I'm down in beautiful Eastern Tennessee with my son visiting my folks. The weather was perfect, my old truck ran well and we've had a pleasant visit.
One of the pleasures of visiting my parents here is reading their local paper, the Knoxville News Sentinal, in the morning. There is inevitably a story about some local rube that makes me feel a whole lot better about my life. Today was no exception.
I don't have a picture yet, but will post one as soon as I have one, of Jason Mark Harms. He is a 29 year old resident of rural Knox County.
The Knoxville, Tennesee fire department was plagued in the last couple of months by a rash of fake 911 calls, involving car crashes, house fires and ficticious injured uncles.
The Knox County Department investigators were easily able to get the phone number that the fake 911 calls were coming from-- apparently the perpetrator wasn't aware that police and fire departments have that gosh-darned Caller ID thingamajig. The calls were coming from a cell phone.
Now I suppose they could have contacted the cell phone company and found out who the customer was, but what they did was much more fun and less time-consuming. Their plan was to call the number, tell the recipient that he had won a gift certificate from a major retailer, and needed to get his address so that they could mail him the gift certificate. They would then get a warrant for his arrest and proceed with it.
Mr. Harms saved them the trouble. He did not want to wait for his gift certificate and instead asked if he could come in to pick it up. After some hasty preperations, they arranged to meet him somewhere, and he of course showed up, allowing the police to arrest him for making the prank calls.
It gets worse.
Mr. Harms showed up with his cell phone bill in his pocket. There was a record of every one of the 15 prank calls he made.
It gets worse.
The television news here is reporting that there was already a warrant out for Mr. Harms' arrest in Lake County, Illinois for arson.
There are some people who I think need to be locked up because they are a danger to society. Then there are others that need to be locked up because they are a danger to themselves.
This guy makes the people who call the police to report that their illegal drugs were stolen look smart by comparison.
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8 comments:
Oh God Brian, was that in the local paper? There is nothing like the police blotter for a good laugh. I'll try to bring home the one from Chaska.
hahah that's great! I'll bet he is a shoe-in for a future Darwin Award.
haha! mmm. and the bonehead award goes to...
lol
Thank you for a great end-of-the-year stupid criminal story.
If people only did things that made sense, I'd be out of a job.
Another funny thing, the guy can not keep his mouth shut. His foirst words to police were "You can not prove it." Buy was he wrong.
Thenin court papers he said he did do it but was doing taxpayers a favor by getting lazy fireman off their asses.
Nice guy huh?
People huh? Just ridiculous.
I'm proud of my fellow Southerners. And, darn, you should have driven down to Atlanta while you were down here.
Wow, it sounds as if he just ran out of time to stop somewhere for some lighter fluid to be carrying on his person.
What a jackass.
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