Police in New Britain, Connecticut, confiscated a 50-foot-long pile of stolen items in November 2002, the result of a ritual scavenger hunt of the Canettes, New Britain High School’s all-girl marching band drill team.
According to The Hartford Courant, police, parents and school personnel were flabbergasted that 42 normally law-abiding girls could wantonly steal so many items in a single evening, but the girls apparently sincerely had a hard time believing that they had done anything wrong. Said one girl, who helped pull a mailbox out of the ground: “I just thought it was a custom … kind of like a camaraderie thing (and) if the seniors said it was OK and they were in charge, then it was OK.”