Dumb Criminals: Unbelievable, But True

Awesome: Police in Dortmund, Germany, arrested six Romanian men in June and charged them with stealing from trucks on the open highway. Allegedly, the thieves would drive their own truck carefully up behind a tractor-trailer at highway speed, and a man on the hood would reach out and open the back of the rig with a bolt cutter. He would climb in and loot the rig of computers and cell phones by passing them out to a partner sitting on the hood of the trailing truck.

In June, Reno, Nev., homicide detective David Jenkins was sitting in his unmarked car (but one with emergency lights on the dash and a police radio blaring away) when Mercedes Green, 19, hopped in and, yelling to be heard over the radio, propositioned him for sex. "You're not the police, are you?" she asked. "What do you think," he said. "I didn't think so," the streetwise woman replied. After her arrest, Green explained: "You wear glasses, and I didn't think police could wear them."

Questionable Judgments: Dr. Frederick Lobati, 47, was charged last year with felony abuse of his daughter in Ozark, Mo., but in June 2008 offered the defense that, being of African heritage, he was merely applying a "konk" (a bare-knuckle punch), which is an acceptable punishment in his culture.

Scott Sullivan, 35, was arrested in Van Buren, Ark., in June and charged with kidnapping and assaulting his mother. He told police that he got upset when he learned that her dog had killed his pet skunk.

Robert Cisero, 46, was arrested in Medford, Ore., in June after (according to police) he hit his teenage daughter in the ankle with a hammer to feign a "skating" injury, for which she could get a prescription for pain medication, which he then commandeered.

Edward Defreitas, 36, was arrested in Toms River, N.J., in June and accused of causing a three-vehicle collision that injured two men in a car and sent two others (paramedics riding in an ambulance) to the hospital. Defreitas told police that he had been drinking and had decided to drive around until he sobered up: "He (said he) was afraid to go home and his mother finding alcohol on his breath."

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