America's Dumbest Criminals - Season 3, Episode 13 - Bumper Crop - Full Episode | Forensic Files

NARRATOR: Tonight on "America's Dumbest Criminals," if you want to make your mark on the world, you
better consider the price of fame. See what develops when a proud pot grower takes pictures of
is bumper crop. And what do you do when you don't want to go through the expense of hiring
a full time getaway driver? Stay right where you are and watch the meter run up and time run out for these and other crooks.
Right here on "America's Dumbest Criminals." [theme music] -Debbie, I've got a hunch.
-No you don't. You're standing up straight. Nice and straight and tall. -Aw, no, not that kind of hunch.
-Oh. -OK? No, although if I did have a hunch, we'd probably see eye to eye for a change.
-Yeah, I'd like that. -It would have to be a fairly sever hunch though. Like bent over half way.
-Aye, what's your hunch? -No. Well, I'm not a betting man but I'll wager that at some point in your life
you were voted like, Ms. Personality, or Ms. Congeniality, or like Little Miss Sparkplug.
-You're sweet. OK. Actually, yes, at one point in my life I was homecoming queen.
-Woah. -But there were only like 15 in the whole graduating class, I swear. -And you were the only girl?
-No. -No. -No. -Now, a little later, we're going to meet a guy who was definitely not
voted most likely to succeed. But after his crime he could've been voted most popular.
-This is true because he was being chased by police officers, a helicopter, even canine teams.
-Oh, half the town was running after this guy. That's coming up later, but right now we're
going to meet the guy who was extremely proud of his green thumb. -But there was a problem.
It seems his crop of choice was marijuana. Still, that didn't keep him from taking
pictures of his prized possession. But it did lead to his photo finish. Take a look.
[theme music] NARRATOR: OK. What's wrong with this picture? Is it the thermometer displaying a cool 53 degrees?
Is it the groovy, space age insulation? Or maybe it's this, a nice, healthy pot plant,
hermetically sealed in a secret cultivation room. But maybe we need to look beyond the photograph
and turn our attention to the photographer. Evidently, the proud gardener, who took pictures of his homegrown marijuana plants,
had them developed at a local drugstore. And the observant clerk who developed the photographs
turned them over to the Lodi, California Police Department. What more could the police want?
They had multiple pictures of the evidence, a film deposit envelope with the man's name and address, even the date
that the photographs were taken. Oh, yeah. One more thing. The green thumbed wizard also took a few photos of himself.
In the mirror. On the same roll of film. Open up to me baby. Come on, work with me here.
And smile because you're another dumb criminal caught on camera. -Now we move, though, from photography to painting.
But this artist couldn't contain himself to just canvas. Instead, he canvassed the entire community, leaving his mark
everywhere he went in the form of graffiti. See what happens when outsider art meets up with police science.
[theme music] -We were having a series of vandalisms throughout town. Tagger gangs were going through town
and putting all of their monikers, and names, and spray painting all over our town.
-The taggers would leave certain names. They would spell their names backwards. And they would put little fancy drawings and symbols up.
This went on for a couple months and we didn't have any clue who it was. -I contacted a principle of one of the middle schools
here in town. He had seen me and was telling me that, hey, he had some tagging at his school up on the roof.
And one of his teachers was saying, no, that can't be right. We don't have taggers in town.
We don't have gang problems in town here. But then he was looking through the hallway
and found an art poster from an art student in the hallway that was up for extra credit.
And on that poster was all the tagging that we had been seeing all throughout town.
Plus the kids name that did it. So I went and advised Investigator Little of it,
he was the one charge of that case. -I go out and look at it. Sure enough, the same art, it's the same thing
we've seen around town that was down the alleyways and on the back of buildings.
And he went down and picked up the poster and started matching it to all the graffiti
throughout our town. -He had several tag names, at least 20 of them. And every one of them was still on this art work.
-And subsequently called the kid in and his parents, and got the kid to confess.
-He went to court and he was sentenced to go and paint over all the graffiti around town, no matter if it's his
