Are these thieves bold, or just stupid?

Law enforcement officials are accustomed to going after car thieves, but a couple of bold carjackers added a new wrinkle to the typical police chase — they stole police cars. Yet another enterprising thief drove off in a stolen fire truck.

One incident, according to UPI, occurred in July in the town of Waterproof, La. A jail inmate stole an unmarked police cruiser and took it on an 1,800-mile run for the border — the Canadian border.

The inmate, a jail trusty, was finally arrested in Houlton, Maine. His long-distance escape was thwarted when U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents asked him for identification as he tried to cross into Canada.

That escapade pales, however, compared to the exploits of another police car thief in Indiana. See, this guy stole the police car while the officers were actually searching his vehicle, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

  The incident happened earlier this year when police in Kouts, Ind., pulled the man over for speeding. Officers handcuffed the man and placed him in their car while they searched his vehicle for suspected drugs.

 The man managed to move the handcuffs to the front of his body, get into the driver’s seat of the patrol car and drive off. He even used the radio in the patrol car to ask dispatchers where he could find the cigarette lighter and the keys to remove his cuffs. He later surrendered to police at his home.

  If there’s no police car handy, a fire truck will do for some thieves. That’s what happened in Otay Mesa, Calif., according to the San Diego Union-Tribune, when a prison inmate boosted a fire truck to escape. The guy was a convicted car thief.