Sergeant Larry Bruce told America’s Dumbest Criminals about a routine warrant he served one morning that took an unexpected twist and became a comedy of errors.
There had been a string of burglaries in the city of Brunswick, Georgia, and Bruce had been put on the case.
“I had a pretty good idea who the person was,” Bruce says. “In a town of just seventeen thousand people, if you’ve been around for a while, you get to know what’s going on and who’s doing it.”
When Bruce had collected all the evidence he needed, a warrant was issued for the suspect’s arrest. Sergeant Bruce and another officer set out early on a February morning to serve the warrant. They were hoping to save some effort by catching the suspect while he was still in bed.
“It was exceptionally cold that morning—about twenty-eight degrees,” Bruce recalls. “My partner and I walked up the crooked sidewalk to the front door of the man’s mother’s house. ‘This shouldn’t be too hard,’ I remarked to my partner.
“Well, his mother answers the door and tells us that her son is already up and in the bathroom. So we explained that we needed to talk to him, and would she be kind enough to go and get him for us. Which she did. She returned a moment later with her son right behind her. He wore white jockey shorts, and his face was covered with shaving cream.
“As soon as he saw us he ‘booked.’ We couldn’t believe it at first. The guy runs to the back of the house and out the bathroom window—in his underwear at twenty-eight degrees!”
Still shaking their heads, the officers ran to the squad car to radio for help.
“In foot pursuit of a black male . . . six-foot-two . . . about one hundred and ninety pounds . . . wearing white Fruit of the Looms and a face full of shaving cream . . . send all available units.”
The dispatcher was incredulous. “We didn’t copy all that. Please repeat.”
Bruce repeated the bulletin. Midway through, he realized how it must sound and began to laugh. It took a minute or so to repeat the information. By then both officers were laughing.
“In foot pursuit of a black male . . . six-foot-two . . . about one hundred and ninety pounds . . . wearing white Fruit of the Looms and a face full of shaving cream . . . send all available units.”
After a few more minutes, several units had arrived in the neighborhood and an intensive search had begun. As the officers combed the neighborhood, people were coming out for their morning papers.
“Y’all looking for a crazy man runnin’ around in his underwear?” one old man asked.
“Yes, we are. Have you seen him?”
“Just turned the corner to the left,” he responded with a cackle. “Don’t worry ’bout him. He was movin’ too fast to freeze!”
The officers turned another corner. A woman in a housecoat stood pointing to a vacant house on a corner lot.
The officers converged on the house, and Bruce knocked. The door swung open. There stood the suspect, still in his undies, and still wearing the shaving cream, which by now had dried out a little. He yawned innocently, stretched, and said, “You looking for someone, Officer?”
“Yes, you!”
The man protested that he had just awakened and was shaving when the officer knocked. The fact that there was no furniture, no running water, no electricity in the house didn’t really seem to bother him. Neither did the fact that everybody in town knew the house had been empty for more than a year.
The suspect, now shivering, was escorted to the closest squad car. Bruce and his partner headed around the block to their own unit.
“No, Larry,” laughed the other officer as he turned up the collar of his jacket against the cold. “That wasn’t hard at all.”