or not. -When I talked to the kid later, I told him they don't teach drive by painting in art class.
[applause] -The signing is artwork, huh? Well this next trio could've used a few method acting
classes before they attempted this grab-and-go theft. As you'll note, the store mannequin
seems more natural than these crooks. -See for yourself what the store's surveillance camera saw.
DEBBIE: Hmm, hmm hmm. Ho hum. We just dropped in to steal-- I mean stroll through this nice store.
Just for browsing. Not here to grab an armful of expensive shirts and run. Nothing like that.
Oops. Change of plans. Run, girl, run! Let's look again. These folks couldn't have drawn security's attention
any stronger if they had brought along a marching band. Thanks to police who moved almost as fast
as our criminals, these shirt nabbers were quickly collared. [laughter and applause]
-Well our next melodrama involves more than a kiss. It concerns what a kiss can conceivably lead to.
But this Romeo is modest. Very modest. Listen to how far he goes to avoid making his intentions public.
[theme music] -Graveyard shift, 4:00, 4:30 in the morning. We get an alarm call.
Officers respond to the alarm, start checking some doors, windows. We get some indications that someone's possibly inside.
A subject tries to leave out the back doors. POLICE OFFICER: Police, don't move!
Get your hands up. Get your hands up! Turn away from me. Put your hands on the wall.
PATROLMAN AARON MULLINS: We take him into custody and once he's in handcuffs we start
noticing that he's not your typical criminal. He starts crying, we didn't find any drugs
or narcotics from the pharmacy on him. And he begins to cry uncontrollably. And we locate inside-- on his possession
a check written out to the pharmacy. So we start to question him about this. So he tells us that he was going to get married in two weeks
time and just felt that he was too shy to purchase condoms over the counter. So his intentions were to break into the pharmacy,
take the condoms, but leave a personal check. He may have been a dumb criminal but he
was at least trying to practice safe sex. -OK, I don't know who was more embarrassed,
the cop who had to say safe sex, or the guy who stole the condoms. Uh, Debbie, do you want to comment on that story?
-No, poor guy. I felt sorry for him. I think we'll just keep moving along though, OK?
And that's what the driver in our next story wanted to do too. But he found it hard.
Probably because he had a police car riding right on his tail who seemed to be suggesting
that that was a bad idea. He and his buddies share center stage in tonight's Blue Light Special.
[theme music] DEBBIE: Three Tampa Bay Area teenagers were on the run in this stolen car
after robbing a man at gunpoint. Their designated driver is great with the gas pedal
but not so hot with the steering wheel. Maybe he doesn't have his mind on the road
because he's thinking about the squadron of police cars riding his tail. When he fails to outmaneuver them,
he tries adding a little camouflage. But the cops aren't fooled by a tree going 60 miles an hour.
Then he tried to lose them in a cloud of smoke. But that's a no-go and neither is the car.
End of the line, boys. -Cha-ching. Now they seemed like pretty nice kids who came up with a pretty naughty idea.
Racing on city streets. But when officers came down on them with the letter of the law, the whole truth came out.
Turns out these teenagers had gone postal. -A few years back I was working graveyard shift on patrol.
We had a report of individuals or cars racing in the northeast section of town. I go up there and I stop one of two
vehicles that go screaming past me. Of course both these cars are just loaded with college students.
Spoke with the driver, chewed him out, and got the name of the other driver. The other driver and his passengers
had returned to a local dorm. Got a hold of that driver, found the passengers, also, that were in his vehicle.
Took all those individuals down to the lobby and in the lobby I kind of chewed him out for racing around town.
I basically told him I was going to cut him a break. And I was just turning to leave when one of the passengers
said, Officer Robinson, we're really sorry for what we did. And what did you want us to do about the mailboxes?
I turned back, I looked at him, I said, I was just getting that. You know that guy was pretty dumb, because if he hadn't said
something I would have never known they had been out blowing up mailboxes. [applause]
-Here's Daniel with a ADC headlines. -The typical bank robber takes only a few minutes
to pull a job. But this Baltimore man was no typical bank robber. He took the time to count his loot on site,
