Police officers can run into all sorts of criminals over the course of their careers and not all of them are necessarily the sharpest knives in the drawer.
Today's burning question came from Redditor NobleDragon777, who asked the online community: "Cops of Reddit, what is the most stupid criminal you have ever met?"
There are a lot of them out there. Law enforcement officers and even regular citizens chimed in.
"3 guys broke in through a large window..."
Not a cop but I used to work at a smoke shop. 3 guys broke in through a large window, left blood everywhere just trying to get in. Walked right past the high end fancy expensive glass and proceeded to grab as many cheap Chinese bongs as possible. They went back through the window breaking 2 or 3 bongs in the process of crawling through the tiny hole they made probably cutting themselves even more than they already have and high tailed it across the street.
They seemed to have dropped damn near everything while running because there was literally a trail of broken glass leading to the apartment across the street. Cops came, followed the glass trail leading directly to someones door. Looked over the little fence to their bottom floor balcony and saw 3 guys all cut up smoking from a broken bong. We estimated they took 8 or 9 bongs, they were smoking from the only survivor. They turned out to be regulars. Never seem em again after that.
"So I went home, called the cops..."
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 <redacted> 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.
"Teen gets fired..."
Teen gets fired from Red Lobster, returns to rob same restaurant that night. They refuse to give him money from register so he grabs charity coin box (muscular dystrophy 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.
"Went to a job..."
Went to a job of 2 males attempting to break into a car. Job description said they had been at it for at least an hour.
Got there and the car was theirs. They had apparently locked themselves out. Checks confirmed it did belong to one of the persons mum. On their person was stolen mail and heaps of phones and new stuff in boxes in the car so they got arrested for theft anyway.
Ended up that the drivers door they had been trying to break into was the only locked door out of the 4. Was unlocked everywhere else the whole time they were there.
"My ex stole a car..."
GiphyMy 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.
"Took a vehicle burglary report..."
Took a vehicle burglary report where the victim found a drivers license sitting on her driver seat that the suspect must have left behind. Seems damning, but if he had any criminal smarts he would just say his license was stolen and the thief must have dropped it while breaking into this new victim's vehicle. Without any other evidence, the case would have gone nowhere.
The next day I take a report at a church that was a couple of blocks away from the vehicle burglary. This guy stole the video cameras from the building. He must have thought the footage came with the camera, because when we checked the video, there was a High Def close-up of the suspects face as he removed the camera. Good evidence, sure, but I still didn't know who the guy was... until I looked at the license I collected the day prior and saw it was the same exact guy.
"He once told me a story..."
My father is a police officer. He once told me a story of a call he went to for reports of a man and woman fighting in an apartment (call came from neighbors for noise complaints/concern). He was 3rd shift, so this was at some point very late at night, when all the crazy people are up and at em. When he arrived he could hear the yelling through the door, he knocked and let them know it was the police.
There was immediate silence and a man answered the door... completely naked. The naked man didn't even give my dad a chance to speak or ask questions, the first thing he said was "I don't have a knife behind my back." Well, he definitely did have a knife behind his back. And the naked woman he was with had drugs, which was what they were fighting over. They both got arrested that night. Tip: don't do illegal drugs, and if you do, don't answer the door for the cops.
cambastian8
"Social media is a treasure trove..."
Can't go into too much detail, but kid (14) shot another kid (15) in the leg after a fight in their apartment complex. The victim is able to describe the gun the shooter used in detail. We get get shooters name from another kid who knows him from school, my partner looks up his Instagram and would you believe it, there he is posing with the gun described to us exactly.
Social media is a treasure trove of wannabe gangsters incriminating themselves.
"So I'm sitting in the station, doing paperwork."
So I'm sitting in the station, doing paperwork. I'm looking out of the window, and a few yards away is a bus stop. A young lad is smashing the glass of the bus stop, as a way of showing off to a couple of girls. So I sigh, walk about 20 yards over to him and arrest him.
Another time, a lad had just broken into a pharmacy and stolen some drugs. Sleeping tablets, which he started taking (maybe to hide the evidence - who knows how these people's minds work). There's a foot chase, which gets slower, and slower, and slower... I ended up just walking slowly behind him. The guy fell asleep while I was booking him in.
"My cousin is a State Trooper..."
My cousin is a State Trooper, and he had a funny story about a guy he caught running drugs on the interstate. One day as he was about to head off duty, he saw a car going easily 100mph in the opposite direction, so he whipped around and eventually caught up to him and pulled him over. The first words out of the guy's mouth were, "You can't pull me over!" To which my cousin replied, "Um, I just did?"
After a search of the vehicle that yielded a pound of weed, a pistol with the serial number scratched off, some meth, and a notebook with his own rap lyrics, my cousin arrested the guy. While questioning him, he read some of his lyrics back to him including the line, "Ain't no pig ever gon catch me... F--- the police"
"He basically gave himself away."
