Because I cannot warn thee every week about the risks of using generative AI (well, I could, but I won’t), let’s return to the other type of futile warning I insist on giving, namely the one against trying to flee from authorities by jumping into bodies of water. As I have said many times, trying this will almost certainly fail. It will dramatically reduce your mobility, making you even easier to catch, as well as posing a non-zero risk of death by water or things in it that would be pleased to eat you.

This message is clearly not getting across, either, but hope springs eternal.

• Florida (Sept. 11): A 27-year-old man suspected of driving under the influence crashed his vehicle, then jumped out and fled into a nearby swamp. (Well, I guess it’s likely a swamp’s nearby no matter what part of Florida you’re in, so I will clarify that this happened in Lakeland.) As always, fleeing into a swamp turned out to be pointless. Luckily, this attempt ended quickly; not only were dozens of alligators probably watching, this guy was carrying two children. Or trying to, at least: he “left the 2-year-old behind and continued wading through the swamp and falling down while carrying the 10-month-old.” Officers quickly rescued the children, who weren’t injured, and with the help of drones the officers easily captured this Father of the Year candidate. Grade: F.

• London (Sept. 9): Normally we only see the suspect splashing around (occasionally with a shark lurking nearby) or being fished out, but here, courtesy of Metropolitan Police bodycams and the BBC, we can actually watch the suspect flee into the water. Well, “flee” is a charitable description of what he’s doing here. With at least three officers pursuing him on motorcyles, he walks out into a fairly shallow pond. It may be that he wasn’t even trying to escape, but rather to ditch the six phones he had stolen. If so, that was almost as pointless. It might have worked if this was the English Channel. It wasn’t. Grade: D-.

• Indiana (Aug. 12): A “massive, cross-county police pursuit” came to what this article called an “incredibly bizarre” conclusion, although as you know it is in fact remarkably common: the suspect drove into a body of water and then tried to swim away from the many pursuing officers, without success. I will give this guy a few bonus points, though, because before swimming away he stopped for a smoke break. “With his SUV partially submerged in the murky waterway,” the article reports, deputies ordered him to surrender. But “he refused to comply,” and instead “proceeded to light a glass pipe and begin smoking from it.” Only then did he swim off, but that of course did not last long. Grade: D+.

• Thailand (July 8): A man described as a “looksmaxxing influencer,” “giga chad,” “alpha male,” and “chiselled content creator” all in the same article (granted, it was the New York Post), unfortunately drowned in July after jumping into a lake to avoid police. Connor Murphy reportedly “behaved erratically” after getting out of a taxi near a home he was renting. He shouted, fell down and rolled around on the pavement for a while before police arrived. He then fled into the lake. It turned out he had also thrown paint all over the walls of the rental property, so something other than looksmaxxing may have been going on in there. Grade: F.

• Bedfordshire, England (July 8): A much happier result here, except that you may need to log in to Facebook to watch it. The video’s title, “Man jumps in river during foot chase,” really undersells this one. For one thing, the officer commandeers a citizen’s bike for the pursuit—he seems to be huffing and puffing before that, so the bike may have been necessary. But with its help he quickly catches up, telling the suspect, “don’t be an idiot.” As usual, this turns out to be a futile request. “Not much choice, have I?” the idiot responds, then jumps in. The officer then calls it in, saying, “4-4, male’s in the river.” (I was really hoping “4-4” was the Bedfordshire police code for “suspect in the water,” but I think it’s the officer’s badge number.) The suspect wasn’t too committed to this, though. He didn’t swim far, and the officer was quickly able to convince him to get out. Bonus points for the way he phrased it: “Mate, if I have to come in and get you, I’m gonna be really unimpressed.” Grade: A for the officer; D for the suspect.

By the way, for anyone thinking “fleeth” is not a word, it is—or at least it was. According to Merriam-Webster, it is the “archaic present tense third person singular of flee.” The Oxford English Dictionary hath not an entry for “fleeth,” but doth give many quotations in which it appeareth, including “Ther is no fowel þat fleeth vnder heuene, that she ne shal wel vnderstonde his steune” (1386), and who can argue with that? Seeth also Job 14:2 (KJV) (“He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down; he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.”)

Granted, because the way I used it in the headline is arguably a command, that might require the imperative form, if “archaic” English had one of those. What would the right form be then? Not sure. Compareth Genesis 27:43 (KJV) (“arise, flee thou to Laban”); with Gandalf (LOTR) (“Fly, you fools!”). I’m going to solve this conundrum by saying it’s not a command, just advice, because I think “fleeth” sounds better there. And that endeth the matter.