ews items about stupid and incompetent criminals tend to make everyone (except for the criminals themselves) pretty happy. They amuse me pretty well, so I often blog about them, and then collect them on this page for easy viewing.

Stupid criminals are reassuring.  It's not a big stretch; while there are super-genius criminals in movies and TV shows, and there are obviously some successful thieves and mafia guys out there, the vast majority are poor, uneducated idiots who are too stupid to have a good job, and too lazy to settle for working at a shitty Wal-Mart'esque wage slave one. If they can't even handle a real job, what do you think the odds are they'll be successful fighting the system and stealing for a living?

More recent additions to this page are added on top.

March 24, 2003

Here are the stupidest criminals of the week!  Man and his wife, drunk, steal a live lobster from a tank in an aquarium for a joke.  People see them, get their license plate number, and call them giving them the option to return it and avoid criminal charges.  Then the fun begins.

Granger admitted he stole the lobsters, police said. He agreed to come back to the restaurant with his wife, pay for the crustacean and sign a trespass warning to avoid formal charges, police said.

But when Boyd returned the restaurant, she started cursing, grabbed the manager and shoved a police officer, who wrestled her to the ground to handcuff her, police said.

Granger fought with another officer in the parking lot, police said. While officers were preoccupied with her husband, Boyd ran from police and was recaptured. Once in jail, Boyd also kicked a guard on the leg, according to police reports.

Here's a tragic and perplexing news story.

Twice, 19-year-old Joshua Cooke dialed 911. Twice, he calmly spelled out his address in Oakton. And twice he told Fairfax County call-takers, "I just killed both of my parents."

Fairfax officers needed more than 10 minutes to reach Cooke's home in the 10500 block of Adel Road, about a half-mile west of Hunter Mill Road, because of the huge snowstorm that had blanketed the Washington area that week. When they arrived, Cooke was waiting at the end of his driveway, speaking on the phone to dispatchers and drinking a can of soda, according to court records.

"I will not be armed when they get here," the 911 caller said. "I do not want to get shot down by police." After about a minute, the sound of police arriving and ordering the caller to the ground are captured on the tape.

So he blows both parents away with a shotgun he just bought the day before, calls the cops to report it, and then impatiently waits for them to come get him, after carefully leaving the shot gun inside so he won't be blown away in similar fashion.  Um, does any of this make any sense to anyone?

I can accept that he killed his parents. Horrible thing to do, happens too often.  Maybe they beat him, maybe he's got emotional issues, maybe he's just a scumbag.  Whatever.  But why in the hell would he do it so soon after getting the gun, and then just surrender as soon as it's done?  Wouldn't he want to go on a spending spree with dad's credit card?  Go into town and get a whore?  Get drunk off the liquor cabinet? Something?  Anything?

This one is just so bizarre.  I mean take the Menendez Brothers, spoiled brats who murdered their rich parents and then tried to deny it, went on a spending spree, etc.  I can identify with that.  Not that I want to kill my parents, but if you're going to do it, there has to be more to it than just killing them and then calling the cops on yourself.  What the hell was the kid's motivation? Maybe the article says?

Fairfax prosecutors have not indicated whether they would seek the death penalty for Cooke. Authorities also have not stated what they believe to be the motive for the killings.

Doh!

This one got even weirder once they got to court, when the kid tried to plead insanity, by virtue of "The Matrix Defense." It's similar to The Chewbacca Defense, except that you don't need to pay top dollar for Johnnie Cochran's suits. There were actually a slew of Matrix Defense murder cases after the first movie and up until the second one, when people killed other people in some ridiculous way, and then claimed they were living in The Matrix, and didn't know reality from fantasy. I never heard of it at the time, but looking back with the help of google, there are tons of "matrix defense" hits.

Sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn't. In the case of this kid it didn't work, and he was sentenced to 40 years for the double murder.

Pretty much everyone agrees that the 2nd and 3rd Matrix films were huge disappointments, but maybe there's a silver lining to that. Perhaps the movie makers realized how many people were being driven crazy by their vision, and decided to bite the bullet and ruin their own franchise for the betterment of humanity. After all, no one seems to be Matrix-obsessed anymore, since the 3rd movie landed with such a thud.

January 15, 2003

Police are so happy to have something to do, especially the soldier-wannabe SWAT teams, that they'll leap at any opportunity.  Such as this one.

A 32-year-old Boulder man who had opened his apartment's patio door to enjoy Wednesday's unusually warm weather was later overheard screaming threats and seen waving what appeared to be a handgun, prompting a maintenance worker to call police.

Officers, as a precaution, evacuated the man's apartment building and called SWAT officers to assist in defusing the situation.

It turned out that the man was simply upset at his computer — which he had called a "bitch" he "wanted to kill," police said — and the gun was a plastic pellet gun, not the .45-caliber automatic handgun it was made to resemble.

Doesn't it seem like a phone call first, or a cop at the door, would be more prudent than scrambling the swat team, evacuating the apt complex, etc?  Must not be a lot of crime in that area, if they can free so many resources for nothing.  And yes, cops get criticized if they under react and the guy kills his girlfriend, and if they over react and look foolish people criticize them on various Internet blogs. It's a tough job.

January 14, 2003

They don't make armed robbers the way they used to.

Adams, who has owned the small grocery store just inside I-285 for 26 years, said he was in a rear office watching television when he saw the robbers on his store monitor about 10:45 p.m. The Korean War veteran grabbed his 12-gauge shotgun with one hand. Using his other to guide his walker, he walked to the front of the store and fired a single shot.

"I got two in one shot, that's what the police told me," Adams said.

Police Lt. James Conroy said Adams fired once and hit both the suspects.

Police identified the slain man as Cameron Lemont Glover, 17, of Clarkston. His brother, Leonard Glover, 19, also of Clarkston, was wounded. Leonard Glover was listed in stable condition at an area hospital.

Hell of a shot by the old man, but if you're 19 and packing, and you can't take a 74 year old with a shotgun and a walker, you deserve to die.  Or course armed robbers deserve to die anyway, but this one is especially Darwinian.

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.