Wanted Man Walks Into Police Station to Chase Up His Job Application, Gets Arrested

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Wanted Man Walks Into Police Station to Chase Up His Job Application, Gets Arrested

In South Africa, a 40-year-old wanted man walked into a police station looking for work, earning the title “South Africa’s dumbest criminal.” He had reportedly stolen hardware goods worth over $1,200 as a delivery man in 2015, then spent seven years on the run.

But he’d applied for a job at the station, and — fed up with getting no reply — came in to ask about the holdup. Staff ran his name, the warrant surfaced, and he was arrested on the spot.

South Africa is one of the world’s highest-unemployment countries, with rates topping 30% in some years and nearly half of young people out of work at times. Stable public-sector roles like police jobs draw floods of applicants. At the same time, the digitization of criminal justice means a name check at a station desk surfaces any outstanding warrant on the spot. Hardship drove a man to a government counter — and that same counter caught a fugitive.

From Emeka

In a lot of Africa it takes nerve to land a job, and South Africa especially. In a country with unemployment over thirty percent, a police vacancy pulls hundreds of applicants. …So you can’t really fault the man for chasing work at the station. The problem is that someone who evaded capture for seven years walked himself, on his own two feet, up to the one desk most certain to run his name. Hardship carried him to the counter, and the counter pulled out the cuffs. The African job hunt sometimes lands like this.

From the Editor

Source: Oddity Central