Jen Horsey, Canadian Press
TORONTO (CP) -- He must have thought it a stunt worthy of 007 himself: he’d rig a harness to a landmark bridge and bungee onto a passing ocean liner, his daring prowess earning him the adoration of the rich and famous assembled on board.
But the would-be stuntman missed the boat, rappelling instead from the Lions Gate Bridge onto a waiting Vancouver police boat where officers were ready with handcuffs.
“I came close to hurting myself but I didn’t come close to hurting somebody else,” said Dean Sullivan after emerging from a Vancouver jail in September, sporting a bloody scab on his nose from hitting the ship.
It was the second time in two years that police had arrested the 36-year-old Nanaimo, B.C., resident for the same stunt and charged him with mischief.
It was just one of many antics that went awry over the past year as Canadian authorities enountered more than their share of the odd and the unlucky.
In one of the first bone-headed crimes of the year, a New Year’s robbery attempt in Vancouver went horribly wrong. Clearly in the wrong place at the wrong time, the robber tried to hold up a gas station by telling the attendant he had a gun and wanted money. The heist was short-lived, however, ending when a police officer who’d been using the washroom emerged to arrest a suspect.
Police in Welland, Ontario, had no trouble collaring a suspect after another gas station robbery last May. The alleged thief held up the clerk at knifepoint, but fled without one critical gas station commodity; he was arrested a short way down the road after his car ran out of fuel.
A crop of eighth grade math students at a Thompson, Manitoba, school would have been better prepared. They likely wouldn’t have had much trouble working out how much gas they needed to successfully flee the crime after completing a 10-question quiz last June that used examples drawn from the wrong side of the law. Students were asked to figure out how much Willie would make for stealing a number of luxury cars, how far a thief could travel on a stolen skateboard before getting “whacked,” and how many “tricks” three prostitutes would have to turn in order to support their pimp’s cocaine habit. Their teacher was suspended from the classroom until June 2003.
A would-be American robber had no trouble doing the math on the dollar exchange rate in November during a hold-up in Buffalo, N.Y. With one glance at the $35 inside a wallet taken from a terrified Beamsville, Ont., man, the gun-toting bandit refused the cash. The thief reportedly said: “I don’t want that stuff,” and fled empty-handed.
Traffic cops frequently encounter strange excuses and even stranger situations from people on Canada’s roadways.
In one memorable case, police arrested a man speeding along busy Highway 401 in a car disguised as a police cruiser -- complete with flashing lights. When he was pulled over, police found the suspect, who they said was drinking beer behind the wheel at the time, was under license suspension, had no insurance and was driving a vehicle with a switched plate.
Ontario Provincial Police Sgt. Cam Woolley said he doesn’t know why people think they can get away with such ridiculous scams.
“Maybe they’re hoping that the judge will laugh when they’re sentencing them and give them a little less time just sort of for the funny factor,” said Woolley.
Perhaps it worked for an alleged Kenora, Ont., drug dealer who was arrested earlier this year after calling police to his own home. Doubtless angry to find, upon his return after several days away, that his 140 grams of pot, weigh-scales, pipes and debt lists were missing, the man called to report a break-in. Police already knew all about it, however, having seized the goods two days earlier after entering the home on a search warrant.
After more than two months in custody awaiting trial, a judge sentenced Carlos Binguis to serve a day in jail for the crime.
An angler was ordered to take his fish story straight to court after he was caught allegedly trying to dupe judges at an August fishing derby. He was accused of filling a chinook with lead in a bid to win the $40,000 prize money. The Toronto man could face up to eight years in prison if convicted of two charges of “cheating at play” and attempted fraud.
And last spring, police outside Vancouver joined the world community in their search for an international terror suspect during their efforts to track down a credit-card fraudster. The cheat was reportedly using a bogus card bearing the name of the world’s most wanted man: Osama Bin Laden.
While dim-witted crooks easily become the butt of jokes, one accused bootylicious bootlegger earned her position rightfully. Customs officials at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport found more than two kilograms of cocaine in August hidden inside a woman’s fake buttocks.
The joke was on Montreal police last January when a pair of wise-crackers commandeered the police radio waves and spent about 90 minutes trash-talking the police, cracking cop jokes and uttering obscenities. An officer said at the time that while people are often able to pick up the police frequency and listen to the radio exchanges, the incident was the first time someone has used the airwaves to speak to police.