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The Year in Weird Canadian Crime

From hackers invading baby monitors to stolen cop cars to mass pig heists, here are some of the most bonkers capers of 2015.

These cows really want that rogue butcher to fuck off. Photo via Flickr user Michael Gil.

Canadian criminals were up to their usual nefarious activities in this year. But every now and then though, crime veered from its usual notorious path into WTF territory. Here are a few crime stories that raised an eyebrow or two in 2015.

Cops Return Woman's Stolen Car, Also Gift Her Cocaine, a Crack Pipe, and Weapons

Calgary mom Courtney Pickering got way more than she bargained for after the cops returned her stolen car back in August. Any relief she may have felt upon picking it up at the lot quickly evaporated when she reached into the glovebox, where she found four pieces of ID, none of which belonged to her. She also discovered a baggie of what was probably cocaine in the cup holder, and a crack pipe on the backseat.

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Did I mention the knife in the front passenger door and the pipe on the floor?

The cops searched the car again and said it was actually good to go this time, but the next day, while rooting around under the driver and front seats, Pickering pulled out a man's flip flop, a hammer, and a pellet gun.

Naturally, she filed a complaint.

If you're going to break into a Timmy's at 4 AM, at least grab some doughnuts to go with that black sludge—I mean, is that really worth going to jail for on its own? Photo via Flickr user Ruth Hartnup.

4 AM Caffeine Cravings

Who here among us hasn't felt the longing for a hot cup of joe before the sun rises, only to realize nothing is open for another three hours? Back in November, a man in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia, decided to take matters into his own hands and allegedly broke into a Tim Hortons around 4 AM apparently with the sole motive to get his caffeine fix.

His plot was foiled when two employees showed up to open up the store and "discovered a male inside who was trying to make himself a coffee and an iced cappuccino." He ran but was arrested in a parking lot nearby, and, luckily for the good folks of Parrsboro, the mess he left was cleaned up in time for the morning rush.

Stolen Bodily Fluids

Toronto police were called in to investigate reports of a package containing "a quantity of bodily fluid samples" stolen from the west end in October. According to the cops, the package was stolen from a courier's vehicle, but things took a weird(er) twist when the apparent owner of the package, Public Health Ontario, said none of its fluids were missing.

The saga ended a few days later when it turned out the package, which contained two blood samples and a nasopharyngeal sample, had simply been sent to the wrong facility.

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A bovine heart, like that pictured here, is closer to the size of a human head than a human heart. Photo via Flickr user Tess Watson.

He(arts)

Toronto police cordoned off a section of Ryerson University's downtown campus after a bunch of organs, including a heart and two brains, were found by a garbage can in November.

After causing small panic, the university sent out a tweet saying the heart probably came from a cow, and the campus paper discovered the organs were discarded props from a photography student's project.

Burn the Baby Monitors

The OPP in Middlesex Centre, Ontario, said someone was rocking their kid to sleep in July when the the internet camera used to monitor the room started to play "eerie music and a voice could be heard indicating the parent and child were being watched." The internet provider later said the home's router was hacked, which is slightly better than a priest saying the camera was possessed, I guess. Either way, I'd cleanse both the camera and router with fire.

And in similar web-tech creepiness (and also in the same month), someone hacked into a Toronto couple's webcam, used it to take photos of them cuddling, and then sent the photos to the female half of the couple via Facebook.

Don't Steal Cars, but Definitely Don't Steal Cop Cars

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Surrey, British Columbia, made the easiest arrest ever when a man allegedly tried to jack an unmarked police vehicle with two undercover officers sitting inside. It didn't go well for him—the cops even mocked him on Twitter.

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Porker Stealing

The OPP in Norfolk County, Ontario, were called in to investigate the theft of about 500 pigs (that's around $90,000 worth of swine) from a local farm over a few months. The owner, who raises "several thousand animals," notified police in June after they noticed that a bunch of animals had gone missing since April 21. Who even has the time to steal 500 pigs over three months, anyway? Where would you even keep them all? Does black market bacon really taste better? (Probably.)

Oh don't worry, he is fucked now. Photo via Facebook.

Fuck Harper

The RCMP fined Albertan man Rob Wells $543 in August for displaying a giant neon-pink sign that read "FUCK HARPER" in the back window of his car. The fine was for distraction, not for voicing his displeasure with Canada's then-prime minister, but Wells vowed to fight the charge and file a complaint against the ticketing officer "for political harassment."

"Harper supporters are very offensive to me, so being offensive is not illegal in this country," Wells told CTV at the time. Wells made his first court appearance in November, and according to the CBC, said his case was being bumped up to provincial court.

Numbers

An alleged Alberta drug dealer was busted in December after his clients kept trying to reach him at the wrong number—a number that happened to belong to a cop. Trevor Dennis was arrested by the RCMP after far too many of his prospective clients called a similar phone number belonging to RCMP Cpl. John Spaans trying to score.

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Silence of the Lambs, Cow Edition

The RCMP in Alberta are looking for a rogue butcher (or butchers) after two cows were fatally shot and carved up in December. The suspect(s) made off with premium cuts of beef, leaving the bodies in a field to rot and get picked on by other animals.

Acting Corp. Jim Countryman told VICE cattle are one of the primary sources of livelihood in the area, although he didn't know if there was a black beef market the bovine killer(s) could tap into. "I have no idea what the motive of this is," he said.

Apparently, cow hunting and carving isn't exactly unusual out west—in British Columbia, six cows were also killed and had strips of meat cut off of them earlier in the year.

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