Four recent dumb criminal cases

GONE! I was horrified to discover that thieves had stolen my three children's bicycles from outside our building.
"This is terrible," I said to the kids. "They may hurt themselves."
But what I was actually worrying about was: they may hurt themselves and sue me. These days, there's bound to be some sort of law against "recklessly endangerment of the criminal classes by the deliberate supply of dangerous, substandard goods for purposes of theft."
Stealing those bikes was not a clever thing to do. They were ancient death-traps dating back to the 20 years or so between the late Stone Age and the release of the Rolling Stones' first album.
In the distant past, those bikes must have been aging constructions of metal with a few patches of rust. But by the time they were stolen, they'd become aging constructions of rust with a few patches of metal.
"Where do you think the thieves will be now?" one of the children asked.
I realised they were probably sitting in the middle of the expressway wondering why the bikes they'd been riding had disintegrated like baddies in an Indiana Jones movie. "They may already be in heaven, sweetheart," I replied.
The children, of course, were absolutely thrilled. They realised that it would be physically impossible for Dad to replace their bikes with older, more decrepit ones, unless I actually stole early Stone Age forms of transport from a natural history museum.
How could villains have been so unwise? Maybe it's something in the air. There have been several recent "dumb criminal" incidents. A burglar in Malaysia waited until residents had gone for a long weekend and broke into their home, I heard from a reader in Kuala Lumpur.
Unfortunately the burglar couldn't get out of the house. The householders came back three days later, found him in a distressed state, and sent him to hospital. Moral: don't break in if you can't break out.
Then there was gangster Philip Collopy of Ireland who decided to give a quick lesson in assassinating people to his family members. Sitting at his kitchen table, he put his gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
Unfortunately, he had forgotten to remove the bullets. His gang organised a hero's funeral for him, but you could tell from the press coverage that members were really embarrassed about the whole thing.
But the big prize goes to a 19-year-old man in the US who last week sneaked into the toilet of a large meeting hall with his gun in a bid to relieve convention-goers of their money. He leapt out of his hiding place, pointed his gun and demanded cash.
Unfortunately, he had not noticed that he was attempting to raid up a police officers' convention. There were 300 cops present. A police officer described the man as "probably the dumbest criminal in Pennsylvania."
Incidentally, my neighbours reckon our bikes weren't stolen, but eroded into unrecognisable shapes before being binned by estate managers who were actually trying to be helpful.
Whatever.
Anyway, I just checked the price of new bicycles on the Internet. They cost almost the same as cars! I desperately need an alternative solution.
Anyone know a museum with really, really poor security?

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