I am deeply concerned about the alarming decline in the quality of our nation’s criminals. I’m pretty sure our bad guys used to be brainier. That’s because they – like the rest of us – used to occasionally read a book and had never seen an episode of silly reality shows like Jersey Shore and The Bachelor. But consider the actions of some of the rocket scientists who’ve committed crimes just in the last couple of weeks.

There’s the pair of geniuses in Iowa who fled the scene of a botched burglary. They were soon caught. Identification was not difficult, considering the men had used magic marker on their faces to create a disguise. A ski mask would have been so boring.

Then there’s the Pied Piper criminals like the Massachusetts man who crashed into six parked cars, removed his license plate and walked away from his vehicle. How did cops crack the case so quickly? Mr. Brainiac apparently
removed a case of beer from his trunk that dropped and cracked as he made his getaway. Police simply followed the trail of broken beer bottles to their suspect.

Just a couple of days later, two Einstein brothers in Arizona lured a pizza delivery man to an apartment complex, hit him over the head with a coffee pot, grabbed the food and ran away. But it didn’t exactly take the brains of Sherlock Holmes or the courage of Scooby Doo for police to find the bad guys. That’s because the perps left a trail of pizza and wing sauce from the scene of the attack to the front door of the apartment where they were chowing down.

In Montana, a clever fellow broke into the local newspaper office, logged into his Facebook and MySpace accounts to peruse porn, then stole the office candy stash on his way out. Authorities followed a trail of dropped candy wrappers across the street to his sister’s apartment, where they arrested him.

Another example of a criminal not being the sharpest quill on the porcupine is the Texas man, a sworn juror, who returned to the courthouse after a smoke break and put a plastic bag of pot in the change tray before going
through the metal detector. He did manage to get out of jury duty.

Also in the Lone Star State, a man strolled into his former workplace, made eye contact with the owner, went into the restroom and came out wearing a mask. He then pulled a gun out and grabbed a stack of blank checks. As if that wasn’t stupid enough, he tried to cash the stolen checks using his real name.

But my favorite silly criminal of the month is the Florida woman who drove to a jail in a highly intoxicated state and demanded a conjugal visit with an inmate. As far as I know, she didn’t get what she came for.

At this rate of incompetence, our common criminals will soon need some kind of federal assistance to stay in business. And we’ve already got enough crooks getting bailouts.

Jackie Papandrew is an award-winning freelance writer and editor. Her humor writing has been featured in several books, including the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, as well as in numerous publications in the United States, Canada and India. You can read more of her work at www.jackiepapandrew.com.