Doofus Of The Day #406

Today's pair of Doofi come from Portland, Oregon.

It seems that every year, that city's police department holds a 'Shop With A Cop' back-to-school event. They give out vouchers worth about $150 to needy children, and dozens of cops escort them through a local store to select what they need for the new school year. This year there were reportedly 160-odd children in the store, and almost as many cops - big public relations exercise, and all that sort of thing.

Our heroes (?) apparently believed that all those cops would actually help them in their nefarious purposes, as no-one would expect anything criminal to happen in their presence.

Yeah, right.

While officers were helping out the kids, store security alerted the police they had their eyes on two young men packing their own backpacks with merchandise.

"Two guys came in and were picking through goods, cutting tags off and loading up their backpacks with blenders, shoes, clothes and tools," said Sgt. Pete Simpson, police spokesman.

A couple of Portland officers assisted security in making an arrest, as a clown making balloons continued to entertain the children gathered for the special shopping event.

The two young men stopped, Shane Alexander, 20, of Hillsboro, and Jason Vantress, 30, of Southeast Portland, were arrested and walked back to the store's security office in handcuffs.

"Initially, they said they were freaked out by all the cops there," Simpson said. "But then, they thought it would be a good time to steal, that police would be distracted."

Now officers and store security are scratching their heads.

"Common sense didn't play into their decision-making today," Simpson said. "As is so often the occasion with crooks, they think they're smarter than the average bear, and they're not."

There's more at the link.

It's scary to think that, given their demonstrated (albeit defective) planning skills, when these two Doofi were clapped behind bars, they probably raised the average IQ of the inmates . . .



Peter