America's Dumbest Criminals - Season 4, Episode 26 - Check Your Bags - Full Episode | Forensic Files

NARRATOR: Tonight on America's Dumbest Criminals, better safe than sorry? He'll be sorry he tackled this safe before the night is over.
A macho man has some real explaining to do, and discover a new reason why it's a good idea to check your bags.
There's no shortage of malcontents lining up to vie for the title of America's Dumbest Criminals.
[theme music] NARRATOR: Now, welcome your hosts for ADC, Daniel Butler and Debbie Allen.
-Again? Hi, there. We've got a truly strange assortment of stories tonight. We've got skimpy details on exotic lingerie that you're
going to love, keys to doors that provide keys to crimes, and a self arrest that's almost too good to be true.
-And something really unique-- a police officer who solves a crime with the use of ESPN.
-There's no N. -You're right, Debbie, there's no end to the crazy things that we're going to see--
-No, there's no N N in what the officer used. It's just ESP. You should have stopped when you got to P.
-Oh, I always do. Yeah, in fact, I took care of business before we began the show.
But if you're trying to tell me you need to visit the little girl's room, go ahead.
I'll cover for you. -Daniel, this is about being able to read another person's mind.
-I know. I got you. You, me. Simpatico, OK? Now go on, powder your nose. I'll cover.
It's OK. -Just introduce our first story, please? -OK. Sure. On numerous occasions, a guy had been
helping himself to beer at a store. Well, the clerk wasn't amused, so he decided
to turn the beer blast into a beer bust. See what happens when it all comes to a head.
Here's Caught On Camera. -It was a 24 hour convenience store, and this guy on a repeated basis would
go in and walk out with a 12 back of beer. And it happened about five times in a period of six months.
And the clerk recognized him from stealing beer before, and locked him in the store.
-Caught your [bleep] today, buddy. Yeah! -The clerk was mad because he lost a week's pay, because he
allowed the guy to steal beer before. -You gonna get locked up. That's what gonna happen.
-Ironically, a police car pulled in to get gas, and the clerk got on the loudspeaker.
-Hey, can you come here for a second? I got this man that's stealing this beer. In the bathroom.
You fixin' to get knocked up with that [bleep] right now! There he is, in the bathroom.
Same man that got me suspended. -I guess this was his revenge, to lock the guy in the store.
-Hey, he did it twice on me. He did-- the time I got suspended, it was him. And he did it one other time.
I took a pay cut from you, though. Hey, you ain't got nothing to say to me, though.
-There are three key components of a good memory. I forgot what they are right now,
but neither can the crook you're about to meet. -He makes it usually convenient to get picked up
after he robs a convenience store. He speeds the culmination of this quick sack with Something
To Remember Me By. -I had answered a call one time to a convenience store robbery.
-Yeah, I want to buy this. -When I rolled up on it, I saw the clerk, and she seemed very calm.
And she says, I don't know why he robbed me. I know who he is. And she was telling me how he approached and set
a beer on the counter to pay for it. And I look down, there's a set of keys on the counter.
And when I looked at the keys, it had his name and address on it, which was the same address that she was pointing
to cross the street from the store. We went across the street to this residence that
was on the key chain, and sure enough, there he was. And when I asked him to release his keys,
he said, OK, I know you got me. -Mormon cousins described Richard Nixon's motto as if two wrongs don't make a right, try three.
It's a philosophy clearly embraced by a thief in Buckingham, Pennsylvania. -Discover with us the back breaking
burden of stealing a 700 pound safe. People with hernias may want to avert their eyes.
-Several years ago we received for a burglary. We responded, and the victim advised us
that the subjects had taken a very large safe. They loaded into the back of a Chevy Camaro.
The safe weighed approximately 700 pounds, plus the weight of the three people in the car.
When they were fleeing the scene, the car broke down, the clutch burned out. The subjects at that point took a hammer,
broke the back out, took the jewelry and the stolen goods out of it, then called a tow truck to pick up the car
and take it back home. They split up at that point. When we get on scene the car was still there,
because the one subject that owned the car couldn't lift the safe out of the car by himself,
