Dumb Criminals Are Funny

Dumb criminals can be really funny if they were not so pathetic:


Stan "Pampy" Barre, III, a former New Orleans' resident was arrested on burglary charges and thought he could beat those charges by pretending he was a police officer. I guess he thought that the police would think it was okay for a police officer to commit burglary. He had been carrying around a badge and handcuffs that he had kept from a deputy sheriff's job he held nine years previously. Upon further investigation, the police discovered that he had been let go from that job and he failed to return the badge and handcuffs.

Now we have two idiots trying to cash a dead man's check by bringing the dead man to a check cashing place. James P. O’Hare, and his friend, David J. Dalaia, both 65 and unemployed, placed Mr. Cintron’s body in the chair and wheeled it around the corner, south along Ninth Avenue on Tuesday afternoon. The men parked the chair with the corpse in front of Pay-O-Matic at 763 Ninth Avenue, a check-cashing business that Mr. Cintron had patronized.

They went inside to present the check, but a clerk said Mr. Cintron would have to cash it himself, and asked where he was. “He is outside,” Mr. O’Hare said, indicating the body in the chair, according to Mr. Browne.

The two men started to bring the chair inside, but it was too late.

Their sidewalk procession had already attracted the stares of passers-by who were startled by the sight of the body flopping from side to side as the two men tried to prop it up, the police said. The late Mr. Cintron was dressed in a faded black T-shirt and blue-and-white sneakers. His pants were pulled up part of the way, and his midsection was covered by a jacket, the police said. While the two men were inside the check-cashing office, a small crowd had gathered around the chair. A detective, Travis Rapp, eating a late lunch at a nearby Empanada Mama saw the crowd and notified the Midtown North station house.

Police officers and an ambulance arrived as the two men were trying to maneuver the corpse and chair into the check-cashing office.

The two men were taken into custody and questioned. The police said they were considering charging them with check-cashing fraud.