My dad is a cop and he was interrogating a robber which was denying he had any involvement since the start.
Dad: "The Man told us that you robbed him of $500!"
Robber: "No it was only $300!"
He basically gave himself away.
"An idiot high schooler..."
My dad is a cop, and I remember that he called me one night and said that he wanted to tell me how glad he was that I'm not as stupid as the guy he arrested that night. An idiot high schooler was caught stealing alcohol after his fake ID was rejected. His fake ID said he was born in 2001, three years younger than he actually was. Poor guy couldn't work out why his ID didn't work. My dad recommended that he pay better attention in math class.
"I pulled over a dude..."
Ex police officer here,
I pulled over a dude for having a brake light out. Nothing serious, ran his plated and the likes. It all came back clean and nothing seemed off, until he exclaimed, "I haven't had any alcohol!" In an over enthusiastic tone.... for some reason he thought this was a good idea... so nearly got away with it (vodka doesnt smell). I breathalised him... legal limit in England is 35 he blew over 60.... Arrested on the spot and his vehicle towed. Idiot.
"We had an inmate..."
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.
Reddit user Janine_18 asked:
"What's the one thing you'll never tell your SO?"
Love/Hate Relationship
"She loves her siblings and hates her parents."
"I hate her siblings and love her parents."
"They were very tight with their parents for the first 3 years of our relationship, and in 2017-2018 all hell broke loose so to say. My partner has no personal animus towards her parents, she is however extremely close to her older sibling who has a heap of problems with their parents."
"My partner follows their lead and it guides her own relationship with their parents. And the reason her siblings have huge problems with their parents is that they retired, moved 20(!) whole minutes away from their childhood home and went on a vacation for a month.
"They are apparently 'selfish', 'inconsiderate', and 'don’t think of themselves as parents'. This despite the fact that they call and visit for every holiday, birthday, promotion, celebration of any kind. Dog and babysit. Frequently host. Communicate well."
"No the absolute truth is that my partner's siblings are black holes and not great."
"Would 'I radically dislike your one sibling and don’t trust the other at all” be a viable middle ground?'."
~ Agreed_fact
Sweet Tooth
"A few years ago, my girlfriend put a candy bowl in our hallway at our apartment for Halloween. She came home that day to discover that nobody took any candy, and she was a little bummed."
"Over the course of that week, I'd take candy out before work or when she was asleep."
"She got so happy that 'the neighbors loved the candy'. She does this every year now, and I have to continuously swipe the candy and pretend it is the neighbors."
"It makes her happy, and I get free candy. Win win."
~ AlecsWebHair
GiphyIn It For the House
"That I know she cheated on me and the only reason I haven't left her is because the mortgage interest rates are a bit high so I can't comfortably buy her half of the equity we have in the house."
"I got a valuation, a mortgage pre-approval, and a lawyer all ready to go... But would only have about $21 per week to spare... I'd be screwed the first time a major appliance or the car breaks down..."
~ H_He_Metals
Mommy Dearest
"That her mother is a bad person in disguise of a caring and beloved figure."
~ Relative_Rich8169
"My pet name for my girlfriend is Bambi."
"She thinks it's because has big brown eyes, but really it's because I want to shoot her mother with a rifle."
~ airblizzard
Giphy"That's my mother in law. For her daughter, she'll do anything... to the point that it's overbearing and controlling and difficult to deal with."
"And for everyone else, she is one of the least empathetic people I've ever met..."
"She CRIED when Rush Limbaugh died, and she literally said the Proud Boys are like the Boy Scouts. But she'll drop $2,000 on Christmas presents for one person like it's nothing, so she thinks she's owed respect and kind words."
"I literally had to tell her at one point, 'If you want me to stop calling you a Nazi, buying me more presents or arguing with me isn't going to do it, you have to stop saying Nazi-friendly sh*t'. But she didn't stop, of course."
"She thought COVID was no big deal until a family member died of it."
"She also makes tons of snide comments about my work. I'm a lawyer in Big Law, I make great money but it's soul sucking and I never wanted to do this forever, I want to work for the government."
"She'll see a postal worker and say 'That'll be you one day, government worker, not a great way to provide for my daughter'."
"Her daughter, my wife, is a DOCTOR who is going to make more than I do no matter what job I work, and she herself is a dentist who worked until her banker husband could retire at the same time as her."
"She talks sh*t about how I made her daughter an atheist (I didn't, she did that on her own), but she herself has NEVER read the Bible and hasn't been to church in 20 years."
"She unironically believes in aliens, Big Foot, and ghosts, and thinks she saw Mother Mary in the sky."
