The scanner call went something like this: “All units, be on the lookout for 22-year-old Joe Blow, believed to be in the downtown area and suspected in the theft of crayfish from the feed store. Subject is described as dressed entirely in black leather with spiked hair and multiple piercings. Subject has a metal spike through his lower lip, metal beads through his nose and right eyelid, and fishhooks through each ear. Subject is known to have other piercings in his cheeks, chest and other body parts.”

OK, so some parts of the narrative have been recreated to protect the privacy of Marilyn Manson. Anyway, I had no interest in this particular suspect. If I had, I would have hit the streets with a metal detector.

The scanner call went on to describe the young man’s many tattoos. Coiled snake on the upper right arm, a skull smoking a cigarette, Bugs Bunny, Elvis Presley, an unidentified art form that resembled a squid …

In police jargon, these things are known as distinguishing marks or features. If you want to dedicate your life to the commission of crimes, try not to have too many. Scars, for instance. Try to avoid scars. Those things will rat you out as quickly as fingerprints.

My own criminal career was sidetracked because of my many scars. It’s tragic because I would have made a fine art thief or international jewel smuggler. I never even got a chance to buy a spiffy black outfit or suction cups with which to scale buildings.

There is a long scar on my right index finger received in a knife fight many years back. (In truth, I got the wound while goofing off outside the cinema as a boy after seeing “The Bad News Bears.” I don’t tell that story at parties.) I have a crescent-shaped scar on the other hand from a wound inflicted roughly 10 minutes after I was hired to help tear down a building.

I have a very impressive scar around my left knee as the result of a schoolyard fight. I won the scrap, but then fell on a piece of jagged tar while doing a victory dance. I have another scar on my left, inner thigh. That precarious wound was inflicted during another round of fisticuffs during which I was dragged across a sharp piece of metal at the end of a coffee table. That one was declared a draw. A fight comes to a rapid end when one of the combatants begins bleeding from that area of the body.

I have no tattoos. Go on and look for yourself, I’ll wait.

You see? There are times when I’m the only person in a room without desecrated flesh. When the tattoo show-and-tell portion of the evening begins, I just show off my scars.

My point is, you want to keep these distinguishing marks or features to a minimum if mischief is your career goal. There was a drug suspect and criminal escapee a few years ago who had tattoos on the back of both hands. The guy was eventually caught in Arizona and quickly identified by the art. He should have fled to Alaska where he could wear gloves all day without drawing attention to himself.

Before the distinguishing marks segment of a scanner call begins, the subject of outerwear is calmly discussed by police dispatchers. These days, just about all criminal suspects are described as wearing dark hoodies with the hoods pulled down low over their brows. I have a hoodie myself. I like wearing it down low over my brow. It makes it look like I’m up to something.

The point of this is, should you choose to wear a hoodie in such a fashion, you will be mistaken for either a criminal suspect or a newspaper reporter. No good can come from it. You will be suddenly popular with police or editors. Man, you don’t want any part of that.

Those are my tips for your aspiring criminal career. Do with it what you will. As for the leather-clad pierced man who began this whole train of thought, he was never found. My suspicion is that he ran too close to an industrial magnet and he remains there still.

In pace requiescat.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter. Visit his blog at www.sunjournal.com.

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