A local story that might just “cut through”.
In suburban Auckland today, hoodlums with machetes raided an off licence. They grabbed a box of beer each and then made their getaway. On a bus.
The police were waiting at the central Auckland bus station 15 minutes later.
I expect to see this in an episode of Brokenwood Mysteries soon.
I like Brokenwood.
So do I, just in case I’ve misread your post it wasn’t a criticism.
Funny thing, the internet. I was also worried that I was coming across as touchy, but I was just sincerely saying that I like the show and I’m pleased you mentioned it.
That’s the problem with the written word we can’t convey at times the thought behind or how the other person takes it. Whereas sat together we’d have understood each other much easier.
I could see it as a Frodo sub-plot in his younger days.
I seem to remember a very long time ago somebody on here proposing a series of specially designed AW emojis that could be added to comments in order to convey tone of voice for avoiding written word misinterpretation.
Mind you, I’ve slept many times since then and may have imagined the whole thing.
This one perchance?
No, the thread I’m thinking of is much older, possibly on the old pre-Drupal AW now lost in the mists of time.
That will Foster a full investigation
In case there are a Speight of similar crimes?
They’ll be released on ale, I’m sure.
You’ve got to admit, that must take some bottle.
I remember a bank robbery in Zürich and the dastardly perpetrators escaped on a tram
Changing at Stadelhofen onto the Forchbahn, maybe.
What a bunch of XXXX
They could get the 2 there from Paradeplatz where the robbery may or may not have taken place (can’t remember)
I think you got diverted somewhere along Bahnhofstrasse.
Oops
Mornington Crescent!
“hopped” on a bus?
Fresh from the shoeshop heist
It’s not the best way to hop it.
Clearly not inspired by Raffles.
Wasn’t there once a bank robber who tried to disguise himself by wearing a full-face bike helmet, a plan which might have met with more success if his name hadn’t been printed across the front of the helmet?
They should have hired Malcolm to plan the whole thing for them
I loved that film! It came out just before I lived in Melbourne.
Me too!
Many years ago, the caseworker in the neighbouring team to mine was threatened by an angry client with a long record of violence. The client said he was on his way to sort my colleague out’. Sadly, or rather happily, the client missed the bus that would have taken him from Swindon to London. He was later apprehended by the Wilstshire Constabulary, whose attention was drawn to the axe he was carrying.
From my London social work days before I worked exclusively with young offenders, there were two lads, friends of one another who became known colloquially as Dumb and Dumber because of their inept criminal adventures. These included…
One of them trying to break into the office of the residential unit in which he was living using his National Insurance card to try to open the door only for it to get jammed irretrievably so staff found it in situ.
Numerous burglaries where they shared a pair of gloves, one glove each, so they both left one set of fingerprints on the scene.
One of them robbing from the school staffroom and pausing outside the office while rifling through the stolen wallets and pocketing the cash, right under the totally visible CCTV camera covering the door.
They both ended up in Feltham which was sad. They were eejits rather than serious villains.
From the suburbs to the centre in 15 minutes.
That strikes me as an efficient public transport system.
The buses from the north are pretty good. They have an express busway which avoids the traffic.
Excitingly, Auckland will have underground stations by the end of 2026!
A couple of guys that I knew in the early ’70s (though not very well) robbed a jewellers shop in the local high street (carrying a chair leg in a carrier bag, masquerading as a shotgun) and ran off to the station where they boarded an all-stations train into London.
The police boarded the train a few stops down the line and apprehended them.
The robbers had been up all the previous night plotting their raid, having taken rather a lot of amphetamine.
“Don’t Do Drugs”.
A man robbed the local Morrison’s in Runcorn at 7:30am. He’d travelled by train from Liverpool. He had a knife. The tills were empty/inaccessible. He demanded packets of cigarettes and vapes. Not booze. He apologised to the lady behind the counter and threw her a box of fags for her trouble. He was collared on the 25 minute walk back to the station.
If ever there was someone asking for bed and board on his majesty’s pleasure, it was him.
I was “getting in” to The Dorchester early one morning about 20 years ago, around the back, not the front entrance.. As I was operating the tail lift, a couple of guys in overcoats and balaclavas ran past with a cheery “good morning “. They’d taken a hammer to the display cases in the lobby and made off with a load of expensive watches etc which made for a brief but entertaining police interview later that day.
It’s 30 years since the inspiration behind the Dunning-Kruger effect…..
‘30 years ago yesterday, the inspiration behind the Dunning-Kruger effect, which explains how stupid people with no skill in something somehow believe they are actually experts in it, took place in the USA.
On January 6th 1995, McArthur Wheeler and Clifton Earl Johnson robbed two Pittsburgh banks at gunpoint. They made no attempts to disguise themselves as they had spread lemon juice on their faces, believing it would make them invisible to security cameras. All because they’d seen it used in movies in connection with ‘invisible ink’.
Both were arrested and went to jail.
When asked why they thought they were invisible, Wheeler supposedly rhymed off a “physics” explanation for how security cameras work, and how they should be confused by lemon juice.
He had “tested it experimentally”.
Psychologist David Dunning read the story and wondered, “If Wheeler was too stupid to be a bank robber, perhaps he was also too stupid to know that he was too stupid to be a bank robber – that is, his stupidity protected him from an awareness of his own stupidity.”
So he and his graduate student Justin Kruger set out to prove it.”
Hand up your sticks.
My secondary comp was on the edge of a large council estate. One of the dads of twin (it has to be said, a bit thick) classmates ram-raided Dixons overnight.
Using his own car.
It didn’t take Plod long to find a Ford Escort with half a plate-glass window on the bonnet.
I’d previously been round their house one lunchtime, early 1980s. They had a VHS VCR, which was a big-ticket item back then. Due to the way it had been ‘liberated’, it didn’t have a mains plug. Rather than buy one and fit it, the live and neutral wires were stripped to expose bare copper, which was then inserted into the mains outlet and held in place with match sticks.
At least one of the twins ended up in clink before I’d finished my A-levels.
I’ve seen that wires and matchsticks method employed in Africa.
Late one dark and snowy night many moons ago a local genius took it into his head to smash the window of Boots the Chemist to pilfer an extremely large display only bottle of what he took to be perfume. He told the court he was hard up and thought it would make an ideal Christmas gift for his girlfriend. Unbeknownst to chummy he had cut his hand on the smashed window in the persuance of his nefarious deed and had left a trail of blood spots in the snow all the way to his front door. The local Plod were soon in hot pursuit and an arrest followed forthwith.
When I was at school one of my classmates (not a friend as such) had an ongoing reputation for bafflingly brainless behaviour, but his absolute peak was one day vandalising every single piece of artwork around the school…by signing his own name on them in his easy to identify large, scruffy handwriting. I don’t believe it was any “cry for help” either, as he seemed quite genuinely stunned when he was hauled out of class for his punishment.