BUMBLERS BOUNCE! As the holiday season got underway full-throttle last week, plenty of folks were hitting the streets. Not just shoppers and sidewalk Santas, but bumbling crooks, too. Lots and lots of bumbling crooks.

On Saturday, Nov. 27, Latie Whitley, 34, and a partner sauntered into the 20/20 Deli in Mott Haven. Whitley pulled a gun and demanded money from the deli owner, who forked over about $1400. Then at some point (it's unclear how this happened), Whitley's gun went off. Being one of those "cartoon robbers," however, Whitley ended up shooting himself in the face. Then he ran off.

Police are still looking for his partner, but they nabbed Whitley just a few blocks away, as he was returning to his apartment, where he had hoped to hide his shame.

Another bumbler was taken off the streets last weekend when Charles Collins, a 47-year-old Crown Heights resident, was arrested in connection with two September burglaries. There was just something that struck us as weird about the robberies. He broke into a Flatbush apartment one night and stole $7000 in jewelry, according to the Post. He also stole a few pairs of jeans, a jar of quarters and two pairs of sneakers. Less than an hour later, as he fast lost his sense of perspective, he crawled into another apartment a block away. He grabbed a corporate embosser and a fanny pack. But his bumbling antics woke up the woman who lived there, who snatched the fanny pack away from him. He got away with the embosser, though.

When cops nabbed him on a trespassing charge last weekend, he broke down and confessed to everything. The embosser, everything.

And while "bumbling" is a bad word to use for the following story, it does have its Night Patrol aspects.

Fifty-four-year-old East New York resident Rafael Phillips took a more passive suicide route than most. Instead of jumping in front of a train, Phillips lay down in the middle of the street at 1:30 a.m. Sunday, and waited for a car to run him over. Well, he got his wish. Then the driver sped away. Three officers soon appeared on the scene to investigate and clean up. But before they had a chance to even get started, another drunk driver came barreling down the street and slammed into them. He was stopped and arrested.

The cops suffered only minor injuries, and no one's saying whether or not the drunk ran over Phillips again, too.

And in a replay of last week's teen machete duel, a husband and wife were playing "he shrieked/she shrieked" after both were slashed with a single box cutter in their Brooklyn apartment.

According to the Post, Vanessa Wilson, 34, says her husband slashed her on the back of the neck while the two were fighting, then cut himself to pin the blame on her. Perhaps proving her right, the husband, Christopher, insists that she cut him first, before he wrestled the box cutter away and got her a good one on the neck. Both are being charged. o