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Has anyone here ever been the victim of a crime?

Started by hbelkins, September 14, 2018, 01:51:11 PM

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MantyMadTown

Quote from: TheHighwayMan394 on September 15, 2018, 02:25:30 PM
I've been murdered three times. It sucked.

Good thing they brought you back all those times, otherwise you would've been gone for good
Forget the I-41 haters


Beltway

Quote from: bandit957 on September 15, 2018, 09:44:40 AM
I was a victim of a series of home invasions in 2009-10, and the response was always, "Move to a neighborhood where this doesn't happen."

By people?  By wildlife?  By rising waters?  ???
http://www.roadstothefuture.com
http://www.capital-beltway.com

Baloney is a reserved word on the Internet
    (Robert Coté, 2002)

Beltway

Quote from: MantyMadTown on September 15, 2018, 02:43:18 PM
Quote from: TheHighwayMan394 on September 15, 2018, 02:25:30 PM
I've been murdered three times. It sucked.
Good thing they brought you back all those times, otherwise you would've been gone for good

Line from character in a movie:  "Being dead is not nearly as bad as I thought it would be".
http://www.roadstothefuture.com
http://www.capital-beltway.com

Baloney is a reserved word on the Internet
    (Robert Coté, 2002)

jakeroot

I had my car windshield broken by a couple of mischievous youths prowling my alley late at night. They took an extinguisher to my Golf's windshield, and then proceeded to spray it down for fun. I thought it was funny, until I realized that tiny fragments of broken glass would probably be there for years (no matter how many times I detailed the car), and my deductible for a windshield replacement ($300) was more than the windshield.

More seriously, I've had two knives pulled on me:

* Once at a gas station, after someone failed to convince me to buy them half a tank of fuel (they won the argument, as you might imagine).

*The second time was at work, while I was a valet. Homeless guy walks off the street, hops into a lady's car (without a key), and tries to drive off. I pull him out of the car, and chase him down the driveway, only for him to turn around near the sidewalk and point a knife at me. I backed off, but then he ran off and proceeded to try and kill himself about 15 minutes later (according to Tacoma Police).

Max Rockatansky

Quote from: MantyMadTown on September 15, 2018, 02:43:18 PM
Quote from: TheHighwayMan394 on September 15, 2018, 02:25:30 PM
I've been murdered three times. It sucked.

Good thing they brought you back all those times, otherwise you would've been gone for good

Revived by Dragon Balls?

Brandon

Quote from: TheHighwayMan394 on September 15, 2018, 02:25:30 PM
I've been murdered three times. It sucked.

And was it Melisandre, or Thoros of Myr who brought you back?

/The night is dark and full of terrors.
"If you think this has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention." - Ramsay Bolton

"Symbolic of his struggle against reality." - Reg

abefroman329


formulanone

Quote from: Brandon on September 15, 2018, 09:13:11 PM
Quote from: TheHighwayMan394 on September 15, 2018, 02:25:30 PM
I've been murdered three times. It sucked.

And was it Melisandre, or Thoros of Myr who brought you back?

/The night is dark and full of terrors.

The fires have told me to always carry extra quarters.

Duke87

I've had pieces of my car stolen while it was parked on the streets of New York City twice. First time I found my car sitting on cinderblocks with no wheels. Second time I found the drivers' side window smashed and the drivers' side airbag missing.

I also had someone attempt to carjack me once but that didn't work out for them since I didn't fall for their ruse. Guy starts pointing at my car while I'm stopped at a red light and yelling "yo there's some smoke coming out of your car right there" and waving at me to pull aside like he and his buddy were going to help me get some problem fixed. I floored it as soon as the light turned green. Found another place to pull over further down the road and look around under the hood. There was nothing wrong with the car, naturally.

And yeah I've had credit/debit card numbers stolen, but who hasn't. That's a minor annoyance, they cancel the card and send you a new one and you otherwise lose nothing.



If you always take the same road, you will never see anything new.

abefroman329

Quote from: Duke87 on September 16, 2018, 09:37:05 AMAnd yeah I've had credit/debit card numbers stolen, but who hasn't. That's a minor annoyance, they cancel the card and send you a new one and you otherwise lose nothing.
Once I had my wallet stolen and my credit card company decided the fraudulent charges were not, in fact, fraudulent. There were a lot of hoops to jump through after that.

TheHighwayMan3561

#35
Quote from: abefroman329 on September 16, 2018, 08:11:22 PM
Quote from: Duke87 on September 16, 2018, 09:37:05 AMAnd yeah I've had credit/debit card numbers stolen, but who hasn't. That's a minor annoyance, they cancel the card and send you a new one and you otherwise lose nothing.
Once I had my wallet stolen and my credit card company decided the fraudulent charges were not, in fact, fraudulent. There were a lot of hoops to jump through after that.