"All the bad things I tend to think about Republicans (they don't care about an issue until it personally affects them, they have no standards except double standards, they use religion as a cudgel but don't actively live a spiritual life, they believe insane sh*t with zero evidence, they're old fashioned and judgy and can't accept that the world is changing around them, etc...) is her to the letter."
~ 2Charming-Fig-2544
Magic the Retirement Fund
"How much my Magic the Gathering collection is worth."
"They'll absolutely try to get me to sell some of it."
"It's my precious."
~ Ganthamus_prime
GiphyFirst Impressions
"When he and I first met, I was CERTAIN he was gay."
"He is very much NOT gay."
"And he will NEVER know I ever thought this."
~ ShinyIrishNarwhal
No Llama Drama
"When me and my wife first started dating, I had a dumb canvas painting with a llama and rabbit on it that I found at Walmart. I showed it to her and told her how much I loved it just because it was just such a dumb random thing to find."
"For some reason she took that as I love llamas and that they are my favorite animal. So now, every time she sees one or something with a llama on it I see her brighten up to show me and I get excited with her!"
"Llamas are not my favorite animal. Never have been. I don’t know how she made this connection, but i will never tell her otherwise because seeing her face light up every time is way better."
~ WhereTheChapstickAt
GiphyRelationship by Google
"I spend a couple hours doing research on how to make relationships work and keep her happy in the long run."
"She thinks I'm this awesome perfect guy but I just do what the internet tells me."
~ BadRobot___
Chemical Warfare
"He thinks I don’t fart around him because I’m too shy or polite."
"It’s really because they are so bad they could kill a horse."
~ Neonpantsuit
GiphyAre There Raisins?
"I don't like the potato salad she makes, and she always tries to make it as a treat for me."
"It's my mom's recipe, but doesn't taste like mom's."
~ Bean_Juice_Brew
*yawn* 🥱
"The spot you make me sleep in on the bed is uncomfortable but I lay there because you're comfortable where you are."
~ legacyrisky
GiphyConfessions
"We’re both in college, and last semester we both had a cold at some point. He had it much, much worse than I did, so I went to class and he skipped."
"Afterwards, I went to his dorm to share notes and take a nap. I was almost asleep, and I’m assuming he thought I was, because I felt him squeeze me and whisper, 'I love you so f**king much'.”
"It was the sweetest thing ever and I’m never telling him I know he did that."
~ scorpiomooon
Maybe a Farm Upstate?
"I definitely didn't kill that massive spider, and I have no idea where it went."
~ Cothak88
GiphySo, these weren't too awful, right?
What secrets are you keeping?
People's Wildest 'WTF Is Wrong With You?' Experiences
We all have that moment where someone we know says something so completely absurd, the only response we think of is 'WTF is wrong with you?'
Sometimes, it's something woefully inaccurate that you can't wrap your head around the fact that someone believes that.
Othertimes, it's something completely offensive and you regret your association with that person.
My college roommate was a girl I knew from my high school. I didn't know her too well, but we had some big things in common, so I figured it'd be fun to live with her.
This girl was half-Korean and talked a lot about racist people. At first, I let her rant, figuring maybe she or someone in her family faced some racism. I faced some myself, and I agreed with most of the things she said about racists. Eventually, however, I realized she was equating the word 'racist' with the word 'white.'
I spoke to her once, telling her she can't use 'racist' and 'white' interchangeably. She agreed to stop doing that, but within a few days, she started doing it again. She was a very bright girl, so I was a little concerned about this, especially since her own dad was white and was possibly the nicest man in the world. Not to mention, this made her and her siblings half-white too. Did that mean they were all half-racist?
I stuck by her for a while, but when she started saying things about what she wanted to do to racist people (once again using the word 'white' instead of 'racist'), I realized I couldn't be around her anymore. She couldn't talk about anything else after a while, and every time she spoke, I wanted to say, 'WTF is wrong with you?'
We did not room together the next year.
Redditors have stories similar to mine (and some even crazier), and they are eager to share.
It all started when a Redditorasked:
How To End A Friendship
"In college I used to kill time between classes hanging out with a guy who was from the same redneck county as myself. We didn’t really have much else in common, but he was nice enough and seemed eager to socialize so I figured why not. I wasn’t overly social myself and didn’t know a whole lot of people."
"One day we decided to go somewhere off-campus, and he drove us. While driving, on an interstate mind you, he proceeds to show me his handgun that he kept in his truck - not in a menacing way, but in a “Ain’t that cool?” way."
"I was not immediately frightened, but I respect firearms enough to recognize we are going like 60-70mph on an interstate in daylight, and nothing good can happen in this scenario. I calmly asked him to put it away because I was not comfortable in this situation at all. He then tells me “Oh it’s not loaded” and presses the gun to his head before pulling the trigger."
"Thank f**k he was right, but still it was a wild and frightening display of reckless disregard for his own life and mine for that matter in the event that he’d accidentally killed himself while driving us. I didn’t hang out with him much after that, certainly didn’t get in a car with him."
