The above pronouncement was uttered by a member of the Baltimore PD homicide unit years ago. Criminals continue to validate the gent, most recently in the case of a scavenger who climbed an electric power substation fence in Cowpens, SC, and set out to mine copper wiring to sell for scrap. He drew a charge for his efforts, not one issued by the local authorities. The thief's bumbling killed power to the 3,000 Duke Power customers and killed the thief. It is a bit mean-spirited to note the poetic justice here, but unavoidable for me.
http://www.wyff4.com/r/28592862/detail.html
Is that a line from Homicide? That (and The Wire) are two of my favorite shows.
ReplyDeleteA lot of my friends in college were extras on Homicide...especially in the Fell's Point scenes.
I miss Baltimore.
The line was probably spoken on "Homicide," but it originated with one of the real homicide detectives on the BPD, quoted by author David Simon. Simon wrote the book, "Homicide: Life on the Killing Streets," after spending a year with the homicide unit. And, yes, the TV show was based on the book. I watched a few "Homicide" shows, and recognized a number of comments from the book.
ReplyDeleteThe book is a good read, btw, even though Simon wrote it over 20 years ago. It is available on Amazon and probably in True Crime sections of bookstores. Simon also wrote "The Corner," which was based on a year with the down-and-out residents of West Baltimore, also a good read. I believe it was made into a mini-series and shown on HBO, but I have never seen it.
I neglected my manners: Hello Arthur!
ReplyDeleteI sympathize re missing Baltimore. I miss Los Angeles.
As they say, if your gunna be dumb you better be tuff!
ReplyDeleteHi Rob!
ReplyDelete"Life is hard. It's even harder when you're stupid."
--One of John Wayne's characters, movie escapes my memory or my inclination to Google it.
My friend who is a police detective says "It's a good thing that criminals are stupid, otherwise I would get fired."
ReplyDeleteI love dumb crook stories. The best ever is the Loomis Fargo heist...$17.3 million...in Charlotte in the late 1990s. Jeff Diamint wrote a book about it "Heist! The $17 Million Loomis Fargo Theft", which was published by our local boys,
John F. Blair, Publisher.
It's one of the funniest books I've ever read...Keystone Kops come to life. Loomis comes off stupid, the FBI not much better, but the perps are unbelievable.
The chief perp and his girlfriend (who helped plan the heist) go on a spending binge, paying cash: a $600,000 house which has a nice wine cellar. They throw out the wine and replace it with Pabst Blue Ribbon. They buy a $50,000 motorcycle, a $25,000 diamond ring...you get the drift.
They hire limos to take them to a country & western club, where she flirts and he gets in fights...this happens over and over again.
The event that helps the FBI nab them, which involves walking into a bank with two suitcases full of money, has to be one of the stupidest moments in the history of crime.
Get the book and read it...but be forewarned: you may die laughing.
Oh, and I could just hear John Wayne saying that line, maybe in "The Sands of Iwo Jima". I wasn't up to Googling either, so e-mailed my son, a walking encyclopedia of movie history.
ReplyDeleteGuess what. Wayne never said it. My son's reply:
"Yeah, yeah, almost everybody says that Big John said it, although some say it was Robert Mitchum. Wrongo bongo on both counts. The line was in "The Friends of Eddie Coyle", spoken by Jackie Brown, one of Eddie's friends."
Heck, I thought it was Big John. He certainly had great writers over the years who gave him some choice stuff. Oh well.
There's a sad part to John Wayne's story. When WW II began, Republic Pictures pulled strings to keep him out of the service and he went along. After the war he became the town drunk, which is quite an accomplishment in Hollywood. Years later his wife attributed his drinking to guilt over not having served in the war. Ironic.
Good AM, O. T.!
ReplyDeleteDumb criminals: Years ago, I operated a web site devoted to bad taste humor, Internet myth debunking, savaging the Clintons, and dumb criminals/idiots of the day et al. My favorite involved 2 idiots in FL who tried to stick up a police station. Elsewhere, on L. A. radio, I heard a news report re a crook who fled from the CHP. Unable to outrun them, he pulled over and shot it out. Low on ammo and deficient in aim, he decided to flee by leaping over a fence . . .
. . . which had been erected to keep morons from falling 65 feet into a quarry.
John Wayne: director and friend John Ford nagged Wayne to join the military during WW2. Ford filmed the Japanese air attack on Midway Island on June 04, 1942, so he had plenty of room to nag. Apparently Wayne's finances were such that he needed to keep working in film.
Wayne was indeed a hard drinker, and hung out with other hard drinkers, including Ford, Ward Bond, and Lee Marvin.
Lee Marvin, a Marine, got shot in the butt on Saipan, earning a Purple Heart. He always made fun of that.
ReplyDeleteIn recent years, an urban legend has surfaced on the web that he and Captain Kangaroo performed heroic feats together on Iwo Jima, and that Marvin received the Navy Cross, which ranks just below the Medal of Honor, for that action.
Marvin would have been appalled at such BS. He came home after his butt rendering. And Captain Kangaroo never saw any combat action, on Iwo or elsewhere.
I saw a study a couple of years ago that estimated that around 55-60% of all info on the web is either incorrect or simply made up.