Dumb Criminal Stories: or, Don't Take A Bag of Frozen Peas to a Sledgehammer Fight

My last blog was rather heavy stuff, so I thought I'd lighten the mood a little here by sharing a few of my favorite Dumb Criminal Stories.

I spent my mid-late 20s and early 30s in law enforcement, and during that period I encountered some of the dumbest human beings imaginable, people so stupid you had to wonder how they could get out of bed without being hit by a car. As I've said before, I stayed in the profession longer than I should have in large part because I couldn't tear myself away from the parade of idiocy that marched through my office every day. Here are a few examples, some from my own experience, some told to me by co-workers and friends in the business.

Early in my tenure as a parole officer I encountered a teenage boy who had been charged with such crimes as riot, causing a catastrophe, possession of explosives and all sorts of other offenses I'd never seen before. When I asked him to explain himself, he said that he and his friends had decided to build a pipe bomb and blow up the port-a-potty on a nearby construction site. One weekend when the site was deserted they activated the bomb, hurled it into the toilet, and took cover in a ditch. Unfortunately for them the bomb failed to explode. They were now left with the tricky problem of deciding whether to leave the bomb and risk it detonating beneath some unsuspecting construction worker on Monday, or fishing it out themselves. My man drew the short straw, returned to the john, and thrust his hand inside the reservoir of germ-killing fluid beneath the toilet, fishing for the bomb. At last his fumbling fingers located it, whereupon it exploded. Flung high in the air on a wave of shattered plastic, toilet deodorizer and human shit, he landed many yards away, riddled with shrapnel and with his foot hanging by a thread from his ankle (why it was his foot and not his hand I don't know, but then I don't know why he blew up the fucking toilet in the first place, either). The doctors told him in the E.R. that he would almost certainly die of infection, but perhaps the deodorizer killed it; at any rate he didn't die, didn't lose his foot, and didn't do a day in jail for his numerous felony crimes. The judge deemed him too stupid for prison. So maybe he wasn't that dumb after all.

Not long after Porta Man I met "Jenny," who'd been busted for drug possession. Taking down her basic information after sentencing, a process called "intake" and very similar to booking, I asked her if she had anything she'd like to state for the record. Her reply is burned in my brain:

"Yeah. I smoke, like, a shit-ton of weed, yo. I mean a shit-ton. Fucking MAD weed, yo. And you know, sometimes other things. A little meth. A little crack now and again. Put X in my weed, too. Sometimes PCP. So can you put it down on the form that I don't want to be drug tested?"

I stared at her for some seconds and then realized she was completely serious. So without cracking a smile, I wrote, in very large letters on the form: CLIENT DOES NOT WISHED TO BE DRUG TESTED BECAUSE SHE SMOKES MAD WEED. "Is this okay?" I asked, looking as innocent as humanly possible.

"Shit yeah!" She exclaimed joyously.

"Do you mind signing it?"

"Shit no!"

And yet somehow she had the money for all that weed.

Then there were the robbers. The first one worked as a security guard for $6/hr. One night he was up all night watching movies like "Goodfellas" and "New Jack City" and decided to hell with the straight and narrow, what they wanted was a life of crime. He promptly robbed the local 7/11, but they hadn't even finished counting the take -- about $50 in cash -- when the police knocked down their door and busted them. "How did you find them so fast?" I asked the arresting officer later on. His reply was memorable:

"Well, for starters, the moron robbed the 7/11 down the street from his house where he goes every day for coffee and everyone knows him."

"He didn't wear a mask?" I asked, astonished.

The officer laughed. "Not only did he not wear a mask, he actually wore his security guard uniform to the robbery! Which has a fucking name tag on it!"

A second robber, a street mugger, was arrested on suspicion and put in a lineup. When the victim correctly identified him through the two-way glass, he exploded with rage. "There's no way the bitch could pick me out?" he screamed.

"Why is that?" Asked the prosecutor.

"Because I was wearing a ski mask when I fuckin' robbed her!"

Then there was the stalker who obsessed over a beautiful college girl who roomed in his house. When she discovered he'd been "at" her underwear drawer on a regular basis, he beat her with a bag of frozen peas from the kitchen and shoved her into the tool shed behind the house. Promise you won't move out, he said, and I'll release you. Okay, said the girl, I promise. The stalker opened the door and promptly got a face full of sledgehammer. The moral of this particular tale is that if you are going to imprison someone, a shed full of deadly weapons is probably not the place to do it.

Or, put more simply: don't bring a bag of frozen peas to a sledgehammer fight.