45 Police Officers Share The Stupidest Criminals They’ve Ever Encountered

As a teacher, remember asking a student who was looking a bit out of it what was up.

Sleepily she replies ‘Didn’t get much sleep.’

I asked her if everything fine, as you’d normally do.

‘Yeah, it’s ok. My uncle got arrested last night though.’
Low socio -economic area so it’s not as unusual as you’d think.

Anyway she tells the story.
‘Uncle so stupid. He and his mate thought it would be a good idea to steal a local ATM. He has his mate smashed through the windows, put chains around it and dragged it out with their big truck. They decided it worked well, so they ended up dragging all the way home.’ She gives a half smile, ‘Thing is, cops found them easy, just followed the marks on the road all the way to the front door.’

So yeah, worthy I feel.

Quick edit to say

I’m Australian, got and tired so excuse language can’t think. This would have been 2008 or 2009 too. That actually scares me it was so long ago.

Ex-cop. A kid on my area, 14 or so who was a complete idiot.

He was a thief, and a terrible one at that. He knew I would be in a particular shop, at the same time every day, sitting in the security office with the manager because of shoplifting.

He knew this because i'd already caught him about 4 times. On this occasion he had seen me walking in...

And he still filled his pockets with sweets and walked out. I followed him out and he was with his dad.

I smiled and his dad rolled his eyes immediately and cuffed him round the back of the head.

I gave him a few chances, more than I should have done. Partly because of his age, and partly because his family were dirt poor and couldn't afford fines or to get him to community service. But that was the final straw unfortunately.

I've been gone a few years, so hopefully he has finally got a brain cell.

I'm a part time prosecutor. My town is small. About 10,000 and we have two undercover officers. They make 12 to 20 arrests on any given week. My paper keeps putting them on the front page. Literally, buy from anyone else and you're fine. But no, I see dozens upon dozens in Court off of these two. We even made them police officer of the year three years back. No slow down.

My father was a city prosecutor. One time he had a case where an individual paid someone else to break into someone else's house and steal a lot of expensive stereo equipment. Upon delivery of the stolen property, some of the equipment was damaged. The "mastermind" of this crime was so mad that he decided to call the cops.

Am cop. To make a long story slightly less long, the suspect was living in an vacant mansion atop a cliff side. The home owner travels frequently only stays at the property when he’s in town. He came home to find his sliding door unlocked. He checked his security cameras and finds someone had entered the home and hadn’t left, so he proceeds to call the police.

We arrive, get the story and open the sliding door to be met with a very strong odor of marijuana. As we begin clearing the house, we begin to enter the last room, which happens to overlook the cliff. As we begin to make entry to a den-like area with a full bathroom, we hear a shower running and someone singing very loudly. We call out for him to come out, hands in sight. The water and singing stops, we call out again, no answer. We enter the room, clear the bathroom and find no one, but the sliding door leading to a balcony suspended about 12 feet over cliff side is wide open.

We look over the banister, and see only trampled brush. In disbelief that this guy basically jumped off a cliff to avoid the police we ask for the helicopter to search the cliff side to see if there was an injured person at the base or anywhere nearby, negative.

As we look about the room, on the counter are two mason jars full of the devil’s lettuce (or giggle bush if you prefer), a bottle of San peligrino, and a box of half eaten Hawaiian pizza from a local pizza joint that some of coppers of the area frequent. Next to that box was a receipt for the pizza that he had ordered and delivered. On the bottom of that receipt was the name of the person who ordered/paid for the pizza. Did some quick police work on police computers and eventually found the guy who matched the guy in the security video.

He was caught later as he limped his way down a street that was further down the hills.

TL;DR Burglar has personal party with personal pizza in someone else’s house, jumps off a cliff when police come to join.

Guy got kicked out of a bar/after hours club by security. Claims he'll be back and about 30 minutes later he comes around the corner shooting at security. They dog pile him and cuff him. My partners and I were about a block away, got there and tossed him in a back seat. Dude never left frame on the cameras from the time he started shooting until I put him in my back seat and tried to claim it wasn't him.

