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ANNOUNCER: Tonight on
"America's Dumbest Criminals," this couple doubted they'd get
their stolen belongings back,
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but they never expected
to get what they got. It isn't just the spirits of
this thief that need a lift.
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Fortunately, he's found
an officer who hold up his pants while
upholding the law.
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And this was probably
an unforgettable evening for this guy, if he
could only remember it.
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For entertainment that's
sure to stay with you, stay where you are. You're on patrol for
"America's Dumbest Criminals."
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[theme music] -Duh. ANNOUNCER: Now, welcome your
hosts for "America's Dumbest Criminals," Daniel
Butler and Debbie Alan.
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-Hello. -Look at you. You look very nice tonight. You really do.
-Thank you. -You're welcome.
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-Oh, wait a minute. Is my hair messed up? Is that why you're saying that? -No, no, can't a gentleman
offer a lady a compliment?
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-Yes, a gentleman can. -Hey, hey, hey. -Oh. -OK, anyway I'll go ahead. Our first story concerns
fashion, well, in a fashion.
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So I'm just noticing
things like how you look more
closely, that's all. -OK, speaking of fashion, what
is the strangest get up you
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ever were caught in? -Yeah, that would be
1972, the platform shoes and the fur coat.
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-Oh, what a picture. Platform shoes and fur coat. -Well, I bet you've
been a tormented slave
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to fashion in your
past, I'm sure. -Yeah, you know me. Oh, but I hated the output
I wore on our first taping.
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That sweater was just
cut the wrong way. It made me look really fat. It was just-- I mean,
it just came down--
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-Thank you, Debbie. Yeah, bring in a photo. -Yeah, unfortunately,
it's on tape. But our first guy
tonight was styling,
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but not smiling when
cameras caught up to him. -He was hip to a hip-hop look,
but what he did wasn't hip.
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And so when the police
caught up with him, they had him hop in the
back of a patrol car.
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-But to keep him from adding
a charge of indecent exposure, he needed a little pick me up.
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Here's is the low down. The baggie britches
look may be cool, but it's hard to
run from the police
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when your pants fall
down around your ankles. This young car thief
should have stolen a belt.
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The detective probably didn't
expect to dress the perpetrator at the scene, but
at least he didn't
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have to worry about
concealed weapons. -Oh, so embarrassing. -I hate those baggie clothes.
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-There are a lot of things that
robbers spend their money on, their drugs, electronics, drugs,
rent, drugs, cars, alimony,
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drugs, gambling and,
of course, drugs. -But there's one thing that the
bank robbers seem to never buy
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and that's stationary. -No, no. They seem to write their
stick-up notes on whatever's
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handy, and that
leads to trouble. -Even if they did get
some writing paper, they'd probably have it printed
with their return address.
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-Yeah, they'd put a
little sticker on. Here's one more case
of someone leaving Something to Remember Me By.
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-A few years back,
we had an incident where a bank was robbed over in
the south section of the city
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where a male walked
into the bank and produced a note
demanding money. It was a sloppily written note.
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And after the teller became
extremely nervous as she should have been, and went through
and handed him all the money,
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he left. And as he left the bank, he
left the note on the counter there at the teller's office.
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She called the
police and the FBI, and our local agency showed up. And we were looking at the
note, and we flipped it over.
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And on the back side of it was
the name of the suspect that had robbed the bank with
his name, date of birth,
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and social security number,
because it was a paste note. We were able to
follow up on that
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and found out that he had been
released from a halfway house a few months earlier, that he
did, in fact, live in our city,
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and it was locally to
where the bank was located. And we were able to
get to the house,
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basically, before he got back. We went to talk to
him, we apprehend him, and asked him if it
was his pay stub.
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Told him we had his
fingerprints on it, and he confessed to
the bank robbery. And so, basically,
that's pretty dumb
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move on any bank robber's part. -In the 911 audio tape
you're about to hear, you get to hear a dumb mistake
turn into genuine remorse.
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And no, this call didn't
come from a White House. -Unfortunately. It was placed from a
business in Salt Lake City.
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A guy does the right thing
after doing the wrong thing, and we commend him. Listen to what a great
job this 911 operator
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does at keeping things together. A man upset and
intoxicated threw a rock through the window,
then felt bad about it,
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went into this office
and called 911. [phone ringing] 911 OPERATOR (ON PHONE):
Salt Lake City dispatch.
