There are an enumerable amount of dumb crooks. We see them all the time on the nightly news. The criminal that cat naps in the convenience store he broke into, only to find that his escape is preempted by the security of the establishment. Then there is the perpetrator that is apprehended three times in four months committing the same crime—which happened to be, stealing a navigation system from police cars—in broad daylight. And of course the perennial crack-head/meth-head that pulls the B&E at his grandparents home days after being released from the county jail on similar charges. One of the only malefactors ever ascribed any kind of accolade for enacted illegalities was of course the bandit whom when asked why he robs banks, took a realist point of view.
Willie Sutton, bank-robber, escape-artist, jail-house attorney, and co-author answered the question in a manner any sophist would. He duly noted the obvious as he explained, “ . . . because that’s where the money is . . .” Why else would you rob a bank? And he was good at his chosen profession; approximately one hundred banks, two million dollars in just about thirty years—these stats include convictions, and jail time. Upon his final release from prison he was an anti-robbery consultant, and was even featured in a commercial for a bank in the northeast. His missives eventually became a doctrine by the name of Sutton’s Law, which is dissiminated by instructors of medical studies as an institutional norm. A law that basically means, in analysis pay particular attention to the obvious before going further afield, in the processes of diagnosis.
So, what does Willie Sutton have to do with Simpson and Blagojevich? Thanks for asking . . .
Crooks have existed throughout the ages. But, given these recent occurrences, have they always been this mentally inchoate?
OJ Simpson and Rod Blagojevich definitely are contenders for the ignominious award for dumbest criminals. As witnessed through the analysis of pyramid schemes and phishing exploits, crime isn’t always easy. The crafty concoctions constructed by guileful malfeasance remains a cautious guide for the rest of us. Which leads to my first question: is it hubris or hebetude? Need, desire or greed?
The funny thing about the allegory of Mr. Sutton is ironic and elucidatory all in the same. The truth is he never said it. The quote actually comes from an overzealous (and quite imaginative) reporter, in attempts to beef up his story. The real reason that Mr. Sutton relieved banks of their deposits was for one simple fact—he enjoyed being a stick-up man, and career criminal. In his second book, Where the Money Is: The Memoirs of a Bank Robber, Sutton notes that the prescient reason for robbing banks:
“ . . . Because I enjoyed it. I loved it. I was more alive when I was inside a bank, robbing it, than at any other time in my life. I enjoyed everything about it so much that one or two weeks later I'd be out looking for the next job. But to me the money was the chips, that's all."
The point of fact is simply that he committed crimes because he wanted to. Because it did something for him—oddly enough because it did something to them. He felt exalted and powerful—a poor kid, born and raised in Brooklyn, by the tempestuous docks that conjure up memories of Terry Malloy, in On the Waterfront, for those of us not privy or familiar enough with strife and literal cutthroat mentality—brandishing a Thompson sub-machine gun. Thievery has maintained an astute reputation in this manner.
Armed robbery; the obsequious hemlock of what some might consider a karmic holdover. Is this the real “universal jurisdiction”? What would the average person do if they were acquitted of murder, less the camera and international media attention? Should we view this causally, or is there a more direct question—what is the relationship we maintain with the inexhaustible fundamental of desire?
More Later . . .
