If you aren’t the brightest bulb on the planet …

If you’re in a hurry to get some dope calling 911 might not be your best move. Have you ever text messaged or paged someone and added 911 to your message so that the person would know it was urgent? Well, Pomona California Police say that two suspects trying to page a drug dealer from a payphone mistakenly called 911 as they were trying to make an urgent dope deal.

Michael Olivieri, a Police sergeant, says that dispatchers traced the call and sent officers to the location. When the police arrived they arrested Paul White and Ryan Ogie after searching a care with stolen plates and finding suspected burglary tools.

The men admitted to mistakenly calling 911. All that Sergeant Olivieri had to say to that was “No one said criminals are smart.”

Objects made of metal are being stolen by people looking to cash in on the increase in raw metal prices. Church roofs, statues, drain covers and even tweezers have been stolen in the city of Paris.

Thefts of copper, aluminum, zinc and nickel were up 144 percent in France last year.

“We are witnessing a real pillage of companies’ assets,” Colonel Philippe Schneider, who heads a police division that specializes in countering such crime, told reporters.

“Everything can be stolen, everything can be sold — cables, drain covers, sculptures,” Schneider said. “We even had 300 kilograms of tweezers stolen.”

Other targets included plane doors, phone booth floors, car wheel rims, cemetery gates and a church roof made of zinc.

Copper, widely used in construction and industry, became a big target for thieves last year as prices of the metal doubled to $8,800 a tonne at one point due to booming Asia demand.

Schneider said stealing cable from a building site or hijacking trucks loaded with scrap metal could pay more than robbing a cash machine or a bank and was far less risky.

“Stealing 10 tonnes of copper is simple,” he said.

“Alongside the traditional petty thefts are methods typical of organized crime, such as … armed robberies, often by international networks.”

However, the number of incidents reported had dropped around 40 percent since October, partly due to a fall in prices and partly because of police efforts to break up organized gangs, he said.

World copper prices have tumbled over the past few months but remain around 20 percent higher than at the same time last year.

Schneider said thieves often sold metal to recycling companies. However, of the 2,500 to 3,000 recycling firms in France, a maximum of 100 were involved in metals trafficking.

There’s been an undergarment thief in Fort Payne, Ala. Luckily he’s been caught and charged with property theft. Joseph Edward Reaves, 44, has been arrested after turning himself in on Wednesday. He was released from the DeKalb County Jail on a $500 bond.

He stole undergarments that had been hung outdoors in mid-December by a woman at her home. Four pairs of underwear and for bras were stolen. Reaves has now confessed to the crime and admitted that he has a problem.

He actually went to an outlet store and replaced the items that he’d stolen from the woman, wrapping the new items in Christmas wrap and left the package for the victim. He’s been arrested for similar offenses in the past.

He has a fetish for womens undergarments, particularly bras, but he’s been very cooperative.

Denis and Tamie Leporin had purchased new bikes for themselves an their youngest son. The bikes were a Christmas gift, but they unfortunately didn’t get much use. The bikes were stolen from their front lawn.

The irate Pensacola Florida couple posted a sign on their front lawn to let their neighbors and the thieves know how disappointed they were:

“I hope U crooks enjoy our bikes U stole; Merry X-Mas,” the sign read.

A day later the couple heard a knock on their door and when they opened the door they noticed a pick up truck driving away. An envelope containing $200 was left on their steps.
Inside the envelope was also a note that read “For every crook, there are 1,000 good people’,” Dennis Leporin told the Pensacola News Journal.

“I thought it was awesome. We moved here from St. Louis, and folks just don’t do that in St. Louis,” he said.

Tamie Leporin said she and her husband were concentrating so much on the theft that they forgot about the true meaning of Christmas, until they were reminded by the kindness of strangers.

“We just wish there was some way we could thank them,” she said.