Dumb crooks’ site is good
for big laughs

According to police in Williamsport, Pa., just before 1 a.m. on a Tuesday morning last month, 27-year-old Patrick McCarty asked to be arrested "for being stupid." When informed by police that such an affliction, however unfortunate, did not amount to a crime, he led them to his apartment and surrendered a stash of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. McCarty was held in lieu of $10,000 bail on drug charges.

OK, Pat, you proved your point. You really are stupid. Perhaps even as dim-witted as Ernest Di Falco, the alleged thief who New Jersey authorities say asked a bank employee to call him a cab after he robbed the Bank of New York in Rutherford. One worker took down the taxi's license plate number, while another recognized him from a nearby pizza parlor. Di Falco was charged with armed robbery after police recovered the money some time later.

These and more unbelievable tales of absolute idiocy can be found at dumbcrooks.com, a side-splitting chronicle of some of the most lame-brained crimes ever committed. Often updated, the Web site features hundreds of wacky accounts from the past half-decade and has "Dumb Crook of the Week" and "Our Favorites" pages.

The site also solicits true accounts of stupid criminal acts from law enforcement officers around the country.

Jim Nulf, retired from the Jacksonville Police Department in Florida, recalls an incident in which several would-be thieves dropped a lit stick of dynamite into what they thought was a late-night deposit box at a local bank. It was actually a drop vault for a car wash. Not only was the paper money blown to scraps, but the coins were discharged at such a high velocity that it caused severe wounds to the perpetrators. Painful? Certainly. Stupid? Absolutely.

Amy R. Logue of Ashland, Ohio, though, takes the cake. Ontario police recently reported that the 27-year-old woman apparently got her phone numbers crossed and called a police station to buy crack cocaine. Even after the dispatcher answered her call with "Ontario Police," Logue attempted to arrange an $80 drug buy at a fast-food restaurant. She was arrested at the scene.

Man, I would have loved to have seen that on "Cops."

Note: Web sites mentioned in this column were active at time of publication. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin neither endorses nor is responsible for their contents.