giving police officers plenty of time to arrive on the scene. They took the unarmed man into custody.
And undoubtedly the shock of their arrival made him lose count. You know, 860, 880, daggone, now I've got to start all over.
Just how large was the shop lifter caught by store security? Well, she was balancing a $695 color TV between her knees.
Which a clerk just happened to spot under her dress when she bent over to pick something up.
Ooo, talk about your horizontal hold. I'm pretty sure she'd been using thigh master, you know?
The police might not have noticed the man and his girlfriend who came in to bail out a friend,
but they spent too much time admiring a wanted poster on the bulletin board. Yes indeed, the fellow was looking
at a picture of himself. Yeah, you know they thought he'd got his bad side. The lighting was no good.
But that little bit of self adulation resulted in his processing. And that closes the file on ADC headlines,
news ripped from somewhere near the back of your local newspaper. Debbie? [applause]
-These days we hear a lot about road rage. Drivers who were so angry that they do really
dumb things when they're behind the wheel. Well this is nothing like that. In fact, aside from the fact that this guy is trying
to get away from police, he's a model citizen. Here's the story from Sweetwater, Texas.
-This happened on a late December evening right at about quitting time. And we had a call of a reckless driver.
Another officer showed up and was going to take me to the house. And I said, well, I'll just drive myself home
and you can have the car from there. And about the time, we see the guy matching the description of the reckless driver.
He had a tail light out. PATROLMAN SAM CUNNINGHAM: In pursuit, highway 70, northbound, excess of 80 miles an hour.
Close to 90. Matched the description perfectly. He didn't want to stop for us. So we chased him completely out the north side of town.
And went probably 20 to 30 miles with him. Signaling every time he would go around a car.
And finally the pursuit ended when another Sheriff's department shot his motor out.
And after it was over with, and I went to transport him to jail, the Van Halen song, "Where Have All
the Good Times Gone?" starting playing. PATROLMAN SAM CUNNINGHAM: You have a driver's license?
One in custody. How much have you had to drink, man? SUSPECT: Oh, I haven't had any.
-Apparently his good times left him pretty quick that night. So that pretty much sums it up.
[applause] -Real quick. You know, you'd be hard pressed to find a better example
of being in the wrong place at the wrong time than the fellow we're about to meet.
If every crime was solved this easily, we'd need a lot fewer police officers on the street.
Meet the crooks who've come down with a stunning case of I'm Where? You're Who!?!
[theme music] -My name's Sergeant Neal Shea. I'm with the Annapolis Police Department.
And you're here on Taylor Avenue in Annapolis, Maryland. And what happened was a little while ago we get
a call for a robbery of a Luskin's. That's about a half a mile from here. [car revving]
-As we're coming out of the back of the station, we look up and we hear this car come screeching into the back lot.
[tires screeching] -Let me see your hands. Your hands. Let me see them! SUSPECT: What's going on, officer?
-Get out of the car, passenger. Driver, let me see your hands. -And we look over and it's like, hey that's the car.
And we're looking at each other like, we can't believe that anybody would be that stupid.
SARGEANT NEAL SHEA: Come on out. SUSPECT: Come on. We didn't do anything! SARGEANT NEAL SHEA: Come on out.
SARGEANT NEAL SHEA: Come on out. SUSPECT: What's going on? SARGEANT NEAL SHEA: You pulled behind the police station.
Come on out here. -And of course everybody's sitting over here at the lot in the back.
And they're looking at us like, oh, those two have lost their minds. They're going to lose their job over this.
They're pulling people out at gunpoint behind the station. Because It's marked no trespassing.
And that was it. Everybody came in and they couldn't believe it. And what had happened is the cars responding at-- the marked
cars-- responding out to the call, he sees them turn onto Taylor Avenue where the police station is.
He goes to turn around and flips on his emergency equipment. He goes to turn around and they see him.
And they duck into the first lot which happens to be the police station. They ride all the way past to the no trespassing,
police personnel sign. Whip in here to the back lot, take a parking space and decide to duck down.
Oh well. [applause] -Oh well. Crooks are just like you and me in one respect. We're all looking for ways to stretch our dollars, right?
