This is a tough one: do you file this story under “funny” or under “frustrating?” Is it a sign of the moral decay of society? Is it proof there are no decent people out there? Or is it just a cheeky bit of news that doesn’t really hurt anyone, a funny prank pulled to give us all a good laugh?

It’s probably all of that. Or maybe none of that. What is definitely is, is a crime. Maybe pulled out by geniuses, but more like pulled off by lucky idiots. Someone (or someones) has been stealing the wheels off of police rollers in Jackson, MS. It’s happened more than once now. There may be a serial wheel thief running loose in the capital of the state.

According to the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, the wheels were stolen off of three cruisers that were parked near the Police Department Museum. The newspaper was tipped off by a FB page that posted the picture of the cruisers on the back of flatbeds, presumably getting hauled off to the motor pool to be refitted with some new shoes.

That in and of itself is a bold and daring crime, if not a pretty stupid one, but the crazier part of the incident – this wasn’t the first time it happened! The wheels off another police car were stolen only a month prior! That time it was parked by the department’s police academy!

It’s easy to make jokes, the crime here is, on its surface, funny. We all know that it is not funny though, in practice. It may seem harmless, but underneath it puts everyone in more danger. It took three cars off the streets for a period to time, who knows what dangerous crimes were committed that the men and women in those cars could have thwarted or who knows how many life-threaten medical situations could have been mitigated by those cops being on the street. Not to make this too serious, because, really, there are way worse crimes in the world, but there is a trickledown effect here that could have had terrible consequences.

The moral of the story? Leave police cars alone!