Monday Lite: The Dark Knight Detective
The Associated Press has picked up the story from my local paper about a a mother in nearby Norco who used some mad detective skills to track down and bust kids who toilet-papered her house.

She went to local grocery stores and asked for help finding receipts from unusually large purchases of toilet paper around the time of the crime. Then she matched those to other items used in the vandalism. The sneaky vandals paid with cash, so she used video surveillance camera to identify one of them from their high school letterman jacket, which busted the whole thing wide open.

A couple of points:

1) We can finally say definitively that there's no such thing as "too much TV." Years and years of Columbo reruns can lead to new skills and interests.

2) Your local grocery store is right up there with your phone company and your credit card company on the list of corporate entities that are in a huge-ass hurry to dish out personal information about you so that you can be rounded up by law enforcement. It sounds good in this case, but nobody will be laughing when these kids turn up at Gitmo. Even if you're not Muslim, they still make you watch as they shit on an assortment of holy books (they've gone multicultural since the press started nosing around), which no kid should see. The collaborationists at the Stater Bros. have that on their hands.

3) Even if you're smart enough to pay in cash, the clothes you have with your name emblazoned in giant letters across the back should probably stay in the closet when it's time to act as an accessory to a crime. And just because you can GET the stuff you need to TP a house or, say, fashion a crude nuclear device from common items available at your local supermarket (there really are a thousand and one uses for PineSol!) doesn't mean you should. Not only are they sham fronts for the CIA to operate domestically (see #2 above), but those places are wired. Everyone knows that craigslist is a criminal-mischief-perpetrators best friend. Sometimes literally. They tend to be lonely, loney people.

4) Do your research. I know by now that when committing a crime, the only sure-fire recipe for success is to make sure you victimize the stupid. If you're contemplating an illegal act and you can't figure out if you or the intended target is smarter, walk away. It isn't you.

For legal reasons, I must say now that I in NO WAY advocate nor endorse the breaking of any laws and this post should not be construed as a point-by-point instructional text for the better execution of said crime nor for the successful subsequent evasion of justice that might ensue. I'm just saying the letterman jacket wasn't the smartest thing I've ever heard.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 7.1



Pops
- posted by Pops @ 1:18 PM