so he left it sitting in his driveway with the safe still in plain view. The Camaro just isn't engineered to carry a 700 pound safe,
and because of that, it broke down and we found the vehicle in the guy's front yard.
NARRATOR: In Connecticut, you may not educate dogs. -I'm sure even Connecticut's most uneducated mongrel has
more on the ball than a shoplifter in Dumfries, Virginia. As you'll see, this guy even tries
to pin his problems on his cat. Here's a twisted tale from the hall of fame we call America's Dumbest Excuses.
-Had a case where a local Harley Davidson shop got broke into, and I was the first unit on the scene.
Caught a gentleman coming out of the side window of the business. Had him at gunpoint, and he was telling me, don't shoot,
don't shoot. I'm just looking for my cat. And I said, your cat? Cat's in the side of the building?
He says, no, man, the window was already open. So we detained him, located some items in the building,
Harley Davidson products that were all laid up on this blanket, like somebody's just gonna grab the blanket
and steal these items. Leather vests, and things of that nature. Also, he had a pair of pink panties in his loot.
When we told him about the pink panties, what was he going to do with them, he turned red and said,
hey, man, don't tell anybody about that. Just-- I did it. I don't have any idea what he was
going to use the panties for. -As you'll see, the score at the end of this story
will be feisty old guy one, and no good young whippersnapper zero. It's time to raise Cain with our Blue Light Special.
NARRATOR: Meet the senior citizen equivalent of Bat Masterson. This 74-year-old Albuquerque man was loading groceries
into his car when he was approached by young thug. -Can you give me a quarter, $0.50?
And I said, I don't have $0.50. NARRATOR: Then the young guy grabbed two $5.00 bills
from the older man's shirt pocket. -He went, and here I go after him. NARRATOR: The robber dove to the floorboard of his car
while the old fellow whacked, poked, and pestered the thief with his trusty cane until help arrived.
-I was gonna say, that money was mine. NARRATOR: For his actions, his mailman thinks he deserves letters of recommendation.
-I thought that was fantastic. Maybe it'll make a lot more would be robbers think twice
before they pick on the elderly. NARRATOR: Though police don't recommend fighting back
in such situations, they were impressed enough with his handywork to make him an offer.
-They say, hey, you want to be a policeman? NARRATOR: Hey, would you want to tell him that he can't be?
-His business was so good, this drug dealer wasn't likely to go bust anytime soon,
so the police department in Saint Tammany Parish, Louisiana, stepped in to help matters.
And when they did, their arrest rate picked up considerably. -About two years ago, some of our undercover narcotics agents
acquired some information that there was some heavy duty marijuana dealing going on outside
of a trailer near this down of Medicineville. Because we believed there were weapons in the home,
our SWAT team was mobilized and helped them to affect a search warrant. While we were there executing the search warrant
and recovering drugs from various hiding places in the home, the customers continued
to arrived at the house. So our undercover narcotics agents were able to continue making marijuana sales
to the bad guys, who wound up actually arresting eight people that day on a search warrant that
was intended to net only two. -And now with news is a man who is to journalism what Austin Powers is to dentistry.
Here's Dan with ADC Headlines. -A Wisconsin man thought his wife wanted to kiss and make up after an argument.
Instead, she clinched her teeth to perform a bit of oral surgery. That's right, she took her revenge right
off the tip of his tongue, leaving her stunned husband mad enough to spit. If you think someone plans to drive drunk, you take the keys.
But what do you do if the vehicle is a horse? Someone should've warned the cowboy in Pierre, South Dakota
to whoa before he climbed into the saddle, as he would later learn. Under South Dakota law, operating a horse while
under the influence of alcohol carries the same penalty as operating a car while drunk.
Hey. Especially those four door models. If you've ever stressed out over filling out your tax return,
you'll empathize with a poor man in Paris, Tennessee. He freaked out when his tax preparation software glitched.
Fearing that he wouldn't be able to file on time, certain that this spelled trouble with the IRS,
he called 911 to complain that he had been defrauded. The officer who responded to the man's home
