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NARRATOR: This is
an ADC Warning. The crimes you're
about to see are true. Only the names were changed
to protect the ignorant.
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[sirens] [theme music] NARRATOR: Tonight on
"America's Dumbest Criminals," a drunk driver takes more
than he bargained for,
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surveillance camera footage
from the convenience store from hell, and a glad bag
that turned into a sad sack.
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All this and more on
"American's Dumbest Criminals." -Welcome to "America's
Dumbest Criminals."
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I'm Daniel Butler. You know, every day
when I come into work, I wonder, will this be the day
that we won't find any silly,
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stupid slow-witted criminals. But fortunately, for
every crafty criminal out there in the world,
there are at least 10
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plain old-fashioned
dummies, out there breaking the law every day. So join us now in scraping the
bottom of the barrel, as we
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open the files on America's
dumbest criminals. NARRATOR: First up, a
reverse prostitution sting
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nets some pretty
weird customers. -I was sitting about
a half a block away from her when she just did one.
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She sent that one off one way. She did another one. She sent him off another way.
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In-- in her mind, she's
got to try and send them in different directions, so the
take-down teams can cover him,
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plus she can still get
the rest of the johns. Well this one guy seen
her talking to a car.
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But when he seen her talking,
he didn't keep driving. What he did is he stopped.
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And he pulled up
right in front of me. And me and my partner
were sitting there,
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and here this guy pulls
up face to face with us. Now here we are with
our police stuff on,
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never looked in
front of him at all. Never saw us. He kept looking back at her. Well, she seen him.
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And she finally
walked over to him. -What will it take
to party tonight? -Well, what you got?
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-So I got 28 bucks. Wait, I got some
frozen lunch meat. -Well, if all you got is 28
bucks and some frozen lunch
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meat, we can do some business. UNDERCOVER POLICE OFFICER: We
can hear what's going on also.
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And when she finally says,
OK drive around the block, we just kind of
stepped out of our cars
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and walked over to him, told
him he was under arrest. -Hey Romeo. -Hey. -Hey you see us over here.
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You're busted. -Oh man! -Put your bologna away. NARRATOR: In South
Dakota it used
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to be against the
law for a married man to talk to a single woman. Here a wife takes the
law into her own hands,
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and attacks a single
woman with vermicelli. Now Earnest Burt of Birmingham
catches a man green-handed.
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-One instant we had
a call on a burglary. And when we got over there,
we heard the door bang
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and we heard the person
that called the police in the back holler and
say, there he goes.
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So when I run
around to the back-- -Hey, hold it, police! Come here. EARNEST BURT: The guy walked up
to me, had a bag of marijuana,
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a lunch-size bag full of
marijuana in his hand. -That's good. What have you got?
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-What? -What have you got in your hand? -And I said, what have you got? He said, what.
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I said, what have
you got in your hand. And he looked and
he said, oh nothin'. And I grabbed him and handcuffed
him, and put him under arrest
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and took him off to jail. NARRATOR: ADC quiz number
819, from 1993 to 1994 there was a change in the
rate of serious crime.
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How did the rate change? Did it A, decrease 3%;
B, increase 5%, or C, decrease 10%?
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The correct answer is A.
Serious crime decreased by 3%. However, really
dumb crimes seemed
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to have increased dramatically
during the same period. You have just taken a job as
a clerk on the night shift
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at the convenience
store from hell. Who's your first customer? It's a mutant packing heat.
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He Demands all $37 in the
cash drawer, and gets away. Now, who's your second customer?
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A gorilla packing heat. He takes all the bananas, and a
yard and a half of beef jerky.
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Now who's your third customer? It's your father-in-law
dressed as a member of the House of Commons.
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Since you have no
more money, he takes all of the smokeless
tobacco, and demands
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the correct time in Nova Scotia. Just the first 15 minutes
of your first shift as a clerk in the
convenience store from hell.
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Now a story that would be poetic
justice if it weren't so dumb. It was the day after the
lottery drawing when Alice Crumb
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stopped by the little store
where she had purchased her local lotto ticket
the week before.
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Going up the list
of winners, she realized that her
number was only one digit off from
being a $20 winner.
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That's when greed
replaced common sense. With a ballpoint
pen, Alice crudely changed a seven into an eight,
and presented it to the clerk.
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-Hey, I won! -Let me see! Let me see! -I won! I won! I won! -You are a winner. NARRATOR: The Cashier spotted
the forgery instantly, and had
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a coworker phone the
police, while she appeared to be
processing the win. While she was being
read her rights,
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an officer made an
interesting observation. -She would have been
a $5,000 winner.
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Look! -No way! -Yeah, look! If you wouldn't have
altered this ma'am, you would have won $5,000.
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NARRATOR: That's right. She'd altered her $5,000 winning
ticket to match the $20 prize.
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And it ended up
committing a felony. -Good [bleep]. What kind of [bleep] is this?
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I'll be [bleep]. You need put these
[bleep] so that you can see 'em better [bleep].