I'm sure that's what this robber in Ocala, Florida had in mind when he made the bold decision to hire
a taxi for his getaway car. After all, cab fare has to be cheaper than divvying up
your loot with a partner, right? Watch as this crook discovers what happens when you cut corners.
-I was working the day shift on this particular day. We happened to have a robbery at the Publix story
out on east State Road 40. The culprit uh-- the gentleman had robbed the store and then called a taxi for his getaway vehicle.
-He just said that he wanted to go to the bank and I informed him that the bank was closed.
And he just said that he wanted to go get a check cashed somewhere. I suggested Publix, and that's where he had me taken.
After he supposedly cashed his check my dispatcher kept asking me where I was. -Fled towards Ormond Beach is where he wanted to go.
So we ended up in a chase, went towards Ormond Beach, ended up catching the vehicle, getting the taxi cab to stop,
had a foot pursuit and we caught him. -I asked the guy if he was wanted for something.
And he said, well, I may have ate a couple burritos without paying for them. And I told him that they don't usually
have a manhunt for a man eating burritos. [applause] [theme music] -Well, they say employees aren't as
responsible as they used to be. But we beg to differ. -Yeah, we found a clerk in Sandy, Utah
who was an absolute stickler for following company policy. Even with a robbery in progress.
-As you'll see, she was far better at her job than this stickup artist was at his.
-Oh, yeah. Here's this shining example of, We're Not Making This Up! -The first time I investigated a case
where the robber leaves with less than he came in with. [clumsy music playing] -A guy enters the store, puts a loaf
of bread down on the counter. He says, this is a robbery and shows the girl-- the cashier a gun.
She's looking around and he tells her, don't look around, just-- this is a robbery give me all the money.
And she says, I can't, I just scanned this loaf of bread and I can't open my drawer now unless I have something
to-- you know, you need to pay for it. ROBBER: Come, let's go. -So he hands her a dollar and reaches into his pocket
and hands her four more quarters. ROBBER: There. -Another employee started to come
over so I guess he was afraid. He ran out the door leaving the bread and the $2.
The first case I ever investigated where a robber paid to rob a store. [laughter and applause]
-[inaudible]. Oh, come on. I'm sorry, sir, but it's going to cost you $2 to rob me.
You know. But that young woman went on to become a government employee, I believe. Didn't she?
-Or maybe a toll booth operator. -She could. She could. This evening has sure taken its toll on me.
-Aww. -I think it's time to call it a night. But I'll be all rested ready when we return next week
with a whole mob of new dumb criminal stories. -If you've got a lead on a story,
or you just can't wait till next week for more state of the art stupidity, visit our website at www.dumbcrimes.com.
-But just in case you've missed the point of our stories tonight, let me say it clearly.
Every crime is a dumb crime. -But as long as people persistent in breaking the law,
we'll need to have excellent people in law enforcement like the officers you met tonight.
-We thank them and others like them who work hard to bring a little order into this crazy world.
And we thank you for joining us tonight. -As always, we hope that we've all learned from others mistakes.
-But if you haven't we just might see you next week on "America's Dumbest Criminals."
-Goodbye. [applause] [theme music]

In this episode of “America’s Dumbest Criminals,” we’ll witness someone trying to make their mark, a photo-happy proud pot-grower and someone who skimps on the expense of a full-time getaway driver.

Crime is no laughing matter, except when the criminals are bumbling fools. Hosted by Debbie Alan and Daniel Butler, this show looks at lawbreakers through a humorous lens.

Brief Summary

This episode features dumb criminals including a pot grower caught by a drugstore clerk and a robber who hired a taxi for escape.

Key points

The Price of Fame. NARRATOR sets the stage for tonight's episode, hinting at the consequences of seeking fame.
Safe Sex Gone Wrong. A man attempts to rob a pharmacy for condoms but leaves a personal check.
A Unique Robbery. A robber inadvertently pays to rob a store, leaving with less than he came in with.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

If you want to make your mark on the world, consider the price of fame.

NARRATOR introduces the theme of the episode.

0:06WatchMar 3, 2022

Tension

40/ 100Low tension

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