… and Catching Crooks Comes Way Down the List.
A couple from Fort Walton Beach in Florida awoke to find a half-eaten hot-dog in their spare bedroom. Unfortunately, beside the half-eaten snack was the husband’s wallet – opened and with the contents spread out around it.
However, this was a Sunday morning and church beckoned so, rather than contact police, the couple cleaned up the mess and went to their truck to make the journey to church. Somebody had beaten them to the truck, however, and the glove compartment was open, with the items it had contained strewn across the seat.
No matter – church beckoned. The man replaced everything in the glove compartment and the couple made their way to church.
The incident report noted the cars and home were both unlocked while the family slept and the husband had slumbered in his recliner by the kitchen, but didn’t hear anything.
The half-eaten hot dog came from the couple’s own supply, which were in a drawer in the refrigerator.
Somebody will get their reward in heaven, I just can’t work out who.
NWF Daily News

There is no real crime committed in this story – just criminal incompetence, really.
Thirty-five year old salesman, David Mackie, was so excited by Capital One’s offer to personalize your plastic with a favorite photo, that he swiftly went online and submitted a card design featuring the iconic shot of actor Nick Nolte looking disheveled.
The bank’s email response was just as swift, announcing, “Congratulations! Your image has been approved.”
Capital One did eventually realize their error, but not before the card had been mailed to Mackie. On Monday, a bank representative contacted Mackie, requesting the return of his Nolte credit card, because use of a celebrity’s image violated the bank’s “image upload guidelines.”
Given Capital One’s obviously lax internal controls, is it any wonder that the world’s economy is in the doo-doo’s?
The Smoking Gun

A self-employed electrician from Winnipeg recently demonstrated a novel use for socks. During an interview at the police station, James Chrysler stripped off his clothes, covered his embarrassment (or not) with a strategically placed sock and danced in front of police.
It all began when police were called at around 1 a.m. on December 23 to investigate reports of a man driving dangerously up and down the street for an hour, honking his horn. When police arrived, the driver (Chrysler) sped towards a cruiser, then stopped, got out of the car, swayed, and fumbled with his wallet.
He told police, “I was going for a nice walk in the snow,” and, when asked to give a breath sample, he refused, saying, “I won’t, because I wasn’t driving. I was walking on the sidewalk.’”
It was during the subsequent interview that Chrysler demonstrated his innovative way with a sock.
At his court appearance, Chrysler reputedly said, “I don’t condone drinking and driving. It’s a dangerous act.”
He was fined $2,000 and banned from driving for a year.

Thirty-nine-year-old Brenton Alan Erhardt from Darwin, Australia, has pleaded guilty to dangerous driving and fined 2,000 Australian dollars. Boring, eh? Read on…
When Erhardt was pulled over for speeding back in July, he admitted to officers that he had filmed himself masturbating while driving from Adelaide to Darwin. He must have been mighty sore after that marathon, the distance is 3,051 miles! Oh, and he was apparently traveling at over 90 MPH at the time. And he was carrying cannabis in the car boot, with two cannabis plants on the back seat.
Perhaps that’s why it took him three-thousand miles to pleasure himself – the dope had too much dope.
Oh, I forgot – he also pleaded guilty to driving unlicensed, carrying two cannabis smoking pipes, administering the drug and carrying a loaded rifle.
ABC News

This must have been a very special festive season for 30-year-old, wheelchair bound, Ana Victoria Perez.
Perez was a regular fixture along a main Monterrey road, asking for change from motorists as she sat in a wheelchair pushed by her husband. But on Monday, the couple changed their modus operandi, and she and her husband allegedly threw a stone through a furniture store window, with a view to robbing the place.
The couple were scared off by a security guard, so scared, in fact, that Perez fled the scene on foot. They were arrested and charged with vandalism when they returned for the wheelchair.
Doesn’t God move in mysterious ways?
First Coast News

Torvald Alexander, who had been celebrating the New Year, returned to his Edinburgh home to find that his house had been broken into – and the culprit was still on the premises.
Alexander did what most of us would do in such a situation – he ran at the intruder, who, terrified, leaped from a first floor window to escape, leaving his shoes behind. This rather dramatic action was probably due to the fact that Alexander was still in fancy dress – as Thor, the Norse god of Thunder. He was dressed in a red cape, breast plate and horned silver helmet.
Our modern day incarnation of the hammer-wielding thunder god works as a mild-mannered builder by day. When asked why his intruder made such a dramatic escape, Thor said “He probably would not have expected to meet a strong builder, especially dressed in tinfoil and silver.”
No, quite. And, going by the photograph, the muscles might have had something to do with it too.

In Wisconsin, an apparently drunken man helped himself to a cup of soda in a retail store but refused to pay the $1.57 bill. Employees told the 27-year-old that he must either pay for the drink or leave, but he refused to do either.
Police were called and an officer gave the man the choice of paying his bill or going to jail. Despite later being found to have over $70 in his pocket, the drunk chose to go to jail.
He was issued an ordinance citation for retail theft.
Well, there’s nowt so queer as folk.

On December 19, concerned by his apparent disappearance, Stanley Carter’s friends filed a missing person report on him. On Friday, 26th December, the long-lost Carter emerged from the attic of a neighbor’s home – wearing the neighbor’s clothes.
Carter’s unwitting host, Stacy Ferrance, had heard noises but thought they were caused by the three children. She notified police on Christmas Day when cash, a laptop computer and an iPod disappeared, then called police again the next day when she found footprints in her bedroom closet, beneath the trap-door to the attic.
Carter kept a log of everything he took from the residence, which he labeled ‘Stanley’s Christmas List.’
He was charged with several counts of burglary, theft, receiving stolen property and criminal trespass after accessing the attic shared by the Ferrance family and their neighbors – the very folk who had reported Carter missing in the first place.
Chron.com

Shane Sartin broke out of Webster County Jail last week by using a string of Christmas lights to climb down from a third-story exercise area in the county courthouse. Of course, the majority of Christmas lights are designed to be hung by people and not hung on to by people and, as you would suspect, they broke.
Sartin took this personal tragedy, and the injured back that ensued, lightly and still managed to get away, changing from his orange prison jumpsuit to sweats and T-shirt. Nonetheless, he was picked up by officers less than 24 hours after his escape and taken to hospital to have his back injury assessed.
KansasCity.com

A hitchhiker has been arrested for throwing snowballs at passing cars because they wouldn’t give him a lift.
Zack Laughlin Kelly was hitchhiking home for the festive season when Oregon police gave him a ride. They could only take him for the first part of his journey, following which Kelly had to rely, rather unsuccessfully, on his thumb. Frustrated at the lack of motorist goodwill (an abundance of motorist good sense, depending on which side of the fence you sit), Kelly decided to take attack the task of getting a ride rather more forcibly.
Police saw him walking in the fast lane of a motorway, snowballs in both hands, jumping toward vehicles to try to make them stop. He was also spotted walking in the center of the fast lane, throwing snowballs at vehicles passing him in the slow lane.
It appeared that, although Kelly had partaken of a festive tipple or two, he was still lucid. He was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.
Metro