My dad, who’s retired, does volunteer work for the local police — mainly directing traffic, putting up cones, etc. — so that the local cops can go do actual cop things instead.

One day, my dad arrives at the station and sees a Sergeant he knows in a very good mood. He asks her why, and she tells him this story.

Back during the global health crisis, the county wanted to reduce the number of people (and infections) in the jail, so many criminals got off with relatively lighter sentences. This included a certain drug dealer.

A few days ago, Mister “Self-Employed Businessman” had a disagreement with some of his business partners at a gas station and attempted to pull a gun out of his waistband. This did not go the way he’d hoped, as the gun went off and sent a bullet grazing all the way down his leg. His associates scattered, and our drug dealer was promptly taken to the hospital.

Incredibly, the hospital didn’t think to ring the police department until well after our genius left, but now the hunt was on. They knew he was in the area, and they knew he was up to no good, but how to find him?

It turns out it wasn’t hard. 

When the dealer had been taken to the hospital, he’d left his car in the gas station lot, and the owner of the station had had it towed. He logically assumed that the police had taken it, and somehow, he also concluded that his best course of action was to call them and ask for it back.

The dispatcher told him that all he needed to do was come down to the station and fill out some paperwork, and he actually believed it. She even arranged a scheduled appointment for him to come in and do so.

The reason the Sergeant was so happy? She was really looking forward to her 2:00.

Related:
So Stupid It Should Be Criminal

My parents divorced when I was ten. For the rest of my childhood, I lived with my dad, but I moved in with my mom when I started attending college.

Not long after I started college, I turned eighteen and became eligible for jury duty. I got my first summons sent to my dad’s address. But there was a problem. My mom did not live in the same county, so I was not eligible to attend that jury duty as I no longer lived in the proper county.

Not long after, due to some issues with my mom, I had to move back in with my dad. Of course, that was when my mom’s county sent me a jury summons, which I was, of course, ineligible for.

Both counties gave up on me, believing I lived in the other county. It probably didn’t help that after I moved out on my own, I happened to bounce over the county line a couple more times, and at the moment, I live at a residence so close to the county line that the person at the DMV asked which county I lived in when I registered to vote.

I was visiting a friend, and as we were hanging out, her phone rang. It showed up as “Unknown Number”, which meant it was likely a scam call. She picked up anyway.

Friend: “Hello?”

Scammer: “Hello! We want to tell you that you won our big cash prize!”

Friend: “You sure? Isn’t this a scam?”

Scammer: “Of course, it is.” *Click*

So… that was that.

Because I mentioned this story in a comment on this NotAlwaysLegal story, and it’s apparently rather popular, here’s the whole shebang.

I worked in a fast food restaurant, and this was my third robbery in as many months. I’d been working doubles due to an especially cruddy general manager calling in every day, and I was just dead on my feet as the only competent manager left in the store willing to work. (I was not paid enough to deal with that, but that’s a fiasco for another time…)

It was about 10:45 pm, and we were getting into the first big after-bar rush that hit us when my drive-thru cashier heard a rattling sound in the lobby. None of us thought much of it; it was an old building, after all, and it was summertime, so we just figured it was the AC unit. We got through the first rush mostly fine, if absolutely barren for fried foods, so I decided to just drop some fries and make everything else to order, as late as it was. 

The rattling sound came again, louder this time, and I was cussing my way back up to the lobby to make yet another maintenance report when all of a sudden, this scrawny guy in his twenties appeared from behind the pop machine. For reference, the center of the dining room was hidden behind this behemoth, so we had no clue he was out there in the slightest. 

At first, I thought that I’d locked him in and started apologizing profusely; I was on day fifteen of seven, but I felt awful that I’d missed a customer…

So I’d thought. 

He demanded chicken tenders and all the cash in the store, waving what I (and my coworkers) thought was a knife. He was definitely high on something, and something inside me simply… snapped. I told him in the deadest voice I’ve ever produced:

Me: “You’ll be waiting ten minutes for the fryer. And I only have fifty bucks available. All the other registers have been removed and the cash dropped, and I just cleaned out the drive-thru’s excess cash before the last rush.”

I’m guessing it was due to the drugs, but he simply nodded and shuffled over to wait at one of the tables. In the stronger light over the table, the knife was revealed to be a piece of metal. I started the tenders, had my team hide in the back while I grabbed my phone, and breathed a sigh of relief when the sheriff’s deputy and a squad car showed up. 

The guy got pretty new bracelets and an attempted robbery charge.

And I made him pay for the tenders.

Related:
Forget Nerves Of Steel; This One’s Got Nerves Of Retail Exhaustion

I am getting gas. I am filling the tank and suddenly the local Sheriff’s office raids the gas station office! Half a dozen cop cars show up, block the exits, the whole nine yards!

I had to talk to a few officers to get my change back after the fill-up, so I was able to ask:

Me: “What are you all here for?”

Officer: “We’re busting the owner for selling fake pee for drug tests.”