HAVING been attached to the crime reporting team for the past three weeks, I have a confession to make.
At the risk of sounding a little mean: Sometimes my colleagues and I find the cases we hear about at daily Crime Conferences with the police, well, rather funny.
I mean, you get all kinds of bizarre incidents, like explosions at soya bean milk stalls, or thieves stealing more than 400 bottles of soft drinks from a Sentosa drink kiosk (I know, right — who would be so hard up for Coca-Cola and green tea?) — sometimes it's hard not to see the lighter side.
Even simple theft cases can have strange twists to them. My personal "favourite"? One that involved a housewife who lost $600 in cash and valuables after leaving her bag on the shoe rack outside her flat for six whole hours after she got home from shopping.
As another colleague put it, with a wry smile: "These are not crimes — just stupidity."
Take the recent cases of supermarket theft as another example — all involved people who had left their things unwatched in their trolleys, or with only their children to "stand guard".
One person walked away to another part of the supermarket to get something, and returned to find her wallet missing. Her young daughter only able to tell her that she saw a "man's hand" (yes, you got that right) reach into the trolley.
Sure, it's a lot less funny when you're the victim. But then again, one could hardly expect a different outcome given how careless that shopper had been.
What could best be said, I suppose, is this: If you don't want to become the subject of the next bizarro-casefile, keep closer watch over your valuables.
It's one less thing for reporters to titter about and one less crime that need not have happened — and that makes all the difference.
Read Goh Yi Han's story about thefts in Singapore supermarkets.