explained in no uncertain terms that such inappropriate calls could bring stiff penalties.
Here's wishing the guy many happy returns. And that closes the file on ADC Headlines,
news ripped from somewhere near the back of your local paper. Debbie? -Here's a 911 call with a less familiar ring than Daniel's
last story-- at least I hope that's the case. When the 911 operator took the call,
there was fear and apprehension in the caller's voice. But as this story unfolds, things
change from apprehension to self-apprehension. Here's tonight's special delivery.
-One night about 2:00 in the morning I was working general control, when I got a call of a citizen who
apparently, he had come home, had a little too much to drink. For whatever reason, grabbed his handcuffs
and started playing with them. Ended up slapping a cuff on each wrist. It wasn't until after he'd locked them
down good and tight on himself that he realized that he didn't have a key, or any way of getting out of his handcuffs.
So I guess knowing that most police officers carry handcuff keys, he gave our department a call and said, please help.
Come get me out of these things. So they sent me to it. He gave his name and date of birth, and everything.
So on my way there we did a warrant check on the guy, and sure enough he came back with an arrest warrant out
of another local jurisdiction here. So on the way there, I have this information now.
I'm going there expecting to arrest this guy when he calls back and says, well, wait, I slipped one hand out,
so you don't need to send the officer. So knowing this guy had a warrant, I told him I'll advise him that I have a spare handcuff
key with me, and I'll just swing by and give it to him. That way we won't have this problem again.
So he said, OK, that'll work for him. So I pull up in front of the house, and here's this young man standing out front.
Got a cordless phone in one hand, and got a set of handcuffs hanging off one wrist.
Apparently he was talking to his friend, and as he approaches me, I can hear him telling
his friend that, oh, that cops are here. They're gonna get me out of these handcuffs.
I took the dangling handcuff and put it in my hand, just like I was looking at it, making
sure I had the right key for it, or something. Told him that the light was kind of bad,
so I needed to move around behind him so I could use the streetlight. So I got his hand behind his back.
Once I had his hand behind his back, I went ahead and took my handcuffs out and handcuffed him with my handcuffs.
Told him he was under arrest for an outstanding warrant, and then told him that I'd let him keep his hadcuffs.
We'd just use mine for the rest of the evening. -Police officers find crooks hiding out
in all sorts of strange places. But if you watch closely, in this story you'll see that one stands alone.
Take a look. -My partner and I were working the violent felony warrant program, and we got a tip that this wanted person
was in an apartment up in Harlem. We arrived at the apartment, knocked on the door,
and another man answered, who wasn't wanted. So we started questioning him about the whereabouts
of this particular person we were looking for, and of course he had no idea what we were talking about.
There was, like, a loft right above this one room apartment. It was like, people put suitcases, I guess, or storage.
And there was about 10 suitcases up there, and there was one large one at the beginning
of the row of suitcases. I was hearing noise, and I didn't know where it was coming from.
I thought it was rats. All of a sudden, he must have moved in the suitcase, because they all started falling, like a domino effect.
And sure enough, that last suitcase was our [inaudible]. I was very shocked to see him in there.
NARRATOR: Now, let's look back at one of ADC's Greatest Hits. The man you're watching is under surveillance
by undercover officers in the underwear division of the New Sewickley, Pennsylvania police department.
And yes, he is conducting a panty raid. -He even confronted our victim the very first time.
They looked each other in the face, and had this amazing shock upon his face, but he still came back.
NARRATOR: The trap was set after the owner filed a complaint that this guy returned on a weekly basis.
-You can see him grabbing the panties. And that's when you see two men, of course they're dressed
in plain clothes, we barged out the door, yelled, police! Freeze! Stop! NARRATOR: The police clotheslined him
and hauled him in. At first, he claimed that the lingerie made good slingshots, but eventually confessed to the theft