Same club different idiot. Tried to get past security without a pat down because he had a gun on him. Security hits him with mace, he takes his gun out and starts waving it around, I'm driving past as the call is coming out and pull up on him ditching a gun in the dumpster. Take him into custody and he claims it's not his gun (not unusual there) and says that his martial arts skills kicked in when he was "attacked" by security and he disarmed one of them. I know all the security guards up there and which ones are armed (only one), found her and could see her gun still secured in her holster. Didn't help that this was not the first time dingus tried to ditch a gun on me.

My ex stole a car and went to pick up his friend at the police station in the stolen car. He parked right in front of a cop. The cop ran the plates and escorted him into the building. Next day, he was on the news as the most stupid criminal in town.

Edit: a lot of people are asking me why I dated him. Well he never told me that. One day, I decided to google his name and I found the article. Learn from me ladies and gentlemen, google your partners name. You never know what they are hiding. And yes, best thing I did was break up with him. Mistakes were made.

Not a cop, but paramedic. Got called at like 4pm in the afternoon for the unresponsive guy in a car parked in a parking lot. Cops came along as well. Guy is passed out drunk in the front passenger seat of his car, with the keys in the ignition. So we wake him up, cops talk to him a bunch, doesn't admit to driving, says he was with his girlfriend for his birthday and she just left him in the car. So it's kind of a gray area, they can't really get him with DUI, yeah he's drunk, yeah keys are in the ignition, but he wasn't in driver seat. Anyway cop wants up to check him out and see if we can take him to hospital to sober up. We check him out and don't really find anything that can mandate him to go to the emergency room.

Cop asks him to sit in the back of the cruiser for a minute to give us a chance to talk. Essentially we start explaining we don't have anything to mandate he goes to hospital, yeah he's drunk but he's competent to make his medical decisions still. Cop says he doesn't really have enough to give him a DUI and arrest him, so is planning on just driving him home. Suddenly guy starts bashing his head and kicking his feet on the inside window of the cruiser. Manages to pop the window out partially. Went from getting a free ride home to a felony for damaging the window.

Myself and my colleagues were going to arrest a male. Before we went to try the only address we had for him we went the shop and were going to go to the near by police station to run some errands. As I walk out shop the male we wanted to arrest is standing outside on his phone not even caring I was there. I went and got my colleagues to come and verify I was right and as we were walking past him pretending we weren’t looking at him to see if I was correct and it was the guy we wanted, he says on the phone “Oh Someone’s in Trouble, Im staying to watch this”. in excitement, meaning we didn’t have to worry about identifying him quickly. This was also hilarious as after we arrested him he knew he was wanted, and was even told by his girlfriend before he left where he was staying, that, if he left the home, he would be arrested. Funny thing is if he stayed at his home, it was not the address we were going to look for him at and we knew nothing about.

My grandpa always told a story of his best friend, there was a shady guy waiting for the bus near grandpas friend, shaky, nervous, sweaty, pretty obvious he was about to do something.

He gets on the bus, puts a gun to the drivers head and tells him to drive, turns around to aim at the passengers and demand money only to find like 20 officers with guns aimed at him...

It was a bus that almost every cop in town took to go to work, something pretty well known and something pretty obvious from the sign on the bus, that ended it's route at the preccint...

Teen gets fired from Red Lobster, returns to rob same resteraunt that night. They refuse to give him money from register so he grabs charity coin box (muscular distrophy or similar) and then he leaves on bicycle. I go to find him and see coins scattered about, follow trail off same which leads me to him hiding in bushes at a church. Bicycle was leaning up against the bush he was in.

Edit: Just to clarify because of comments below, I was the police officer that arrested him, not a Red Lobster employee.