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PERPETRATOR (ON
PHONE): Yeah, hi. I just broke into a building. I'm inside the
building right now.
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DEBBIE: The dispatcher,
though new on the job, accepted his confession,
and walked him
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through some tricky
moments on the phone. PERPETRATOR (ON PHONE):
Yeah, I just got frustrated.
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I'm really upset right now. All I did was break the
window, and I walked away, and felt really guilty about it.
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-I felt really bad for him,
because I could tell that he didn't do this maliciously
or anything like that.
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He made a mistake, and
he was upset about it. And he just wanted
somebody to listen to him.
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DEBBIE: The man
was so confused, he had to step outside to
even identify his location.
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911 OPERATOR (ON PHONE): If
you know what the name of it is, or anything like that?
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PERPETRATOR (ON PHONE): I
could go look really quick if you want to hold on a minute.
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911 OPERATOR (ON PHONE):
OK, will you come back? PERPETRATOR (ON PHONE): I will.
So it's OK?
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So it's OK?
911 OPERATOR (ON PHONE): OK. PERPETRATOR (ON PHONE):
I'll put the phone down.
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911 OPERATOR (ON PHONE):
All right, put your hands in the air, and
walk out there, OK?
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PERPETRATOR (ON PHONE): OK. I'll do it right now. 911 OPERATOR (ON
PHONE): OK, good.
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PERPETRATOR (ON PHONE): Bye.
911 OPERATOR (ON PHONE): Bye. DEBBIE: Sometimes
even tragic stories
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have not so tragic endings. ANNOUNCER: Hey, check
out this dumb law. In Silverton, Texas,
it's illegal to drive
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within three miles
of the city limits. -OK. I bet that law really cuts
down on tourism there.
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But, hey, you know,
some days we wish we could just roll back
time and start over.
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Well I'm sure the two young
men in our next story do. They decided to rob a series
of convenience stores,
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but their crime
spree degenerated into a comedy of errors. Here, see for yourself.
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They started to rob
this store, but they knew one of the clerks. So then they drove here.
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-Well, evidently,
they went outside, and they couldn't
get his car started. And with that, he was
worried, so he wanted just
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to let's forget
the whole robbery. He came back in, and he gave
the money back to the clerk.
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DANIEL: The clerk helped
them jump their car, and off they went to
store number three.
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-He was going from
one convenience store right to the other. And even after his
car wouldn't start,
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that wasn't enough to deter him. DANIEL: At their last stop,
a police car sensed trouble
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and checked their license plate. Then followed them home
where $198 and a BB gun
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were confiscated. -Most people that stick up a gas
station or use a gun in a crime
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are typically not very
smart from the word go. -It's comical, but
still, it's a robbery.
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-You know, Debbie,
I'm not a lawyer, and I don't play one on
TV, but I'm pretty sure
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that, "Oops, just
joking," is not a defense that holds
up well in court, huh? -I think you're right.
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It's probably about as strong
as the devil made me do it, huh? -Yeah. All right, speaking of strong,
some jobs take strong backs.
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And if you lift enough
things, there's the chance that you're going to
get injured on the job.
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Some people try to
see just how long they can take to get
over such a problem. You're about to see some fraud
investigators who were just
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sick about what these
fakes were doing. Would you believe this man
is receiving workers' comp
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because he's too
disabled to work? And this guy said he couldn't
walk because of back pain.
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Smile, the guys from labor
and industries are watching. -You can see that
the person seems
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capable of pretty
heavy activity. He's on a construction job. DEBBIE: His claim was cancelled
saving taxpayers $28,000.
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This man crawling under the
car filed a bad back claim. But inspectors paid him a
visit when they found out
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about his roadside
repair service. -He's gone under
this car to repair a so-called broken
shock absorber.
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DEBBIE: This stranded motorist
is really a state inspector who just saved the
system $170,000.
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Oh, my aching pocketbook. -Hey, hey. Police officers wear name tags
so that everyone can read them
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and know who they're
dealing with. Of course, doing that reading
thing comes a lot easier when
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you're sober, which
our next guy wasn't. Witness how name
dropping can get you punted right into the pokey.
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-I had locked an
individual up for a DWUI and placed him under
arrest, and brought him in.
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He was supposed to
appear in court. And it turned out, he
never appeared in court.
