One for the Good Guys...

A lady that works for my wife had somebody break into their house last week. They kicked in the garage door and got into the kitchen through the door connecting the garage and house which they never bothered to lock. Didn't take much, about $1k in jewelery. The perp left a perfect shoe print on the garage door and a receipt from burger king on the floor of the kitchen.

The cops weren't as enthusiastic about investigating this as she would have liked, so she went to BK and got their surveillance tapes herself for the day and time from the receipt and matched up the shoes of the people in line to the Nike print. Figured out who it had to be from the tape and passed it on to the cops who were able to get an ID and then arrested the guy.

Found out he had also robbed a couple more places. Don't know if the court system will actually prosecute meaningfully or not, but at least she got some personal satisfaction and will eventually get her stuff back.

great to see a person using their brains, to investigate the crime, maybe prevent future victimization, rather than respond with the panic move of obtaining a gun to respond. if the police departments were not so busy investigating homicides, then less violent property crime could be further pursued.

don't need to go buy any guns, they already have them....which they would have used on him if they had been home when he came in....

As well she should have. A little deterrent goes a long way.

My wife had her purse stolen last year...$1200 cash in it so that hurt...

We were at the Bangor Walmart at the time and they would not let us see the security cameras, so we called the police who saw exactly who did it, but the man and his girlfriend paid with cash and could not be traced through their debit or credit card. They said the image was too fuzzy to get a license plate on their car. They also said they would put the guys picture on the Bangor PD Facebook page because criminals like to check it out and see if they can rat other criminals out so they can get out of their crimes or get reduced sentences, but the police did not do that either; I kept checking for weeks afterwards.

It kind of makes me mad because if another police officer's wife was robbed, they would have checked the video cameras on the street lights, or had other police office's look for the car, but because it was just Joe-Average-Citizen, they did not care; very sympathetic for sure, but they did not care.

I guess I should not care; all my bills are paid and I have a warm house, and maybe they really needed the money more than we did, but it just sucked because it was not theirs, and we are hardly rich. I have to keep praying about it and ask forgiveness because it is only money after all...

NoSmoke wrote: because it is only money after all...

its only money....the gov't will print more and you and i can earn more!

but, if it's like around here, theft like she and you experienced is done 90% of the time to pay for drugs, maybe even a higher percentage.

if it was somebody taking money because they were that desperate to feed their family i'd feel differently than them taking it to feed their habit. i still wouldn't give them a complete pass because if they had explained their situation before stealing from me i'd have come up with something so they could earn it.

homecomfort wrote:great to see a person using their brains, to investigate the crime, maybe prevent future victimization, rather than respond with the panic move of obtaining a gun to respond. if the police departments were not so busy investigating homicides, then less violent property crime could be further pursued.

Do you really think this way??

The best thing that could have happened is that the thief got terminal lead poisoning.. then the court system doesn't spend our tax dollars to 'defend' the thief, and nobody else is a victim of the thief..

AND just when will the thief get violent and harm or kill somebody in their home??? They have already made the leap into being a felon,
when will they take the next step??

Best deterrent would be a dead body labeled 'failed thief' lying in the driveway or in front of the door on the sidewalk.

HC, do you cower under the covers when you hear a noise in your house? or do you get out the shotgun and go investigate??

Greg L

BTW, my police friends tell me that home invasion is so common that they are overwhelmed by the volume of investigating needed
to be done.. Any homicide is handled by a completely different branch of the PD. So it's not that they are too busy working on homicide cases,
it's that there are too few home invasions that result in dead thieves. It would reduce the burglary workload !!!

GL

homecomfort wrote:if the police departments were not so busy investigating homicides, then less violent property crime could be further pursued.

I'm not sure what the crime is like in your area, but where I live homicides are very rare...but burglary is exploding due to the increased number of meth heads, crack heads, and other drug addicts that will steal milk from a baby just to get their next fix. The sad part is, a lot of those people aren't even from our area. They were arrested in a city somewhere else in NYS, incarcerated, and then paroled. The state has figured out that housing is cheap in Northern NY, so we get to deal with them. To say the least, it is ruining part of our town.

LsFarm wrote:

homecomfort wrote:great to see a person using their brains, to investigate the crime, maybe prevent future victimization, rather than respond with the panic move of obtaining a gun to respond. if the police departments were not so busy investigating homicides, then less violent property crime could be further pursued.

Do you really think this way??

The best thing that could have happened is that the thief got terminal lead poisoning.. then the court system doesn't spend our tax dollars to 'defend' the thief, and nobody else is a victim of the thief..

AND just when will the thief get violent and harm or kill somebody in their home??? They have already made the leap into being a felon,
when will they take the next step??

Best deterrent would be a dead body labeled 'failed thief' lying in the driveway or in front of the door on the sidewalk.

HC, do you cower under the covers when you hear a noise in your house? or do you get out the shotgun and go investigate??

Greg L

BTW, my police friends tell me that home invasion is so common that they are overwhelmed by the volume of investigating needed
to be done.. Any homicide is handled by a completely different branch of the PD. So it's not that they are too busy working on homicide cases,
it's that there are too few home invasions that result in dead thieves. It would reduce the burglary workload !!!

GL

good post greg