The 2015 MT awards for criminal folly

Best new insult
37-year-old Patrick Sciberras wins this award after receiving an €850 fine and a suspended sentence for, among other offences, calling a passing policeman a “frying pan.”

Sciberras had told a court that he had consumed “a couple of drinks” at a bar and, while waiting to be picked up from a bus stop by a friend, he had heckled a passing motorcycle policeman with the now immortal phrase “hawn ja frying pan,” before threatening the officer and his family.

The “Good parenting” award
If ever confirmation is needed that instilling virtues like self-control, respect for the law and other people’s safety in children is hard, ask the parents of the 12-year-old boy who was twice in two weeks caught driving a BMW in November. A week after leading police on a high-speed chase through Hamrun, officers from the Rapid Intervention Unit caught the unnamed pre-teen behind the wheel of a BMW a second time on November 21st. 

The same child was reportedly spotted driving the vehicle in early December, but officers reacting to the dangerous driving report found him to be sitting in the passenger’s seat, with a licensed adult driver at the wheel. Well done, mom and pop.

Best heart-warming ending
Jack Daboma Ibibo, a black Hungarian student hogged the news in July after he was handcuffed by police officers, having moments before been slapped, spat at and racially abused by Maltese woman Alison Cutajar, as he had been attempting to organise a queue at the Valletta bus terminus.

Daboma subsequently filed a criminal complaint against the woman, to which Cutajar reciprocated with a complaint of her own. Both complaints were withdrawn after the two apologised to each other in court and later shook hands for the cameras. Cue: soaring orchestral score. Pass the Kleenex.

Worst travel manners
Italian couple Matteo Clementi, 26 and his 23-year-old partner Enrica Apollonio were fined €2,329 for breaching airport security after the two rushed onto the airport apron in June, in a bid to stop a Ryanair aircraft leaving for Italy without them. The tourists said it had taken them two hours to get to the airport from Paceville.

Honourable mention
A yearning that only pastizzi could satisfy cost Francis Cassar €250, after he was spotted at a popular Rabat pastizzeria in breach of his bail conditions in October.

Cassar, who had been on bail for an unspecified offence, had been ordered to remain indoors between 11pm and 7am, but was spotted at the pastizzeria when he should have been observing the curfew. Cassar pleaded guilty and was fined €250.

And the 2015 MT award for criminal folly goes to...
Simon Peter Chircop, 47 from Attard, who was jailed for three years and fined €916 after being found guilty, in January, of attempting to steal items from a police inspector’s car. He had been spotted trying to break into the car by another police officer and promptly arrested. Once at the police station, Chircop then reportedly threatened the Inspector who owned the car, earning himself a stay at Corradino. Not quite Danny Ocean, then.