South Pasadena Police Department

The puppy thief who didn't know how to hold a puppy.

Updated at the bottom: A detective tells us that the thief returned the puppy because his pastor told him to.

Worst puppy heist ever. Or at least the most sheepish:

South Pasadena cops say that only one week after 53-year-old L.A. resident Jesus Lopez Medina lifted a $1,000 "puggle" (pug plus beagle) from Pet's Delight on Fair Oaks Avenue, he walked back into the posh pet store and tried to put it back.

Last Friday, police released surveillance video of a man in an Orlando Magic "Hardaway" jersey snatching the six-month-old little girl from her pen a week prior.

Even then, he was hesitant to a fault:

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Fox11

Hostage (or suspect?) surrenders.

Three armed robbery suspects broke into the giant Burlington Coat Factory in Inglewood around 7:10 a.m., reports KNX news radio -- then found themselves faced with the morning cleaning crew. "About a dozen" employees total, says KNX. So the robbers reportedly took them hostage, lining them up on the floor while they gathered their loot.

However, Inglewood police soon had the place surrounded. And by about 8:30 a.m. ...

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@realjonlovitz via Twitter.

The damage.

Remember the Northridge "Mean Girls" who allegedly scrawled swastikas on their classmates' front walkways and smeared poop on their cars in April?

Well, according to the L.A. city attorney, they had their very own Amy Poehler on hand to drive the getaway vehicle. (Refresher course: Poehler was the "cool mom" in the movie who dressed like her daughter and talked like her, too. Video below.)

The real-life Valley version is named Catharine Whelpley...

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An actual photo from Mike Belton's MySpace.

In the history of retarded Vegas heists, this one takes the special gold star.

Michael Belton, a 24-year-old Riverside County resident whose MySpace is riddled with online poker and mobster apps, tells Las Vegas Metropolitan police that some guy named Carlos Rodriguez recruited him via Craigslist to stick up a blackjack dealer at the Bellagio last Saturday -- and the Las Vegas Sun got a hold of the hilarious interrogation.

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White powder: A general no-no for carryon baggage.

Updated at the bottom with naughty pics of Korean man's suitcase.

Originally posted at 10:35 a.m.

Exactly one week ago, Customs officers at LAX made the giggle-bust of a lifetime: They discovered 63 pounds of tadalafil, the generic form of erectile-dysfunction drug Cialis, in one idiot's carryon.

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Worth it? (Doubtful.)

Tustin resident Ahmad Mabrok, 29, may have just set a new standard for worst Saturday night ever.

Or best, we suppose -- if you're into jumping from fiery stolen vehicles and getting your junk licked by ferocious police dogs. (And, uh, spending the rest of your life trying to move past your YouTube celebrity status as the naked Hummer-limo thief of Orange County.)

Mabrok was trailed by California Highway Patrol officers from Irvine, where he allegedly jacked the limo, all the way to southern L.A. County, where news helicopters watched the unthinkable go down.

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mormonbloggers.com

This also happened, once. (Mormons.)

Things got a little crazier than usual on the 71 this afternoon, when a kid in the backseat of one family's minivan reportedly waved a toy gun at another driver.

Perhaps spooked by SoCal's rich history of car-to-car freeway shootings, the potential victim called the Walnut sheriff's station to advise law enforcement...

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James K. back in the day.

These would-be criminals are so dumb they don't know the name of the mayor of L.A.

At least one would-be victim was smart enough to alert authorities: The LAPD last night warned residents that wannabe burglars are sending fake letters on city letterhead saying that fire inspectors needed to check out their homes.

The problem with the otherwise official-looking documents:

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Craigslist

A mother-daughter sex ad spotted on O.C. Craigslist.

From the was he really that stupid? file comes this gem of a tale out of Orange County:

Deputies there arrested 21-year-old Shaw Bruce Warrington last night after he allegedly showed up to meet what he thought would be a mother and her underage daughter for sex, according to Sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino:

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Gumby.

Updated at the bottom with San Diego police telling us they don't believe it was a hoax. Two suspects turned themselves in. First posted at 6:03 a.m. on Sept. 7.

Gumby tried to rob a Southern California 7-Eleven. You read that right.