– omjf23
"“It’s not loaded” famous last words of many an idiot."
– GloInTheDarkUnicorn
The Worst Kind Of People
"When my dad was in the nursing home, they weren't running certain expenses, like ambulance rides, through his insurance. When I took over his financials, he was tens of thousands in medical debt that shouldn't have ever been charged to him in the first place. He was in numerous collections, and his credit score was tanked."
"When I complained to the nursing home director, he said, "Well, it's not like he's going to be buying a house or a car!" Then he laughed."
"My dad was paralyzed from the waist down and needed lifelong care, so he was never going to leave the nursing home. Even though he was technically correct, I gave him the "WTF is wrong with you look." Then I complained to HIS boss and he got canned a couple a weeks later. My dad's insurance was fixed pretty quick, too."
– MNWNM
"“Sorry, what was funny about that? Could you please explain.”"
– v3n0mat3
...Seriously?
"MIL told my wife she should divorce me bc I googled whether a lasagna should be covered with foil while cooking."
– Struggle-Silent
"This is my first laugh of the thread lmao wtf."
– koreantrvp
"It actually ruined this entire trip. It was at my BIL’s wedding, which was only close family (siblings + parents) and they had the caterer make a lasagna for an evening dinner."
"Father of the bride was gonna pop it in the oven and asked if it should be covered. I googled lasagna cooking instructions and said yes it should be covered and cooked at this temp. MIL said absolutely not!"
"Me and the father of the bride kinda gave each other a look and he covered it. MIL was furious and texted my wife that I was an a hole and she should divorce me before we had kids."
– Struggle-Silent
Hostile Work Environment
"Boss at old job told the team we needed to ‘get used to a healthy level of conflict, fear and anxiety in the workplace.’ I dipped so fast after that."
– Prestigious-Energy69
"Similarly, a boss told me that I owed him my loyalty because he was paying me."
– Kylearean
How To End A Relationship
"A girl I was with while we were still together just looked at me while I was driving to her house and said.” You know I would get over you faster than you’d get over me” I was like …… Tf did you just say?"
– omega91301
"Huh. And just like that I'm over you."
– Pineapple_Spenstar
"Honestly, that would absolutely do it for me. When I was younger, I would be stupid and hurt and argue. I'm past 50 and I got no time for that nonsense."
– Terpsichorean_Wombat
There Are Other Ways To Stave Off Boredom
"I was DD for some buddies who wanted to go to a particular dance club in Baltimore. They're all hammered, it's too loud and we've been there for several hours. Casually an older woman next to me chats me up and notices my eyes are nearly crossing from boredom. I explained what I was doing there and casually (stupidly) mentioned I'm a bit bored. This psycho BITES ME on the chest! Afterward says "Well ya ain't bored now, are ya??""
– Mike7676
"Well, were you bored after that?"
– DontWannaSayMyName
"I must say, I was not!"
– Mike7676
That Goes Both Ways!
"I'm a man who works with kids, and when I started this job, I was talking to one of my old coworkers about how every once in a while I'll get weird looks for being a man working with kids and my coworker said I deserved it because some men can't be trusted with kids. I was shocked and she went on to say that I did it to myself and deserve to be questioned about it. I immediately stopped talking to her."
– Dolhedew
"What? What in the actual f**k? Doesn’t she know there are women who can’t be trusted with kids?"
– Anonymoosehead123
That Escalated Quickly
"The lady that accused my kids of cutting the line. (They hadn't, I was watching). When I went to ask her what was wrong, she told me to go back to my own country with that sh*t. (I was born in Massachusetts.)"
"The line was to pet dogs at a Renaissance Fair."
– pasafa
Everything All At Once
"While alone with a coworker, he told me that "women in the work place will lead to the decay of the fabric of society" to me. A woman. He also asked me out, got an attitude when I didn't say yes and continues to walk around with huge incel energy. He always complains that he has no one to go home to yet refuses to look at himself as a possible reason."
– Nopeferatu31
"Sounds like they should learn something from the phrase, "if you meet one a**hole, they're the a**hole. If everyone you meet is an a**hole, you're the a**hole.""
– tmpope123
Ouch!
"I told a coworker my wife had died."
"Her response: "You're one of those bald middle aged guys with a dead wife.""
"Me: "Yeah.""
– WalrusCello
"I want to think this was a wholesome thought that came out wrong. An awkward attempt at dark humor."
– ThisUsernameIsTook
*Cringing*
"Had an otherwise normal co-worker who was completely convinced windmills will cause the earth to stop spinning."
– Shadowmant
"WINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY! GOOD NIGHT!"
– Torvaun
These are all crazy 'WTF is wrong with you' stories, but that last one blew my mind in 'how is it possible people think that could be true' sort of way!