Canadian police arrested a suspect, but they couldn't identify him until they got a positive ID on his butt.
West Vancouver, British Columbia, police popped a dude in his 50s on a con job, and they just knew he had a long rap sheet somewhere. However, none of his 22 different aliases came up legitimate, his fingerprints were no help, and he wasn't talking.
Canadian law requires that suspects be positively identified before standing trial, and even if they plucked an ID out of a hat and hung him with it, police feared the suspect would skip after answering to a lightweight charge and be gone.
Canada doesn't have the automated database the United States does, so authorities did it the old-fashioned way. They just started calling other agencies across the country and asking for details on known con artists and bunco men in the suspect's age group.
Finally, one call produced. An investigator had a file on a con man whose only identifying mark-a pretty unique one-was a tattoo on his butt that read, "Made In Canada."
A visit to the jailhouse shower room at the right moment confirmed it. Their man was wanted on a national warrant for con jobs in Quebec, Ontario, and Alberta.
They got his butt.
Man's Best Friend
After stopping a 47-year old man for DUI near the city of Koblenz, German autobahn cops found out who should have been driving.
As officers took the driver-the human-through the contortions of the field sobriety test, his white West Highland Terrier jumped out, watched the demonstrating officer closely, then performed each maneuver exactly as directed. While his master failed miserably, the little terrier passed with flying colors, impressing the heck out of the cops and drawing a crowd of onlookers.
The final maneuver in the test required the driver to do a 360-degree turn with his eyes closed. The driver fell over. The pup, however, jumped up on his hind legs and executed a perfect pirouette. The official report, as filed, read "Man: Failed; Dog: Passed."
Blackmarket Brides
Officers arrested Dr. Wang Chaoying, director of a mental hospital in Huazhou, China, for selling his patients. Specifically, Doc Wang was kinda cleaning up his more attractive young female patients, doping them with long-acting giggle drugs to make 'em more docile and happier, and then selling them as brides.
China's one-child policy has created a nationwide surplus of young guys and a shortage of marriageable women. To meet the demand for spouses, a significant black market in brides-for-cash has sprung up in the last decade.
Guangdong Province police have documented at least 20 cases since 1998 in which Doc Wang charged thousands of yuan (Chinese bucks) each for mentally disturbed marital partners. The only way the cops caught wind of the scheme, however, was because those 20 guys didn't know their brides had mental problems when they bought 'em, and the ladies came unpleasantly unglued after their respective honeymoons.
Doc Wang doctored the hospital's papers, too, so nobody knows how many cases there were, or who got whom. They do know there were a lot more than 20, but the other victims aren't talking. They must be content with their wives' unexpected idiosyncrasies. Or maybe they're just willing to deal with 'em to avoid copping to a crime.