Same. Lost my wallet on a bus and the assholes who found it decided to treat themselves to some shit at the gas station across the street from campus. Bank said "sorry, fuck you". At least it was "only" $12.
self-certified as the dumbest person on this board for 5 years running

Rothman

Come to think of it, when I lived in Greenbelt, MD, we had neighbors that attempted to break into our apartment.  The police's response was, "Yeah, you shouldn't live there."
Please note: All comments here represent my own personal opinion and do not reflect the official position(s) of NYSDOT.

michravera

Quote from: hbelkins on September 14, 2018, 01:51:11 PM
Anyone ever been stolen from, burglarized, assaulted, or otherwise victimized by a lawbreaker?

You mean besides being hit by a DUI (twice), Auto Burglary (about 5 times), Robbery (at Driver Training), and Domestic Violence (in a car), and Vehicular Assault? ... And that doesn't include acts (such as fraud, residential burglary, workers' comp fraud, phone menace and threats, auto menacing, intentional damaged to an occupied vehicle, gaming control violations, etc), that were probably crimes that I either didn't report or which I did report and LE or the DA decided not to pursue)  ...

Hey, almost all of mine are at least sort of on topic!

J N Winkler

Quote from: bandit957 on September 15, 2018, 09:44:40 AMI was a victim of a series of home invasions in 2009-10, and the response was always, "Move to a neighborhood where this doesn't happen."

Quote from: Rothman on September 17, 2018, 08:13:33 AMCome to think of it, when I lived in Greenbelt, MD, we had neighbors that attempted to break into our apartment.  The police's response was, "Yeah, you shouldn't live there."

I have never heard of a police department that shows much interest in solving property crimes unless there is some sort of surveillance evidence that allows a perpetrator to be identified, regardless of how prosperous the neighborhood is.  And even when footage is available for residential burglaries and auto thefts, typically from entry-level nannycam systems, I see it posted on Facebook a lot more often ("Please help us identify these awful people who drove up in a car and stole a package from my porch/got into my unlocked vehicle while I was idling it to warm it up on a cold morning") than I hear of any investigative effort being dedicated.

I think it ultimately comes down to triage of resources.  Police would rather have a burglar come in and clear up 70+ burglaries in consideration of leniency in sentencing rather than spend a lot of staff resource on just one burglary.  They would rather recover stolen property after it has been abandoned and is phoned in as a public nuisance (e.g., stolen vehicle taken for a joyride and then left at the curb for longer than whatever the curbside parking limit is in the community) than try to chase it using the theft itself as the starting point.

It is not at all uncommon for the police response to a property crime to bear far more heavily on the victim than on the perpetrator.  A few years ago, in my mostly Anglo subdivision, we had a Hispanic family living a few doors down on the other side of the street.  One day black graffiti was observed on the side of their house, alleging (in Spanish) that the daughter was a prostitute.  911 was called, as was the father, who was then at his job.  My mother observed the police officer and the father in the front yard in a tense standoff.  We later learned that the police officer had told the father to overpaint the graffiti immediately, as in go to the paint store and buy the supplies RIGHT NOW, don't wait until the weekend or whenever you think you might have the time.  AFAIK, the person responsible for the graffiti was never caught.

About a decade ago we had a spate of burglaries in our subdivision, none of which was ever solved.  We received support from the police to set up a neighborhood watch, and we were advised to keep exterior doors locked and garage doors shut.  (Previously it was quite common to leave doors unlocked when gardening or mowing the lawn, and to keep garage doors open for hours on end.)  Aside from this, there was no law-enforcement intervention.  This was in a fairly prosperous neighborhood, built out about thirty years ago, where SFR property values are at or slightly above the local median, in a ZIP code that has basically not seen any homicides over the last 25 years that were not somehow connected to domestic violence.
"It is necessary to spend a hundred lire now to save a thousand lire later."--Piero Puricelli, explaining the need for a first-class road system to Benito Mussolini

abefroman329

I haven't found the police to be particularly helpful when I'm filing a police report for no other reason than the fact that I'm required to in order to file an insurance claim. Nor do I expect them to; as noted above, they have bigger fish to fry.

I also found (and find) it pretty terrible that, the one time I had to file a police report when I left a smartphone in the back of a limo in NYC and had to file a police report in order to get a new one, the desk sergeant was a lot nicer to me than she was to any of the non-white people entering the precinct, but that's another story for another day (and another forum).

inkyatari

Least seriously, had a couple bicycles stolen from my front porch.