A man dressed in a full-on, head-to-toe Gumby costume walked into a branch of the convenience store in Rancho Penasquitos in northern San Diego early Labor Day morning and held the place up before fleeing empty-handed. It was caught on security video.

That according the San Diego Police Department (via KGTV San Diego). Det. Gary Hassen:

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Wiki

Honda Civic from the 2000-and-earlier era.

Cops are shot at, sworn at and Monday-morning-quarterbacked for their actions. They're well-paid in L.A., but it's not all fun and games, especially during those 12-hour shifts.

But we have to say these particular LAPD officers had it pretty easy. Because on Monday morning a suspect drove up to an LAPD cruiser downtown and declared:

"Officer, I just stole this car."

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LASD

A stolen gun.

When you deal in stolen goods you have to allow time to pass for the hot stuff to cool off, ya' dig? If you've ever seen Heat or any other crime "crew" movie you know that you need a grizzled old white guy with a handlebar mustache who did hard time at "the shoe" (whatever that is) to fence the stuff. Hopefully it'll end up in a pawn shop in Vegas or, if you're lucky, overseas.

What you really don't want to do is to turn around and sell it back to the people you just allegedly stole it from.

But that's what authorities this week said happened:

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sea turtle via Flickr

Next time, try more Xtreme measures

A tree did not grow in Brooklyn early yesterday morning (har har) when a troupe of bicycle thieves -- dead set on jacking a bike tied to a sidewalk ginkgo -- chopped down the innocent tree in cold blood. [Spotted at Flying Pigeon LA.]

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Megan's Law

Child-porn connoisseur Robert Nicholas McGuire

This stupid (alleged) criminal makes his non-home way up in the San Luis Obispo boonies, but the story of his arrest -- a modern-day detective's epic -- deserves a re-telling down here in L.A. (If only so we might learn from one particularly facepalmin' sex offender's mistakes.)

It all began with a stroke of bad luck: Robert Nicholas McGuire, 35, was recognized in downtown SLO by sheriff's detectives on the Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement team. Wrong dudes to run into. Reads the sheriff's report:

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Not the alleged caller.

Ring-ring. Who is it? It's me, man. Got the stuff. Good work. We'll pick you up.

Something like that conversation happened this week and, unfortunately for the suspect with the alleged stuff, he was talking to a cop, and not the friend he thought he was ringing. That's because Whittier police had already stopped the friend and answered his phone.

As a result, the caller got to have his next telephonic from the comfort of jail. Police say ...

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LASD

This car, wrong way, through a DUI checkpoint -- allegedly.

Added: Sheriff's officials say the District Attorney's office this week charged the suspect "with Second Degree Murder, Felony DUI, & Hit and Run from a traffic collision."

Here's a doozy of a tale out of scenic Lancaster.

Sheriff's officials say a drunk driving suspect allegedly hit and killed a pedestrian and, with a headlight out and blood on his car, then drove, tires screeching, the wrong way through a not-faraway DUI checkpoint as cops looked on, we would suspect, in disbelief.

Of course they gave chase and pulled the guy over. At the time ...

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Facebook

Alex Eljabiri.

In the annals of stupid (alleged) criminals, videotaping one's shenanigans has to be one of the more shortsighted moves of all time.

But it certainly can help authorities nail you to the wall.

Take the case of Alex Eljabiri, who police nabbed last month for allegedly burglarizing a residence on 28th Avenue, according to the site Yo! Venice!

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West Covina Police

Authorities allege Jerith Sims tried to carjack a cop.

Welcome to criminal university, kids.

First lesson:

While plying your trade, don't target police. We can't emphasize this enough. In fact, while committing crimes, you really want to be as far away from cops as possible. Because they have radios and lots of friends and will ultimately thwart you.

We have an example we'll study today. We'll just call these three suspects ...

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Rock climbing and tagging -- the mash-up of the century.

Taggers, we know you're hardcore -- down for the street, hype about "getting up," excited just knowing that thousands of people will cringe at your handy work as your neighborhoods' home values suffer (your parents will thank you later).

We get that.

But why, when you're hanging upside down perilously from a bridge just to spray your name "wild-style," don't you take some basic safety precautions? Case in point:

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