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NARRATOR: She'll
have a lotto time to think it over in prison. Coming up, a dumb criminal who
has a very special surprise
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for the police in his garage. -Many people have
written to us, concerned that our show is
demeaning to criminals.
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We'd like to respond to
that letter by saying, thank you for your
vote of support.
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NARRATOR: And now, Officer
Doug Baldwin of Pensacola tells us about how he
went barely undercover.
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-Several years ago I was
working narcotics undercover. And we were-- we were
having this problem
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in this high-draw crime
area where people were standing out on
corners, selling drugs.
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Um-- in my phase of
working in narcotics, I did a lot of street activity. I went out in the streets,
chased people, and apprehended
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them uh- in the process
of them selling drugs. On one particular day,
um-- I drove through there,
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and I seen who was out
there selling drugs. All these guys know me from
working the streets there.
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And they were pretty
familiar with who I was. So once I realized who was out
on the streets selling drugs,
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I went back to the station. I changed out cars. And so I drove back in the
area, and I put on a ball cap,
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and I never wear a ball cap. Nobody have ever seen
me in a ball cap. I just don't wear them.
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So I put this ball cap on
and drove into the area. And this one particular guy that
I know, and I know that he knew
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me, I drove up to
him and I said, hey man you've got
something for sale. He said, yeah what you want?
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He said but we've
got to be careful because I see Doug Baldwin. He's driving around, speaking
of me, working undercover.
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I say, well I to get a 20 piece. You gotta 20? He said, yeah but
let's hurry up.
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Because Doug Baldwin
is in the area. So he sold me the 20
piece of crack cocaine.
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I gave him a $20 bill. And as soon as he did that,
I took off of a ball cap and I said, John,
you're under arrest.
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And he said, ah! Doug, that's you! And he got scared. Only he-- he was
real dumbfounded.
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How dumb can I be, you
know, selling to Doug, and I'm talking about Doug? NARRATOR: In Chicago, it's
against the law for barbers
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to eat onions between
9:00 AM and 5:00 PM. But it is legal
for them to consume at least two gallons
of malt liquor.
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And now let's take a short
ride to the big house with a real drunk driver. The man this officer just
pulled over is very drunk.
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He was lucky to be conscious,
let alone able to drive. He probably couldn't walk,
so we got behind the wheel.
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As the officer began
a field sobriety test, he heard a loud crash. -Stay here! Do not get in that car.
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Stay here! NARRATOR: Two cars had just
collided less than 50 yards from where they were standing.
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The officer ran
down to the accident to see if there
were any injuries. He had no more than
gotten there when
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he heard the squealing
of tires, and turned to see the drunk driver drive
off at a high rate of speed.
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He radioed in for help. Within 30 minutes several police
units and uniformed officers
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were pounding on the front
door of the man's house. A still very drunk and now
confused man, answered.
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[knocking] -Where's the car? -The-- the car? -The car. Where is the car? -It-- it's in the
garage, of course.
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-Let's go. NARRATOR: The police
lifted the garage door, and sure enough
there was the car.
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-See! I told you. Good night. -Get back here. NARRATOR: Another
open and shut DUI.
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Now we take you inside the
courtroom for trial and error. Now from actual
courtroom transcripts,
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a grocery clerk relates how a
robber gave as good as he got. -Mr. Richardson,
would you please
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tell this court what
the suspect did right before he ran from your store? -Well, he pulled out
his wallet as if to pay,
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and I opened the cash drawer. -And that's when he grabbed
the cash from the drawer?
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-Right. He took the money. But he left his wallet. NARRATOR: And now
from the ADC security
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cam vaults, the "Powder Room." Here a band of
well-choreographed thieves move into a convenience store.
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The man in the
center of the picture is choreographing
the entire operation. Watch now as the team goes into
action, luring the clerk away
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from the cash
register, the thieves have the money at their hands. So now the conductor
motions to one of the women
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to move in and steal the cash. All right. Wait. Wait, though. There's been a hitch.
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Let's go down to the field
and see what the problem is. OK, she really has to
go to the bathroom.
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All right. There's gonna have
to be a break here. He's motioning her back
to the ladies' room.
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OK. We're going to have to start
the whole robbery over again. Coming up, you'll find out
why this dumb criminal became
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the prince of thieves on
"America's Dumbest Criminals." [sirens] NARRATOR: Next up, a
creative second-story man
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who should have thought
of a second story in, "Prints of Thieves." -I was working uh-- burglaries,
residential burglaries,
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plainclothes. I had a break-in at
an attorney's house. And the idiot left his
fingerprints in this house.
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So naturally, we
got him identified, and I had a warrant
issued for his arrest. So I was out on the
street one morning.
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And lo and behold, I
ran across this guy. Frisked him. And of course, he had a
bunch of jewelry on him.
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So I took him downtown into
the investigations division, sat him down and
started talking to him
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about break-ins in the area. And he said, no, it's not me. I ain't been doing that.
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-What about all the people
that saw you at the scene? -Someone who looks
just like me, man.