More seriously, In 1990, I was working the graveyard shift at a 7-11 on Caton Farm Rd. in Crest Hill, IL. Sometime around midnight a couple thugs came in, pointed a gun at my head and demanded all the money.  I gave them everything in the drawer, and $20 from the safe.  They demanded that I open the lotto machine.  I told them there's nothing in it, but they "insisted," so I opened it.  THey next "requested" my wallet. Then they demanded that I open the register in the liquor area, but that was a register I didn't have a key for. They took a board that was leaning against the wall and started hitting me with it.  It contacted on my thigh twice.  THen they started kicking me in the mouth, then threatened to shoot me if I didn't try protecting myself.  THen they fled.  Fortunately this was the time that the local cops came in for their nightly donut (I'm not joking.  I had been working this shift for a week, and like clockwork, they came in at this time to get a donut and coffee.)

Ultimately they got away with around $40 and a Playboy, and my wallet (which had nothing in it.)  The cops recovered my wallet behind the speedway gas station next door.

This whole situation is one reason I don't trust the news, because the newspaper stated "the robbers tore a piece of shelving loose and continually beat the clerk with it."
I'm never wrong, just wildly inaccurate.

MantyMadTown

Quote from: J N Winkler on September 17, 2018, 12:02:21 PM
Quote from: bandit957 on September 15, 2018, 09:44:40 AMI was a victim of a series of home invasions in 2009-10, and the response was always, "Move to a neighborhood where this doesn't happen."

Quote from: Rothman on September 17, 2018, 08:13:33 AMCome to think of it, when I lived in Greenbelt, MD, we had neighbors that attempted to break into our apartment.  The police's response was, "Yeah, you shouldn't live there."

I have never heard of a police department that shows much interest in solving property crimes unless there is some sort of surveillance evidence that allows a perpetrator to be identified, regardless of how prosperous the neighborhood is.  And even when footage is available for residential burglaries and auto thefts, typically from entry-level nannycam systems, I see it posted on Facebook a lot more often ("Please help us identify these awful people who drove up in a car and stole a package from my porch/got into my unlocked vehicle while I was idling it to warm it up on a cold morning") than I hear of any investigative effort being dedicated.

I think it ultimately comes down to triage of resources.  Police would rather have a burglar come in and clear up 70+ burglaries in consideration of leniency in sentencing rather than spend a lot of staff resource on just one burglary.  They would rather recover stolen property after it has been abandoned and is phoned in as a public nuisance (e.g., stolen vehicle taken for a joyride and then left at the curb for longer than whatever the curbside parking limit is in the community) than try to chase it using the theft itself as the starting point.

It is not at all uncommon for the police response to a property crime to bear far more heavily on the victim than on the perpetrator.  A few years ago, in my mostly Anglo subdivision, we had a Hispanic family living a few doors down on the other side of the street.  One day black graffiti was observed on the side of their house, alleging (in Spanish) that the daughter was a prostitute.  911 was called, as was the father, who was then at his job.  My mother observed the police officer and the father in the front yard in a tense standoff.  We later learned that the police officer had told the father to overpaint the graffiti immediately, as in go to the paint store and buy the supplies RIGHT NOW, don't wait until the weekend or whenever you think you might have the time.  AFAIK, the person responsible for the graffiti was never caught.

About a decade ago we had a spate of burglaries in our subdivision, none of which was ever solved.  We received support from the police to set up a neighborhood watch, and we were advised to keep exterior doors locked and garage doors shut.  (Previously it was quite common to leave doors unlocked when gardening or mowing the lawn, and to keep garage doors open for hours on end.)  Aside from this, there was no law-enforcement intervention.  This was in a fairly prosperous neighborhood, built out about thirty years ago, where SFR property values are at or slightly above the local median, in a ZIP code that has basically not seen any homicides over the last 25 years that were not somehow connected to domestic violence.

That honestly sounds insulting to the victims of property crimes. If the police are putting all the burden on the victims (or basically blowing them off), then it sounds like they're not doing their job.
Forget the I-41 haters

akotchi

I have had two different cars broken into.  For one car, the passenger side window was smashed, but nothing taken.  The other had no damage, but the glove compartment was ransacked -- I lost a camera (my sign camera) and a Tom-Tom.
Opinions here attributed to me are mine alone and do not reflect those of my employer or the agencies for which I am contracted to do work.