and was placed in the Beaver county jail. NARRATOR: In Monroe, Utah, daylight must be visible between partners on a dance floor.
-Two of our smarter criminals chose one of our small gas stations to get away with a lot of money.
So they chose the store, they staked it out a little bit. They went in the store and lifted the entire ATM machine,
and ran off with it. Unfortunately, this particular machine had no money in it. What the machine actually was was an ATM that simply prints
out the amount of money you want after you enter your numbers in there, and then you take that receipt
to the cashier, who gives you the money. Our question now is whether these guys have decided
that the next plan would have to involve a machine that actually contained US currency.
-Being a police officer with ESP might not help with the kind of criminals profiled on this show.
-Yeah. If you're reading their minds, chances are you're drawing a blank. -But in Hudson, Massachusetts, there's
an officer who duped a crook into believing his mind was an open book. -For quick cover to cover coverage,
here's We're Not Making This Up. -I was working as a special agent, railroad police detective at a railway express agency.
And we would get a tremendous amount of losses. Jerry was a career thief. He had been stealing from the railway
express for about 10 years. I was at the disadvantage, but I had to turn things around.
I had to use the ESP to program them, or to program myself to be able to catch them
at the right time at the right place. -ESP, extrasensory perception, is using your feelings, your imagination to get hunches,
get feelings about people. So I'm sitting here doing this report, my boss is in having a coffee, and all of a sudden,
it was like a light bulb went off in my head. Bingo. This is it. So I went in and told my boss, Joe, I said,
Joe, I'm going to get him now. This is it. He said, go get him, tiger. I'm just following after, I'll just
follow where my feet take me, where I should go. All I knew is this is it. And I went up an alleyway between these two buildings,
and I looked up, and who's coming down the alleyway but Jerry? And he's carrying a burlap bag over his shoulder,
like Santa Claus. And he's looking down. He doesn't even see me. I get about 20 feet away, and I go, ahem.
He looks at me, he opens his eyes, drops the bag, and he runs out of the alley like a scalded cat.
Oh, beautiful. Just what I wanted him to do. Not only did I have all this stolen merchandise,
but in the bottom of the bag was his electric light bill and phone bill, with his name and address on it.
And when he was arrested by the FBI and handcuffed, all he kept saying over and over again
is why did I drop the bag? Why did I drop the bag? He couldn't figure it out. He probably knows now.
-Thank you, Officer Kruskin. -Well, it's time again for us to go. -I knew you were going to say that, you know,
before you said that. You think I've got-- -No. I think you were reading the teleprompter.
-OK. All right. Yeah. Well, then I guess you probably discerned what I was about to say, that we'll be right back next week
with more stories that'll help you feel smarter than you really are. -We'd like to thank the officers who helped us out tonight,
and take a moment to express our appreciation to everyone in law enforcement for putting yourselves
in harm's way for the good people of this country every day. -If you've got a lead on a story,
or you just can't wait until next week for more state of the art stupidity, visit our website at www.dumbcrimes.com.
-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. -Bye, bye.

In this episode of “America’s Dumbest Criminals,” we’ll witness a criminal who regrets he tackled a safe, a macho man with some explaining to do and discover why it’s a good idea to check your bags.

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 covers bizarre thefts, a self-handcuffing man, and a police officer using ESP to catch a thief.

Key points

A Beer Bust. A clerk locks a repeat beer thief in the store, leading to a police intervention.
The 700 Pound Safe. Thieves try to steal a massive safe, but their getaway car breaks down.
A Cat-astrophic Excuse. A shoplifter claims he's just looking for his cat while caught in the act.
Elderly Hero. A 74-year-old man fights back against a young thief with his cane.
Handcuffed to Trouble. A man accidentally locks himself in handcuffs, leading to an unexpected arrest.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He'll be sorry he tackled this safe before the night is over.

0:09WatchMar 10, 2022

Tension

40/ 100Low tension

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