CRIME IS no laughing matter, as we all know, and there has been much concern about the fact that crime is preventing South Africa from enjoying a true tourism boom. Moeketsi Mosola, CEO of South African Tourism, said as much at the opening of Indaba in Durban last month.
But sometimes you just have to laugh. One of the best things the media can do for us is run stories about criminals who have – perhaps literally – shot themselves in the foot. Here are some of my favourites.
Many of our local thieves have been arrested because they steal cellphones or jewellery and then present them as gifts to their girlfriends, who then show off their ‘presents’ to the entire neighbourhood – and sometimes even to the people that the items were stolen from in the first place. Another favourite trick is to take their photograph with stolen cellphones – and then wonder why it’s used as evidence against them. Or the instance when a robber dropped his business card – a handwritten scrap advertising his services as a painter, complete with cellphone number – at the scene of the crime.
Last year, police in Ladysmith tracked a stolen car to a farm outside the town and impounded the vehicle. They were rather surprised a while later to get a phone call from the thief complaining that they had taken his car and that he wanted it back. The officer on duty made an appointment for the caller to collect the vehicle and arrested the highly indignant thief when he arrived.
In Zululand a few years ago, an enterprising gang of thieves decided to rob a clothing store and cut a hole in the roof to gain entry. Once inside, they decided to load up the clothes by putting them on. The police were tipped off and waited next to the hole when the thieves reappeared. One of the crooks tried to run for it, but didn’t get too far – he was wearing so much clothing that he could hardly use his legs and could not put his arms down by his sides. The police almost let him get away because they were laughing so much.
A tourist standing in line at a bank in Johannesburg was startled when the man behind her reached past her, grabbed a cheque out of the hand of the man in front of her and tried to bolt out of the door. He was caught in the bank’s security doors and when he realised he was about to be nabbed, he ate the cheque. The police let him go, as they had no evidence of his crime.
Criminals in other countries aren’t much smarter. There have been several reports of petrol thieves striking a match or a cigarette lighter to see how much petrol is in the tank, but one thief almost literally bit off more than he could chew when he attempted to siphon petrol from a motor-home parked in a street in Seattle, US. Police arrived at the scene to find an ill man curled up next to a motor home near spilled sewage. He admitted to trying to steal petrol but plugged his hose into the motor home's sewage tank by mistake. The owner of the vehicle declined to press charges, saying that it was the best laugh he'd ever had.
Police in Pennsylvania interrogated a suspect by placing a metal colander on his head and connecting it with wires to a photocopy machine. They placed the message ‘HE'S LYING’ in the copier, and pressed the copy button each time they thought the suspect wasn't telling the truth. Believing the ‘lie detector’ was working, the suspect confessed to the police.
Customs agents at a Texas border crossing caught two wildlife collectors who had hidden snakes in their underwear. The men had tied the snakes into pantyhose and stuffed them into their groin area to sneak them across the border from Mexico. Customs inspectors noticed the bulges were wiggling and ordered the pair to drop their pants. The inspectors found 14 snakes – including a boa constrictor – hidden in the men's pants, boots and pick-up truck. The inspectors say they suspected at first that the men were smuggling narcotics... but in the words of one investigator, "drugs don't move around like that".
Back home again, a man walked into a café, put R20 on the counter and asked for change. When the assistant opened the till the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register. The man then fled with the money, leaving the R20 note on the counter. But there was only R15 in the till. This is possibly the first and only time that a thief has actually given change.
A Cape Town man who later said he was "tired of walking" stole a steamroller and led police on a 5mph chase, until an officer stepped aboard and brought the vehicle to a stop.
A friend of mine, who now farms tomatoes on the Zimbabwe border, used to run a lodge in Mozambique. One night Mike heard a noise in the garage, went out and found a semi-intoxicated thief from a nearby settlement, who had loaded up a wheelbarrow with bags of cement (that were intended for some minor building work at the lodge) and was trying to manoeuvre it through the garden. The thief was rather indignant at being caught – he said he needed the cement and Mike wasn’t using it, so why shouldn’t he have it? Mike loaded him on to a bakkie and drove to the police station, quite a distance away. The police took the miscreant away and presented Mike with a number of forms to fill in – in triplicate. In Portuguese.
This took a long time, as Mike is not fluent in Portuguese and the policemen were not fluent in English. The final document was a consent form. When Mike asked what it was for, he was told that it was his agreement that he would provide food for the prisoner for the length of the jail-bird’s stay. (In Mozambique, the state does not feed the prisoners, either the complainant or the inmate’s family are expected to do so.) “I’m not going to feed him!” exclaimed Mike. “Then we have to let him go,” replied the policeman. It was now getting on for four o clock in the morning, so Mike decided to give it up as a bad job and withdraw the charges. As he pulled out of the police station for the long drive home, who should be thumbing a lift from by the side of the road but the previously accused. “Jump in,” said Mike resignedly, and the two drove home in silence.