J N Winkler

Quote from: MantyMadTown on September 17, 2018, 04:03:19 PMThat honestly sounds insulting to the victims of property crimes. If the police are putting all the burden on the victims (or basically blowing them off), then it sounds like they're not doing their job.

Ultimately, it comes down to rational allocation of tax money.  If you report a property crime, you may get tea and sympathy, or you may not, but ultimately the police are not going to dedicate any resources to an investigation that has the theft or vandalism as the starting point.  An ounce of prevention is not worth a pound of cure in this case--it is more like a hundredweight of cure.

Part of the reason the police officer insisted on the graffiti being overpainted right away is that gangs tend to see vandalism left unrepaired as a sign the neighborhood is ripe for them to move in.  The empirical observation is that vandalism in general tends to be more of a problem in spaces that appear to be uncurated.  In urban freeway design and management contexts this can often drive decisions about underpass lighting, maintenance standards for prompt overpainting of graffiti, etc.
"It is necessary to spend a hundred lire now to save a thousand lire later."--Piero Puricelli, explaining the need for a first-class road system to Benito Mussolini

Max Rockatansky

Quote from: J N Winkler on September 17, 2018, 04:58:44 PM
Quote from: MantyMadTown on September 17, 2018, 04:03:19 PMThat honestly sounds insulting to the victims of property crimes. If the police are putting all the burden on the victims (or basically blowing them off), then it sounds like they're not doing their job.

Ultimately, it comes down to rational allocation of tax money.  If you report a property crime, you may get tea and sympathy, or you may not, but ultimately the police are not going to dedicate any resources to an investigation that has the theft or vandalism as the starting point.  An ounce of prevention is not worth a pound of cure in this case--it is more like a hundredweight of cure.

Part of the reason the police officer insisted on the graffiti being overpainted right away is that gangs tend to see vandalism left unrepaired as a sign the neighborhood is ripe for them to move in.  The empirical observation is that vandalism in general tends to be more of a problem in spaces that appear to be uncurated.  In urban freeway design and management contexts this can often drive decisions about underpass lighting, maintenance standards for prompt overpainting of graffiti, etc.

Essentially that's the basic gist of the Broken Windows Crime Prevention Theory.

DandyDan

#45
I had my car broken into twice. When I had my old Mercury Topaz, someone stole my winter coat when I was at a bar in Fremont, NE, and when I had my old Saturn SL2, someone stole a number of old CD's when I was at the old Borders in Omaha.  Don't leave anything out in plain sight, people
MORE FUN THAN HUMANLY THOUGHT POSSIBLE

freebrickproductions

The worst for me (so far) has just been having my car gotten into over night twice after I left it unlocked both nights.
It's all fun & games until someone summons Cthulhu and brings about the end of the world.

I also collect traffic lights, road signs, fans, and railroad crossing equipment.

(They/Them)

tchafe1978

We were "victims" once when some thieves "broke into" our cars overnight a number of years back. Being in a small town, my wife was used to leaving everything unlocked all the time, even though me, being from a bigger city, locked everything all the time, and tried to convince her to do the same. The thieves entered our cars at night and rummaged through them. We only lost a few dollars in cash, which I consider really lucky. My wife had left her car unlocked, with the keys and her purse inside. They had rummaged though the car and left things a mess, and we found her purse a block away in the street with her credit cards and other things scattered about. I had even left my car unlocked that night, even though I usually locked it. Luckily they didn't take anything from my car, not even my stack of CDs or my aftermarket stereo and speakers. They left the doors on the cars ajar as to not make noise slamming them shut, which was a clue they had been entered. A couple neighbors also had their cars rummaged through and left a mess, but they didn't really lose anything of value. The thieves were eventually caught when they used a cellphone they had taken and were able to be tracked. This incident finally convinced my wife to start locking everything up at night.

abefroman329

My wife is also from a small town, and also insisted on leaving the door to our apartments open (she seems to have cured herself of the habit now that we live in a townhouse). We were never robbed, though.

slorydn1

I was robbed 3 times during all those years I delivered pizza's. The first time, in the early 90's I was working for Domino's. I had a real turd for a car then and it was constantly breaking down. I had just finished two deliveries downtown (one to the jail, ironically enough) when my car broke down in front of the old Pak-A-Sak on East Front St. I had just used the pay phone (remember those?) to call my store to let them know of my predicament and went back to my car. I was messing with something under the hood when I heard a male voice say "hey you." I looked up and I was surrounded by several black male subjects and the one in front of me had a knife. He told me that I knew what time it was and to hand "it" over. I gave him all the money I had on me and the whole group took off. They were never caught. This was in broad daylight by the way.