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Issued some warrants for his
arrest, and about two weeks after the warrants
were issued, I
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stopped the same car
with the same driver. As I approached the car,
the driver of the car
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turns around and said-- -John Clemens and I? We're like this. -Uh-huh. We're like this.
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In fact, John Clemens
practically raised me. -And here I'm standing
in front of the guy,
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and he doesn't recognize
me, because he was so drunk when I locked him up last time.
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-Coming up later, a
guy really gets socked, but now with news being too
disturbing to the special
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prosecutor, here's Daniel
with ADC Headlines. -It's going to be
pretty disturbing.
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When a county jail in
Florida received a bomb investigators
sprang into action. First, they traced the call
to their own holding cell.
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Then they went to investigate
where they found only one inmate who could
have made the call.
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In addition to being held for
battery on a law enforcement officer, he upped the
ante by being charged
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with making a false
report of a bomb. The guy only had one phone call. The police officer in San
Mateo County, California,
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asked the man standing next
to the car with the two broken windows to
show him some ID.
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He handed the deputy the only
documentation he had with them, a copy of a current
arrest warrant against him
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for driving with a
suspended license. Hey, it had his name. It had his age. Detroit police officers were
showing neighborhood children
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how their new squad car
computer equipment worked when a curious pedestrian
inquired about its abilities.
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The officer asked
for his driver's license to perform
a demonstration. He eagerly complied and
in moments the officers
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were able to arrest the
man for an armed robbery he pulled two years
ago in St. Louis.
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Go figure. And that closes the
file on ADC Headlines, news ripped from
somewhere near the back
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of your local newspaper. Debbie. -These days, the world is
full of people wearing beepers
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and most of them seem to
sit near me in theaters. Don't you just hate it
when those things go off
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and you're trying
to enjoy the movie? Well, the guy you're
about to meet got beeped.
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He got back to the
person who called him and then he got caught. Here's the story.
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These guys are behind bars
because when someone reached out and touched one of them
via a pager, he touched back.
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The problem? The pager was one
of a number of items stolen in burglaries
at three homes.
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-One of the victims of the three
burglaries had a pager stolen. She inadvertently-- her husband
had the pager replaced--
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inadvertently dialed
the old number. And the person who stole
the pager returned the call.
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-The guy called back and said,
I don't know what's going on, but somebody keeps
using my beeper.
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So I said, whoa. -She called police who
then beeped the burglar and traced the call.
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Busted. This little convenience
item will keep these guys inconvenienced for
quite some time.
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-You know, one of the worst
liabilities of being a criminal is that there may not be
anyone willing to give you
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a Band-Aid when
you get a boo-boo. Well, our next guy thought
he was on the cutting
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edge of being bad boy,
but he was moments away from slicing
and dicing himself. What you're about to see
isn't all that funny,
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but it sure left the
crook in stitches. Check it out. -Other officers tell me of a
story in which the 911 phone
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rang, our dispatcher
answered the call. We were able to tell
that the call was coming from a local
place of business.
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-I got cut all over my arms. -The caller, however, said that
he was in a local motel room.
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We knew immediately that
something was wrong. So the communications
officer sent officers
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to the place of business
shown on the screen. When they arrived, they
did find that the building
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had been broken into. Once inside, they
located the suspect who obviously had been cut.
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He told them that
he'd been chased by several other
subjects and attacked, and had broken into the
building for safety.
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-Three guys were mugging me. Tried to mug me, take my money. -The manager of the
building was called
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and found that
money was missing. The man they contacted
had been drinking and was probably
under the influence.
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And they asked him
where the money was? He said it was in his trousers. They asked him why he took it,
and he said his father taught
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him, you don't leave
money lying around. This was left lying around. So he took it for safe keeping.
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Another crime solved,
a burglary ended. -I don't think daddy
meant that, huh? OK, get this synopsis
we received when
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we first heard about
this next story. Guy thrown out of trailer
with socks tied together.
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Well, who could resist
a come on like that? Here's the yarn we were told
in Henderson, North Carolina.
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-A couple months ago while on
patrol it was kind of slow. Several officers responded to
a breaking and entering call.
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We get there and you're just
not going to believe this. There's this guy laying beside
the home in his underwear
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with his socks tied together. Of course, we still think
we've got a break in. Can't get anything
out of the guy.
