More Heroic Failures

The Man Who Could Not Catch a Thief 
During 1978 a thief returned every night to the same 
newspaper shop in Barking, Essex to steal £10
. 
Every 
morning the money was gone and so the shopkeeper 
planned to catch the thief. 
The shopkeeper brought a very large box into his shop. 
He put the box in the middle of the floor. After closing 
the shop at five o’clock, he climbed into the box and 
spent the night there. 
There was no movement until fourteen hours later 
when the very clever detective came out of his hiding 
place to go to the toilet. He was away for only a few 
minutes. But when he returned, another ,£10 was gone. 
The Most Unsuccessful Police Dog 
In
 
America, there was a dog, ‘La Dur’, who looked very 
frightening. He stopped working for the Orlando police 
in Florida in 1978 because he never did anything to 
worry robbers, thieves or other criminals. 
The policeman whose dog it was, Rick Grim, had to 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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agree: ‘He’s useless. He just doesn’t bite them. I got tired 
of doing the dog’s work for him.’ 
The British examples are worse. British police taught 
‘Laddie’ and ‘Boy’ to look for things that people hid. 
They lost their jobs after a visit to a flat in 1967. 
The policeman was questioning two men, who spoke to 
the dogs in friendly way until the dogs went to sleep in 
front of the fire. When the policeman tried to take hold 
of the arm of one of the men, the dogs were angry and 
one of them bit the policeman’s leg. 
The Man Who Was Unhelpfully Brave 
Sometimes people try to be brave to help someone in 
trouble. In July 1978 bank workers at Sherman Oaks in 
California did not want to take a packet that a man 
brought into the bank. They thought the man was a 
robber and so they sent him away with his packet. They 
were glad when they saw the man run outside with his 
packet. 
Outside, another man saw the man running away from 
the bank and decided to try and catch him. He caught the 
man and carried the packet back into the bank. Inside the 
packet there was a smoke