The second time, also during the day, right after I started dispatching for the sheriff's office, I was working for Pizza Hut as a side job. I delivered to an apartment complex in one of the not so nice parts of town, but a place I had never had issues with before. The customer and I had just completed the transaction when what appeared to be a young teenaged black male came up beside me and did the old stick his hand in his pocket and point something at me trick. Little did he know that I had been observing him the entire time I was at the door and I saw him stick his empty hand in his sweatshirt pocket right before he walked up to me. He told me he wanted all of my money or I was going to get it. I convinced him that the customer paid with a check and if he wanted money he needed to come back to my truck with me so he could "get it". He complied.
I reached into my truck to get my "wallet" and imagine his surprise when I came out with a 6 inch .357 magnum and my cell phone (one of those ancient humongous bag phones that I had mounted in my car like a car phone).
I proned him out on the ground and called the local PD to come take out the trash. It turns out he was only 14 or 15, so he didn't get any jail time. I am sure he needed a change of underwear, though.

The 3rd time was the scariest. It was October 2005, right before my birthday and I was back delivering pizzas as a side job again. I was in another not so great neighborhood with a double delivery, and this one was at night. Both were on the same street. The first one went off without a hitch. The second one, I was having a lot of trouble finding the address, nothing in this neighborhood is marked worth a damn. I had just looped around a second time going back towards the first customer as the second address should have been really close to the first one. I saw 1 black male subject standing at the end of a driveway, I didn't notice them the first time. He was wearing hoodie and he started waiving me down, so I stopped short and asked if this was (whatever the number was) and he said "yes".

I stepped out of the car with the bag and looked at the ticket and realized I had made a mistake, I had given the drinks for this order to my first customer. I always kept a couple of extra 2 liters of the various kinds of soda we carried then in my trunk for just such an emergency. I read off the ticket while I was pulling the pizza's out of the bag and started to hand him the pizzas when a second black male subject started to walk up to me from the side. That made me feel uncomfortable so I started inching backwards towards my trunk (I was still at my open drivers door this whole time). I was telling the guy in front of me that I needed to get his soda out of my trunk when he set the pizza's down on my hood and drew a semi auto pistol and the second guy grabbed my left arm and went to shove me against the side of my car. I still had my gun hand free and I was carrying concealed, but really its pointless to draw on a drawn gun you will lose 90% of the time. I then heard multiple sets of foot steps running up from behind me and as I was shoved against the car they were now to my right and there were 3 more black male subjects running up-this last group seemed to be really young, like middle school to early high school aged (I was right, they were freshman).

They wanted all of my money but I told them I wasn't reaching for anything with that gun pointed at me, that my "bank" money was in my right front pocket and my wallet was in my right rear pocket. I had a bunch of coin change in my left front pocket if they wanted that too. The 3 little squirts shook me down while the second adult was holding me against the car. They messed up and got my credential case from the sheriff's office out of my right rear pocket and missed the wallet with all of the cash in it and took off running. The guy that had been holding me reached inside my car and shut it off and took my car keys, then ordered me into the car. They told me if I twitched in the next 30 seconds I would be dead, then they took off running. This was their undoing.

As a supervisor in the sheriff's office I was issued a portable 2 way radio even though I wasn't a sworn deputy.I had the radio on the front seat of my car. I drew my firearm and called in that I had just been involved in a "10-65  (armed robbery) just occurred" on the radio providing a full description of all 5 suspects and their direction of travel into the woods. I also advised responding units that I was armed with my side arm and I was running after them in that same general direction (I was BEYOND pissed and not thinking real clearly at that moment).

Everyone heard my radio call. I had units from 3 different departments swarming around me in less than 3 minutes-and yes those 3 minutes felt like 3 hours.

To make the long story short, we caught the 2 main actors (adults) in less than 20 minutes. They dime'd out the other 3 punks and they were dragged out of school in hand cuffs the next day. They said they all knew they were screwed when they went to open the wallet and found it wasn't a wallet but a credential case with my badge and ID (we had badges too, the difference was mine said Dispatcher where a sworn deputy's badge would say "Deputy Sheriff" on the banner).


This is what makes it the scariest of all. They guy that pulled the gun on me ended up murdering someone in another county less than a year later while he was out on bond for my robbery. I found out about that because our captain in charge of investigations pulled me into his office to tell me about it. To this day I wish I had been in a better tactical situation when the robbery went down, I might have been able to prevent someone else from being murdered down the road. I also know it's stupid to think that way but it is what it is I guess.

Please Note: All posts represent my personal opinions and do not represent those of any governmental agency, non-governmental agency, quasi-governmental agency or wanna be governmental agency

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