truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

In another familiar scene, two 18-year-old men spotted police approaching their trailer-park home in Salina, Kan., in August, panicked, and tossed illegal drugs out a window. However, police spotted the flying drugs, even though cops had originally intended only to serve warrants on two of their neighbors. The men were arrested.

Oblivious: In August in Billings, Mont., federal officers recognized Wyoming fugitive Sterling Wolfname, 26, on the street, but the man tried to give a different name, seemingly oblivious that "Wolfname" was tattooed on the side of his head.

The economic slowdown and rising prices for scrap metals have provoked desperation and creativity among down-market criminals. A 42-year-old man was arrested in his car heading for a metals-recycling center in Miami in July with a 40-foot-long municipal street lamp strapped to the roof. And police in Williamsburg, Ky., easily tracked the stolen railroad rail in August, which was so heavy that it left gouge marks in the pavement as the thieves dragged it away. And the badly burned man found in July by police on a utility pole in northwest Dallas died days later (one of several who so far this year have tried, unsuccessfully, to safely remove copper wire from power poles).

Fugitive Willie Vickers, 46, was arrested in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, in July on old burglary warrants after he volunteered to help a woman and a police officer get into her locked car. Vickers said he had lots of experience with locked cars, seemingly oblivious of tipping the officer to run his name through the computer.

Not Ready for Prime Time: Sharon Platt allegedly stole about $5,000 from her employer, Murphy Motors of Williston, N.D., recently and left town. She was apprehended in Pittsburgh in May after she applied for a job and listed Murphy Motors as a reference, and her old employer alerted Pittsburgh police.

Cumberland County (Pa.) Commissioner Bruce Barclay resigned in April after disclosure that he had built a hidden video system in his home and recorded as many as 500 sexual episodes with unknowing men. While the videos may have violated state law (investigation is under way), one of them has exonerated Barclay of a separate rape charge filed by a 20-year-old man, in that the video evidenced a consensual relationship. (The young man has been charged with making a false police report.)