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-Oh, somebody who looks
just like you, man. What about the jewelry
we found in your pants?
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-Somebody else's pants,
somebody else's jewels. -And I said, well
how do you explain
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your fingerprints
in this man's house? And without thinking
the guy said-- -Somebody's been leaving
my prints all over town.
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Are we done here, man? NARRATOR: Let's
face it, he had-- Now a logical drunken heretic
gets scooped in "D.U.I.-O."
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-I'm working routine patrol,
and it's about 3 o'clock in the morning and I'm
driving down the street,
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and this citizen comes out
and frantically flags me down. And says, there's a man
over at the Catholic Church,
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and he gives us the location,
and says that this man is standing in front of the church.
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And he's yelling and
screaming and throwing rocks at the front
of the church. So I go looking for this man,
and-- and my partner and I
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find him. So we stop him and
he's-- he's obviously and admittedly intoxicated. And he's very drunk
and he's walking.
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And I said-- -What's going on? -There supposed to have-- -OK. Talk to us. We're asking you questions.
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-OK, I'm at this-- I'm
mad at this church. -OK, calm down. SAM HILLIARD: And he was
very upset about this.
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So my partner and myself
pats him down for weapons. And he finds this-- this
large O in his pocket.
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It's literally about this big,
and it's an O. We said, well what's this O? And he says-- he says,
well that's my souvenir
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from the church. We said, what? And he says-- -It's my O. -It's your O? No sir. If it's from the
church, is not your O.
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-Well it turned out
it's the O in Catholic that's on the front
of the church. So he says, that's
my O. We said,
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no, it's got to go
back to the church. And he says, well, OK. So my partner and I, we
go back to the church.
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And sure enough, the Catholic is
there, and it's missing the O. So we're standing there,
and we're putting the O back
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on the church, and we're
writing the priest a note, letting him know what happened
at the church and everything.
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Where we don't see any other
obvious damage or anything. A few minutes later,
here comes a car.
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It comes creeping by real slow. And my partner looks over and
goes, hey Sarge is that him?
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And I looked and
low and behold, it's our guy that we stopped
down the street. And now he's driving
a car and he's drunk.
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He comes out, and ranting and
raving, I want my O. We said, what? -We explained to you
it's not your O. Sir,
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we have to place you
under arrest for DUI. -He goes, if you guys
were stand-up guys,
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you'd give me my O. I want
my O, and it belongs to me. So we ended up arresting him
for DUI, for drunk driving.
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And subsequently,
we got to court, and he stood by his story
and he wanted his letter O.
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NARRATOR: A street
mugger in New York City snatched a brown bag from
a woman walking her dog.
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Surprised, it
contained the trinkets her pooch had deposited
on the sidewalk. It's not worth a lot.
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But to him it was special. This is actual
footage of this week's America's dumbest excuse.
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The two young men
who stole this van told the police that the
double-wide mobile home ran
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a stop sign, thus striking
their stolen parked van. Now their backup story was that
the wicked witch of the East
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had actually dropped
the double-wide on them. The police bought neither story,
and the youths were arrested
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for a stolen
vehicle, and failing to stop for a double-wide mobile
home, and the wicked witch.
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[theme music] [sirens] -Fort Lauderdale, Florida,
home to spring break, beautiful beaches,
and thousands of
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honest, hardworking Americans. But even Fort Lauderdale
has not escaped the influence of dumb crime.
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NARRATOR: An undercover officer
from Fort Lauderdale tells a touching tail of felon
fellowship in "Good-Buy."
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-Several years ago we'd
made some purchases out of a house of cocaine. We executed the search warrant.
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As people were exiting
out of the house and unloading the
gear and so forth, there's another
vehicle that pulls up.
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-Wait a minute. Can I help you? UNDERCOVER POLICE
OFFICER: The people get out of the
car, and the lady,
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the first thing she does, she
throws down a bag of cocaine that she'd brought with her.
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-I think what we'll do is just
move our car down that way. -OK. Wait a minute. Lady, what is that?
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-I don't know. -Uh, did we get that on tape? -Did you get what on tape? -That little package you
just dropped must be yours.
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-You got film? -Are we uh-- denying
we dropped that? Are we confused? We don't know.
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-I didn't drop that. -Oh, is that right? All right. Guess what? Don't you go anywhere.
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UNDERCOVER POLICE OFFICER: We up
and advised them that they were under arrest for the cocaine,
and come to find out that they
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were-- they had 10
ounces of coke in the car that they had bought
from the gentleman
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that we just executed
the search warrant on. And they were actually just
stopping by to say good-bye.
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They were leaving the state. NARRATOR: And they did get
to leave, but not the state.
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They were immediately enrolled
in the witless protection program. -Well, that's our
show for this week.
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We hope you'll all agree
that it was time well served. Our appreciation to the men
and women of law enforcement
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across the country. I'm Daniel Butler
saying, don't be dumb. Don't break the law, or
we'll catch you next time
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on "America's
Dumbest Criminals." [theme music]