Real criminals are dumb?

If you're like me you watch a lot of TV. There are only two kinds of television shows on the tube these days, Police dramas and cooking shows. Both often involve knives (coincidence?)

And on these police drama crime shows criminals are often shown are brilliantly diabolical mad men operating with unseen motives begging for the sharp Instincts of a dashing detective to bring them to justice.

Of course here in Nevada, reality is less interesting.

The brilliant detectives of the Sparks Police Department merely had to push the OnStar button of our most recent victim stolen car to apprehend the diabolical murderer. I'm not bagging on the Sparks Police Department; I'm just saying they don't need Colombo on their payroll to solve these crimes,

In fact, police in the Truckee Meadows area have not really needed to use ANY of the sexy TV technology/tactics to solve crimes in 2011. although there are plenty of crimes that have not been solved, the ones that have been are kind of, well, dumb.

I thought this might just be a trend, "dumb criminals", and then I thought back to two of Reno's most notorious murderers of recent years the "Mack" and "Dennison" murders. In retrospect neither of those murders were solved with dashing police brilliance. Mack turned himself in after escaping to Mexico, and Dennison's murder was ratted out by a family member. after escaping to Washington state.

And although I might offer a suggestion to future murderers "turn off the OnStar on your victim's car", I suspect this will fall on deaf ears. After all, criminals, unlike on TV, are really dumb in reality.