Guy denied that he was himself the whole way to court. We turned up with a warrant for arrest. And, unsurprisingly given his stupidity he was at home with the door unlocked and watching spongebob. He denied it was him as I held a photo up beside his face and we are talking super distinctive. Like long black hair, Johnny depp facial hair but weighing 300lb. Well I guess it’s possible that he had a look-a-like who happened to be in his house. However, fingerprints don’t lie and in custody, despite his fingerprints being a match... he claimed it wasn’t him. Funny thing was the judge gave him more time for the obstruction than for the original offence.

Not a cop but my father is and this is not a criminal either but a lawyer.

My father used to work financial crimes and working where he does means that he knows a lot of lawyers. One day one calls him upp and tells him that he has gotten an email from the Spanish lottery(both my father and lawyer are norwegians living in Norway) that said he had won 100 million euroes! But the lawyer had heard about people being scamed this way so he called my father to ask about it.
My father simply replied "did you buy a lottery ticket in Spain" to wich the lawyer replied "No" and so my father said "well then it is probably a scam" this should have been the end but the lawyer kept asking "but what if it is true?".

We had an inmate that would constantly call crime stoppers on his contraband cell phone and try to get them to give him the reward if he confessed to his crimes. He did this several times a month.

4 AM on a very slow week night. All on duty officers gathered on a deserted hill top to test weapons and converse. A car approaches the very secluded area. The dirt road is very narrow and wooded with no place to turn around. They pull up to officers location to turn.
They had just broken into a coin operated car wash. Still had the coins and front panel of the change machine in their back seat. Drove to literally the ONLY spot in the county where they would get caught to split their loot.

Not a cop but read an article about 2 people caught after they attempted a robbery by sisguising their faces with a permanent marker


Needless to say they were caught, there are pictures and everything, here's the article if anyone's interested:

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/29/iowa.marker.disguise/index.html.

Story from a cop:
He and his partner were sent to interview a suspect involved in armed robbery out of state. They show up to his house and find him sitting on the porch. They call him by name and announce themselves as police officers. Then they say, do you know why we are here? The suspect says “yea, that armed robbery in Atlanta”.

The guy apparently was more worried about being seen as out of the loop than being seen as innocent.

This bloke wasn't such a criminal but more a traffic offender. Caught him driving while using his mobile phone. I was the passenger in the police car and filmed him while he was doing so. Pulled him over and he had the phone on the ground in the footwell. Said to me "What? How did that get there?"

Also another traffic related incident. I had worked in the command for nearly 5 years, caught someone pushing in front of the traffic queue, which triggers me as a cop and as a human. He said to me "you don't know how bad the traffic is in *redacted subburb*"

But dumbest guy I ever met was a bloke who robbed a convenience store and I was around the corner. Caught him outside I had my firearm pointed at him and he threatened to stab me. I'm pretty sure he was off his face as he started walking towards me. If he ran he would be dead now but glad he didn't as I just walked backwards and kept yelling at him till he realised there was a glock 22 pointed at his chest. That was also my scariest day in the police. Only a year in at this point and shooting someone is not something I ever want to do.

I knew this kid in high school who got pulled over for a minor traffic violation. He decides it would be funny to jump out of the car and book it down the street. The cops of course go chasing after him and after a couple of blocks he stops, puts his hands in the air, and yells, "Psych!" The cops didn't find it funny so they tackled him to ground and put him under arrest. His parents were wealthy so he didn't get in that much trouble, but it was still so incredibly stupid.

Not a cop myself, but about 10 years ago I got held up and robbed by a group of 3 guys with knives. All they wanted was the money in my wallet, so me being the smart guy not wanting to mess with knives just obliged. At the end of the ordeal he put the knife to my throat and said "If you ever tell the cops my name is I will slice your throat right now".

So I went home, called the cops, told em where it happened and gave them the name they guy told me. The name instantly rung a bell with them since the guy had come into contact with the police in the past. Cops went to the spot where I was robbed and they were laying in ambush for a new guy to appear. They could instantly identify the guy he was arrested and thats about it.

Happened in the Netherlands, don't know his sentence or anything.