My nephew Mike, who is a retired police officer, says the reason it's so easy to catch criminals is because most of them are stupid.
He's got a point.
I sat on a jury a few years back that heard evidence in a particularly gruesome double murder that happened not far from where I live. Our decision hinged on a damning series of cell-phone records that left little wiggle room for the defendant.
Yes, he had left his cell phone in the car in which he had shot and killed two people.
Yes, that was a dumb mistake.
I was reminded this week -- again -- of how dim-witted criminals can be. A handful of young people -- men and women -- have been charged in a series of thefts in Chesterfield and Colonial Heights in May and June. A Chesterfield policeman says it's one of the largest crime sprees by such a big group of young people he's ever seen.
They were caught when a cop stopped them because they were driving a stolen car. A friend of one of those arrested said he saw that she was trying to sell some of the stolen items on Facebook.
Unfortunately she has a baby. One can only hope that the baby's father passed on some DNA that counteracts the stupid gene. But don't count on it. The stupid gene is very strong.
Virginia seems to be rife with brain-dead criminals. I Googled "stupid criminals Virginia" and came up with one that takes the cake. Two men in a pickup truck went to a new-home site to steal a refrigerator. They snatched a fridge from one of the houses, creating considerable damage to the house in the process, and loaded it onto the pickup. The pickup got stuck in the mud, so these rocket scientists decided it was because the refrigerator was too heavy. They put their stolen refrigerator back into the house, and then realized that they had locked the keys in the truck -- so they abandoned it.
The pickup was easy to trace when the crime was discovered.
I suppose this just confirms what Albert Einstein once said: "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
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I didn't say that most are stupid, nor did I say that it was easy catching criminals, as a rule. I said I was thankful that more of them weren't smart, as it would have made the job more difficult. -Mike
ReplyDeleteThere are some smart ones, we just never hear about them. There are career criminals who manage to have whole lives which never see the court docket, particularly thieves. But, as Mike says, thank goodness most of them are not smart...Or do the smart ones wind up in Congress or working for large Corporations?
ReplyDeleteSorry, Mike. My bad for misquoting you. I should have taken notes. I learned that in Journalism 101. Looks like I forgot that lesson momentarily.
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