THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE CRIMINALLY STUPID

Ever wondered how often someone says: ‘Life hasn’t worked out quite as I’d planned; nah, think I’m going to try my hand at house-breaking’?
Very rarely, I’d say; at least not in an off-the-cuff, I’ll give it a go sort of way. The route to crime is, I’d guess, a dysfunctional upbringing leading to the gradual de-construction of normality; the severing of the societal umbilical cords, followed by the slow realisation that your employment prospects are absolutely zero. If you’d applied yourself a bit at school you might have got a job as someone who signs off the paperwork on the toilet door claiming that you’d cleaned it; not that you’d fancy that much. Maybe you didn’t meet that charismatic headmaster who you would have told to ‘f**k off’ when he found you smoking in the playground; you know the one…instead of administering a sound thrashing and a month’s detentions – which was what you deserved – he smiled, understood you, and put you on the road to becoming the next Richard Branson.
But crime does pay – it pays admirably for those who are good at it, measure the risks, and are prepared to accept the consequences when it all goes wrong. Crime, in reality, is no worse a career path than banking or estate agency. Unless you kill - or worse, maim someone – you’ll be no less popular than a corporate big-wig at Barclays. And no one will have much sympathy for your victims if greed and stupidity can be attributed toward their loss.
Take land banking, for instance, today’s new faceless crime. Thousands of gullible people have given away their savings or inheritance, mesmerized by the promise of huge, speedy returns from land development. The BBC recently reported that twenty schemes are currently being investigated by both the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and the City of London Police. Billy McNaught, a 75 year old former soldier from Yorkshire was a victim of such a scam. He was reported to have parted with over £100,000 - inherited from his mother and wife - to buy eight strips of ‘green belt’ land with no access, and with as much chance of getting planning permission as an application for a nuclear power station on Balmoral village green. His strips were later valued at a collective worth of £75. Mr McNaught didn’t deem it necessary to get a solicitor involved in the transactions.
‘Three years ago’ he said, ‘I could buy whatever I wanted. And now I don’t even turn my central heating on any more.’ Well, my heart bleeds for you Billy, but no one coshed you on the head and stuffed your money into a sack bearing the word ‘swag’: I’m sorry, but you did it to yourself.
On a flight to Malaga the other day, I noticed a teenager opposite me laboriously two-fingering out an essay on his laptop. Beside his device was a piece of paper - someone else’s work - which he was blatantly copying. I observed him making a few changes, of course, but in the casual everybody-plagiarises-so-can’t-be-arsed manner that Gadhafi junior did for his doctoral thesis at LSE. Stealing someone else’s words and ideas is no less a crime than stealing someone’s Stradivarius, or de-frauding pensioners from their savings. But to be any good at crime, you have to have a nose for sniffing out the crossroads where naivety meets opportunity. And that brings me on to stupidity.
The thing about stupidity is that it doesn’t discriminate between the morally corrupt and the morally upright. You can be honest but stupid - such as Billy - or dishonest and stupid such as the bloke who attempted to sell the £1.2m Stradivarius he had stolen for £100. Why, in the name of Zeus, risk jail for a gain that’s worth half the price of what a tank of unleaded will cost in a week’s time?
But then a few days ago, I too fell into the stupidity trap: I had my push bike nicked. I had paid a visit to my solicitor, parking it in front of the bay window outside his secretary’s office. His business premises are within a substantial detached Victorian property in affluent and leafy Wilmslow. The house is set back from the road and my bike was hidden from passing view, or so I thought. When I came out, no more than ten minutes later, it had gone. Stupidly I had left it unchained, assuming that it would be safe as: a) I was only going to be a few minutes, b) this was Wilmslow, not Toxteth and c) it was broad daylight. Nobody had seen a thing. No one had much sympathy for me - least of all the police - as I had clearly been stupid to assume an unsecured bicycle wouldn’t attract attention, even in Wilmslow. I gave them the details, got a crime number and thought that was the end of it. The insurance would pay up and all it would cost me was the hundred pound excess and the inconvenience; annoying and costly, but hardly the end of the world.
You can imagine my surprise, when a few days later I received a call from the Greater Manchester police informing me that they had found my bike. Not only did it match my description, but it also matched the serial number I had given them. My joy knew no bounds when they informed me they had also caught the little scroat who had nicked it. Things got even better when they generously offered to send a couple of officers out to me with the bike for my positive identification, and to take a statement. The thief was in custody, and they needed urgent confirmation that it was my bicycle in order to charge him.
Half an hour later a large police van arrived. My bicycle was unloaded by Officers Green and Deans who proudly awaited my confirmation that another unsolved crime was about to be cleared up. The only problem was that it wasn’t my bike.
‘It has to be,’ claimed PC Deans, frustration showing in his voice as the case for the prosecution evaporated before his eyes. ‘Look, here’s the frame number you gave us.’ It was the same number, but it wasn’t my bike. You see, my bike, a distinctive white Specialised ‘Hard rock’ mountain bike, was identical in every way down to the after sales trip computer and the fitted lights except that it didn’t have a metal pannier rack and two saddle bags affixed to the rear wheel. I had bought a rack and saddle bags some time ago some time ago, but never fitted the things as reading the instructions had given me a headache. Was I losing my mind? It clearly was my bike, but I sure as hell hadn’t fitted these adornments…or had I? No, someone else had, but why?
I put this question to PC Green:
‘Apparently, he’d been using your bike as a getaway vehicle, sir. We apprehended him leaving a house which had just been burgled. Saddle bags were full of costume jewellery; nothing worth much – he’d overlooked the really valuable stuff. Denies it of course, says he was given the saddle bags to “look after” by a friend. Presume he fitted them himself.’
‘Must have, I suppose’, I replied. PC Green unclipped the saddle bags. ‘Better keep these as evidence then.’ Neither of us had an appetite for dismantling the pannier frame and so it stayed on the bike.
As I wheeled the bike to the back of the house leaving PCs Green and Deans to persevere with their endless paperwork, I reflected that not only had I been a victim of a crime through my own stupidity, but that I’d also profited from crime due to someone else’s. Those frames aren’t cheap; I’d paid around fifty quid for mine.
I asked PC Deans what would happen to the perpetrator: ‘It’s down to the CPA [Crown Prosecution Service]’ he said, ‘if they think there’s sufficient evidence, it’ll go to court.’
‘And if not…?’ I asked.
‘Nothing, I’m afraid; case closed.’
What? Even after being apprehended exiting a freshly-burgled house with two saddle-bags full of loot and his dabs all over my bike? How much public money would have been wasted should one rogue, guilty in the eyes of the law of nothing other than stupidity, be returned, unprosecuted, to the streets.
This, I’d say, is nothing short of criminally stupid.