into the carpet in
front of him and says, now you know I'm
serious and leaves.
00:19:22
Well, as we were
arriving, they're trying to relay the story to us. He had put the cable ties on
loose enough that everybody was
00:19:28
loose before he'd even
gotten out of the building, and they hand us a copy
of his driver's license.
00:19:33
Not hard to track
down from there. [laughter] -Gosh. I guess that means he
won't be getting any more
00:19:43
referrals from that temp agency. -Well, no. He had a temporary brain, OK? -Yeah.
00:19:48
-Both of them can't
be temporaries. We want to thank
you for joining us and extend our gratitude
to the law enforcement
00:19:54
officers who make
this show possible. Every day, they lay
their lives on the line
00:19:58
to keep us safe
from the stupidity of would-be criminals. -As always, we
hope that we've all
00:20:03
learned from others' mistakes. -Hey-- but if you haven't, we
just might see you next week
00:20:07
on "America's
Dumbest Criminals." -Goodbye.