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He's so drunk he can't talk. He can't stand up. We finally get somebody
to the front door,
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so come to find out,
he had gotten drunk. The friends tied his
socks together as a joke.
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He goes to get up
out of the bed, socks tied together,
he stumbles, falls out of the window, lands outside
the window just sitting there.
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-Dude, where's
the bottle opener? -The funniest part
about the whole thing is that they didn't take
him in the front door
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when it was all over with. They picked him up
and put him back through the window with
his socks still tied.
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-We're real sorry
about this, I swear. It won't ever happen again. -Now we're going to pull a
fast one with this quick story
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from Del Rey Beach, Florida. A purse snatcher
who's escape leads him to be picked up by
an officer's pickup.
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-I was off duty,
and I was getting a sandwich at the sub shop. I was pulling out
of the parking lot,
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and somebody jumped in
the back of my truck. I got out and said
what was going on.
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He kind of recognized who I was. And I realized that he just
committed a purse snatch.
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And I chased him
across the street into a Swiss Chalet, a
little chicken place. I chased him into the bathroom.
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He was trying to flush the
evidence down the toilet. We got the police, and
we made an arrest on him.
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Sometimes dumb criminals
just fall into your hands. -It's a shame that our
final fella didn't audition
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for the circus before
leading a life of crime. -His story has elements
of a high wire stunt,
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a trapeze performance,
and a balancing act. -But mostly, I think he
was just a real clown.
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-Oh, yeah. Now appearing in the center
ring is tonight's death defying appearance of
We're Not Making This Up.
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Had this young man in
the early 1980s when I was a detective that
was a hot-prowl burglar.
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That's burglarizing a home
when somebody's inside of it. Fortunately for us, there
was a feisty old lady
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that was the victim
who confronted the man, and screamed at the
top of his lungs,
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and ran out the front door. The thing that he'd forgot was
his wallet and his driver's
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license in the driveway
as he ran away. Did a photo lineup and
identified the bad guy.
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He did three years in
the State Penitentiary. A year and a day after he
got out of the penitentiary,
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he was back to his old form. And he burglarized another home. This time the people,
instead of screaming,
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they called the police. When we set up a perimeter
around the house, and as we announced ourselves
and told him to come out,
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he decided to bail out
the bedroom window. But he forgot to look before
he jumped out the window
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into a Cypress
tree, which knocked him back into the house. He jumped again at
the Cypress tree.
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Back into the house. He jumped a third time,
and the cops were finally able to catch him as he
hit the Cypress tree.
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And we arrested the young man
for one count of burglary. Well, the district
attorney didn't like that,
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and he upped the charges
to four counts of burglary. It was his opinion that
he broke into the house,
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that's one count. Jumped out of the
window and was thrown back in by the Cypress
tree, that's two counts.
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hit the Cypress
tree again, three counts being thrown back in. Hit the Cypress tree again.
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Now he's got up to four
counts of burglary. The individual served
another eight years
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in the Nevada
State Penitentiary. The moral of the story
is look before you leap.
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-[inaudible]. -But the tree was an accomplice. -Remind me not to get
before that judge, though.
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-The tree is on
yard arrest, though. -Oh, Daniel. You know, that's not
the kind of story
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you're going to be bragging
about to your cellmates when you hit the
jail either, right?
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-I think you're right. -Well, it's time to head
them up, move them out. -Are we on a cattle drive here?
00:18:50
-Well, yeah. I think you're right
again, but before we go, we want to say thanks.
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Thanks to you at
home for watching. -You betcha. And very special
thanks to the officers
00:18:59
who helped us out tonight. Without them, we'd be
two well-groomed people with nothing much to say.
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-Two? -Well, seriously, we do want
to express our appreciation to everyone who works
in law enforcement.
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-It often seems like a
thankless job, I'm sure, but our world would
be a far worse place
00:19:15
if you guys weren't on the job. -And we'll be back
on the job next week to once again poke our finger
in the underbelly of society.
00:19:21
-Yeah. Hey, if you've got
a lead on a story, or if you just can't wait
till next week for more state
00:19:26
of the art stupidity,
visit our website. -The address is
www.dumbcrimes.com. -As always, we
hope that we've all
00:19:34
learned from other's mistakes. -But if you haven't, we
just might see you next week
00:19:38
on "America's
Dumbest Criminals." -Goodbye. See you next week. [theme music]