After reading the local crime news in the newspapers, one might conclude that although ineptness in the commission of a crime is not a crime, it probably ought to be.

I suppose that our homegrown outlaws are no more bungle-prone than their counterparts plying their chosen craft in other jurisdictions, but at times they do seem to be trying hard to break free from the pack.

Consider the evidence:

. A forgetful thief steals a jacket from a central Maine department store and, as the store’s surveillance camera shows, wears it out the front door. Although he doesn’t leave an engraved invitation to police investigating the heist to stop by his house for pizza and beer, he does leave behind something just as neighborly: His old jacket, which contains his photo identification. Oops.

. Three men allegedly burglarize seven area businesses and are about to call it a night, when they discover that their getaway vehicle won’t start in the damnable January chill. Which is fine, because they also lose the car keys in a snowbank. Footprints around the disabled vehicle match footprints found at all other break sites, and the vehicle’s registration leads police to the suspects and the booty. Game over.

. An armed man with a pillowcase over his head holds up an area pharmacy, demanding drugs. A pharmacist gives him bottles filled with M&M candies. During an ensuing police chase, the man, who is a diabetic, swallows some of the candy, believing it to be narcotics. When police collar him, he is feeling ill and they take him to a hospital as a precaution before booking him.

And so on, and so forth.

The pillowcase caper was mindful of an Associated Press wire story from a few years ago that I found in my file concerning a robber in Jacksonville, Fla., who showed up with a bag over his head to stick up a supermarket.

According to a clerk, the bag had eye holes, but the holes had shifted during the robbery, leaving the robber eyeless. Plus, during the robbery the bag was torn and the clerk recognized the guy as a regular customer. Operating on the cheap and forsaking the basic ski mask – accessory of choice for most aspiring stickup artists – the robber was quickly bagged by the cops.

Even so, he seemed somewhat smarter than the Chicago bank robber described in a United Press International clipping included in the booklet, “True and Tacky, News Stories From The World’s Newswires,” compiled by Monica Hoose and Carolyn Naifeh and published by Topper Books in 1990.

The man, who police believe had staged three previous robberies at the same bank, was arrested after reintroducing himself to a teller he had robbed the previous December and passing her the same note used in that robbery. “Do you remember me?” he asked the teller. “Sure do,” she replied, as she sounded an alarm and police swooped in.

The Chicago loser was having as bad a day as the gunman who entered a Pittsburgh gas station, demanded money and then stuffed the pistol into the front of his pants. The weapon fired and the man screamed and ran away, sans cash box receipts, police said. Can’t say that I blame him a whole lot. Cops hoping to close the case reportedly were looking for a chap who walks gingerly and speaks in a squeaky falsetto voice.

A bigger loser, still, was a Virginia man charged with murder who, according to a UPI wire story, plea-bargained his way to a 40-year jail sentence while a deliberating jury was voting to acquit him.

In Yokkaichi, Japan, police were reported to be searching for a man dressed in a monkey suit who pulled a knife on a convenience store clerk and demanded money, before losing his nerve and fleeing the scene of the crime – no doubt hoping authorities would conclude that he had just been monkeying around.

It wasn’t lack of nerve that did in a miscreant out in the heartland. It was his rotten luck. According to Cleveland news media reports, a man was charged with impersonating a police officer after he stuck a flashing blue light on the dashboard of his vehicle, pulled over a female motorist at 2:30 a.m. and shined a high-beam flashlight on her.

He told the woman he was a police officer and that he had stopped her for driving erratically. Although he wasn’t a cop, she was.

When the plainclothes detective called for police backup, the jig was up. History had recorded yet another happy ending to a story of bungling ineptitude.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net