A sudden and acute failure of the victim selection process

I love it when criminals' bad choices slap them in the face.

Hard.

It seems that two dumbasses, one of them armed with a cheap imitation of a Samurai sword, decided to rob the Regents Park Sporting Club in Sydney, Australia yesterday.

Unfortunately for them, they neglected to check out the clientèle before making their move.

This can best be described as Not A Good Idea.

You see, the local motorcycle club, the Southern Cross Cruiser Club, was having their weekly beer-and-poker session business meeting there at the time.

Yes, Australian "motorcycle clubs" are not dissimilar to their US counterparts. Think large, burly, hairy men with teeth, leather jackets and an attitude.

And they did not appreciate having two young punks threaten them.

Biker club founder Noel "Bear" Mannix said the robbers appeared to have regretted attempting the heist as soon as they saw the bikers.

"It was one of those stopped-time moments," he said.

"It was very hard to see the expression on their faces because of the balaclavas, but I imagine it was something along the lines of 'Oh shit, what have we done here?' "

The two wannabe robbers fled in panic (one plunging headlong through a glass door - neglecting to open it first - and jumping off a fifteen-foot balcony) but it didn't do them much good. Fifty irate bikers took off after them. They brought one down (heavily, and repeatedly) and held him for the police, who found the other one hiding nearby. (Hey, with fifty bikers after me, if I couldn't outrun them I'd be hiding too!)

The two miscreants are now in durance vile, and the Regents Park Sporting Club management are exceedingly pleased with their biker guests - so much so that they're talking about "putting on a night" for them.

Knowing (and liking) Australia as I do, I can assure you that this will probably involve large quantities of meat and beer. Should be great fun!

And I don't think they'll have a problem with gate-crashers, either . . .



(Oh - and a hat-tip to my friend Massad Ayoob for the title of this post. It's one of his favorite descriptions of idiot criminals and their bad choices.)

Peter

UPDATED TO ADD: I got this news from an Australian source (linked above), but now it's spread to US news media. CNN has a good report on it.