Stupid criminals and why we love them

We love them because they make it so easy.

There's a fair bit of buzz going around currently over this idiotic Louisiana beauty queen named Lindsey Evans who just lost her crown and title with only two more weeks of her term to go because she and three girlfriends decided to run out on a restaurant tab that only totaled $46. Compounding her stupidity, Lindsey left her purse behind, which the restaurant turned over to police. Lindsey returned to get the purse and was identified and charged...and also charged for the marijuana that was in her purse when she left it. (They call it "dope" for a reason, folks...)

People wonder how she could be so stupid. But during my time as a police officer, I saw many other people who clearly didn't think about what they were doing. If I listed them all, I'd probably exceed my allotted blog space, because there were a lot of them. But I will share a couple of my favorites.

1. Following a DWI arrest in which the intoxicated driver of a car was arrested and his car impounded, his equally drunk passenger was allowed to go home in a taxi from the scene. A couple hours later, when I was releasing the drunk driver from the station, I told him to call someone for a ride. He did, and in a few minutes, who should come through the police station door but the passenger. "I came to get my friend," he says.
Now I know that my arrestee's still way over the legal limit, so I'm pretty sure that this guys is too. As I recall, he seemed to be the drunker of the two during the original traffic stop, and he still smells like booze right here in the station.
"How'd you get here?" I asked him.
He started to say something then he paused, I think realizing what he was about to admit to. "Uhhh....I walked," he said.
Uh-huh.

I told him to have a seat to wait for his pal, and then I went to our front desk and asked the desk officer if I could check our parking lot camera video. Sure enough, skipping back a bit, the camera clearly captured this guy driving into our lot, parking rather badly, then getting out of the driver's seat and walking into our front door, complete with a bit of a stagger and a stumble as he walked. I went back out to see him again.

"Your pal's free to go. He'll be out in a minute. But I know that you drove here so I'm going to have to give you a few test just to make sure that you're ok to drive him home."

Of course he failed. He was arrested for DWI and his car was impounded. And to add insult to injury, his pal didn't even wait around for him to get processed but called for another ride and left.


2. I'd just decided to stop another car based on my suspicion that the driver might be intoxicated. I put my lights on, and the car slowed, pulled to the side of the highway, and then lurched forward for no reason and struck a concrete bridge pillar.
Some people sure do like to make it easy.
I radioed in my location and the vehicle description, and when I walked up, the driver was on his cell phone. I made him hang the phone up and I talked to him for a bit, eventually deciding that he was indeed under the influence. Indeed, he admitted that he and his friend had been having a few drinks at the friend's house while watching a football game. "But I'm almost home now," he said. Why do drunks always say that? Do they really expect me to just say "well gee, I guess you are. OK, drive the rest of the way very carefully and have a nice night..."?

He blows the field sobriety tests, and I'd just cuffed him and put him in my backseat on him when another car pulled up behind my cruiser. A man gets out of that one and comes up and says "Is this the John Smith arrest?" (Name changed to protect the guilty.)
WTF? I was about to respond that this was the Bill Bailey arrest and the John Smith arrest was a mile up the road, but I bit my tongue. instead I simply asked him what he needed.
"Well John's a friend of mine, and I'm a lawyer so I'm here to represent him."

OK, now this was something that I hadn't seen before. "And you came out here at midnight for this? What kind of a lawyer does that? Do you have any identification on you?"
"Oh sure," he says, digging out his wallet. "Normally I wouldn't do this, but John's coming from my house. we were watching a couple of games and we had a few drinks."
He kept looking through his wallet, and I moved in close to get a good look at his eyes and see if I could smell alcohol. I could.

He produced a business card. Yep, he's a lawyer. A real-estate lawyer, licensed to practice in the adjoining state. He couldn't even practice here if he wanted to.

"So how much have you had to drink while you guys were watching the games, sir?"
This was that moment where the light came on inside his head.
"Uh, I'm ok. Really."

Well I knew how drunk his pal was, and it stood to reason that this guy'd probably had about the same amount to drink. My quick assessment told me that he had definitely been drinking, so I told him that I was going to have to give him a few tests. He got nervous and told me that he didn't need to test. "I'm not really driving. I'm just here for John."
"And that's really nice, sir. However you were driving that car there on my highway so I need to make sure that you're not over the limit. Now you can either take these tests and convince me that you're fine, or else I have to place you under arrest and take you in for official testing."

He hemmed and hawed a bit, then gave the tests his best shot and predictably failed. He joined his buddy in the back seat and when the tow truck I'd called for "John's" car arrived, I just had it take both cars.

It eventually turned out that the "helpful" lawyer's BAC was 0.02% higher than "John's" was.