Circus man P. T. Barnum is famous for saying that there’s a sucker born every minute. Retired captain Don Parker of the Escambia County Sheriff’s Department in Pensacola, Florida, reports an unusual incident that proves Mr. Barnum’s point:
A resident of a quiet neighborhood was walking his dog in the woods one evening when the animal sniffed out a woman’s purse. The man unzipped the purse to look for identification. Instead of a wallet, a comb, or a lipstick, he found several curious packages, about the size of small bricks, wrapped in plastic and sealed with duct tape. Suspicious, he called the cops.
A patrolling deputy soon arrived and took the purse and its contents back to the station. As suspected, the packages contained drugs—pure cocaine with an estimated street value of two hundred thousand dollars.
The narcotics division immediately set up surveillance at the site where the purse had been found, hoping that someone would try to retrieve the drugs. But there was no activity, even though the officers stayed until well after midnight. Finally, as they were about to give up, one of them had a brilliant idea.
“Give me a piece of paper,” he whispered to his partner. Then he wrote, “I found your purse and the contents. Call me. Large reward expected.” He listed one of the confidential phone numbers that bypassed the department’s switchboard and rang directly in the narcotics office.
The narcotics officer quickly taped the note to a stick and placed it where the purse had been. Then he and his partner went home.
The narcotics officers’ fellow workers were highly amused the next morning when they learned about the note. For the rest of the day, the two were teased unmercifully. But the jokes stopped abruptly when they got a call around three in the afternoon.
A female cop answered the phone and set the trap. She demanded ten thousand dollars in cash for the safe return of the purse and its contents. At first the person on the other end of the line balked, but she made it clear he would have to pay up if he wanted the dope back. Finally, he agreed.
The drop was set for a phone booth outside the local mall. Undercover deputies took up positions in the parking lot around the booth.
The male and female narcotics officers stood by the phone booth, the female cop holding the purse. Soon a car with three occupants pulled up.
One suspect got out of the car and handed the narcotics officers a shopping bag that was bulging with cash. The female undercover officer gave the suspect the purse, and the man turned to go back to his car. That’s when the cops got the drop on the suspects.
When both cops drew their weapons, the suspect started to go for his own, but thought better of it. Seeing that his friend was in trouble, the driver of the car did what had to be done—he prepared to save his own tail. Before he could get the car in gear, however, he found himself staring down the gun barrels of about a dozen policemen.
The final score was six pounds of cocaine, ten thousand dollars in cash, three suspects arrested, one car confiscated, and a nice leather purse. And the bust might never have been made if that one narcotics officer hadn’t posted the sign.
It just goes to show: There is a sucker born every minute. And it always pays to advertise.