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Just had an attempted break-in. Your run-ins with criminals?
Yeoface
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Woke up this morning at 3:30 am to a drunk/high guy on our front step ringing the doorbell and pounding on the door. Looks like he had been in a fight or a drug deal gone bad, and had a bloody face with an eye swollen shut. Was spitting blood all over our steps.
The cops came in under 5 minutes with an ambulance luckily and no harm was done, but now I'm on an adrenaline high and was wondering what other kind of run-ins you guys have had to deal with.
The cops came in under 5 minutes with an ambulance luckily and no harm was done, but now I'm on an adrenaline high and was wondering what other kind of run-ins you guys have had to deal with.
Yeoface on
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people don't break in by banging on the front door and ringing the doorbell at 3:30 am
Sounds like maybe he had the wrong place.
The most recent time however, I was alone upstairs and the alarm begins wailing just as I had managed to get to sleep. So I think 'bollocks to it, I'm getting involved this time'
I grab a baseball bat and sprint downstairs in my underwear
Burst in through the back door to the bar and see the fucker trying to open one of the fruit machines with a crowbar. I yell some vague threat, he legs it and tries to make good his escape through the open windows in a single jump.
He misses, catches his foot on the windowsill and comes crashing face first into the gravel area outside the pub
Then he climbs into his bike, bruised and bloody, and disappears into the night
Thats really my only run in with a criminal
Was sitting at my computer and heard a smash. Didn't think anything of it until I realised it was louder than it probably should have been.
Opened the front door, looked over to my car space and a guy was reaching into the car through the small triangular window. I frozed momentarily, totally shocked, I think I may have actually gasped like they do on television! I immediately started shouting ludicrous things like 'HEY! YOU'RE STEALING MY CAR!'
He started running, while moaning this weird zombie moan which freaked me out, and I started chasing him. The entire time I was yelling 'AAAAAH YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE ETC!' And he outran me because I am terribly unfit.
Called the police who spent 20 minutes asking me questions about who I was, whether I was a student or worked. I apologised to them for appearing naive and asked "So are you, you know, going to get the bad guy now or what?" A few condescending moments later I was told to come into the station to make a report and they'd hung up.
In retrospect, an amusing evening!
My useless dog didn't even bark at the guy. Urgh.
Houses where I stay all have high fences all around, and a big gate. At night, people open the gate, drive their cars in, and lock the gate. And then lock the house inside (which will typically have a solid metal grille, a solid wooden door, and another padlock. You'll see why in a moment).
So... global economic recession, people laid off, crime has spiked a bit recently.
So, my neighbour comes home one evening. He gets out of the car, opens the gate, drives in. Neighbour then begins unlocking the house door.
Then a dude holding a parang runs in, gets in the car, and tries to reverse it out of the driveway.
So, my neighbour can't grab hold of the car. Can't stop the car either, for fear of being run over. So he runs ahead of the car (which is slow because it's reversing), and swings the solid cast iron fence gate shut. Car can't get out. Crazy thief jumps out of the car, waves the parang wildly at my neighbour, then runs away down the street.
Fast forward about half an hour. The neighbour's called the police and the neighbourhood watch, and the commotion has attracted everyone in the neighbourhood. So we're all standing in my neighhour's driveway - maybe twenty residents, plus four watchmen and two police - then
Dude comes back, with four friends, all with assorted sticks and parangs. They march in, smash my neighbour's car to bits, then march out. Yes, in front of everyone. The local watch isn't armed and can't do anything. The local policemen were just there to take notes and weren't armed either. So everyone just watches rather helplessly for a while.
Isn't the third world nice. The police haven't gotten back to my neighbour - ineffectual law enforcement seems to be the ongoing theme here...
And then my own house got broken into a month later, but nobody was at home so no interesting stories there.
I look a little surprised, since we're standing in front of a police station. They quickly notice this as well, and run off. Cops didn't find them, but whatever. It was Adam's Morgan. Go two blocks off the main drag and it gets shady real quick.
Though I did leave my bike outside for a while and came back to find one of the screws holding the bars gone. So someone started to try and steal them and didnt get very far which I found pretty amusing.
Twitter
That was... interesting.
No, one of the stores I called up asking for a refund gave me the ordering IP address, which was (presumably a botnet node) in Buttfuck, Iowa or somewhere.
Also they misspelled my name in a way that only a computer generally does.
But the thought did occur to me as well.
Had about $3000 stolen out of the delivery van at a farmer's market too, they went in through the back and pried the security gate open between the cab and the back of the van, and grabbed the deposit bag. They left my camera, wallet, and phone though.
Two weeks later they (we're assuming, since we never saw who did it the first time) got caught when they smashed a window on a truck that belonged to one of the farms selling at the market, trying to get at their cash. But they did it while the owners were in the back of the truck. So a foot chase ensued, with the thief making a break for a bus that was just stopping to pick people up. He got on, the bus started to move, people blocked the road, banged on the door until the driver opened it, then stormed the bus and dragged the guy off and called the police.
I left my car unlocked on the street, and came out in the morning and noticed my glove box was open. The only thing missing was a crappy CD wallet of burned CDs. I wouldn't really call it being robbed, more like having my car cleaned up for me.
So all in all not too bad. Still pissed I missed out on the rest of the Tribes 2 era.
i also was walking back from class one day when i heard a car alarm going off right up the road and saw a couple of middleschool kids running away. the kids had apparantly tried to open the door and when the alarm went off they booked it. so i went up to the car and shut the door/went on my way.
one day also, i was sitting outside during the spring when i hear a lot of yelling behind the house. i turn around and see this young black guy running through my yard, then a cop following him tackles him right on the paved driveway. it left a nice pool of blood but he was apparantly innocent of whatever they were chasing him for. how do i know? because he came back later that day and asked us if we had found a watch.... a rolex apparantly....
But yeah, pretty much criminals all around. I swiftly realized that this was not my scene.
Then there was the time a party nextdoor to use spilled out onto our yard, including a guy getting beat down by four dudes on our curb. Called the cops, then went out with a baseball bat to let them know that I had done so (in the hopes that the dude might still be alive by the time they got there). Good times. Don't miss that neighborhood.
That's about it. I've lived a boring life.
EDIT: Well, at least for actual run-ins. There was also the time my truck got broken into. Or last weekend, when I accidentally left my computer (the desktop case) in my hotel room (I had brought it in out of fear, ironically, that it might get stolen) and the housekeeping staff decided it must be "trash" that I'd left behind, and claimed it rather than turning it in. Filed a police report, got the computer back, but seriously what the fuck?
After he left the store, he turned the corner and just calmly walked away. One of the employees was tasked with following him so that we could hopefully get some sort of identifying information, but the guy was apparently pretty smart. He planned out a route through the adjacent neighbourhood that would easily lose anyone following him and apparently parked whatever mode of transportation somewhere where we wouldn't see him getting in a car and we could take down a license plate. Never got any real identifying information and, as far as I know, he got away with it.
Shit, I had completely forgot! Yeah, I'm working at Wal-Mart, and some lady apparently stole like 12 or 15 or a whole damn bunch of TVs...she had simply grabbed a hand cart, and was throwing them on it and rolling them out the door one at a time. Did this more than ten times before a greeter finally, like, noticed. Had a whole van full. If she hadn't gone back for that last one, she'd have gotten away with it.
I wound up catching the shit for it, because I was in electronics. Which may be fair. But I was alone in there, and busy with customers back-to-back the entire time. I mean, that's why we have door greeters and why we generally mark the boxes so they know the crap was paid for.
But yeah.
See, that's why I hate when the greeters try to check my bags and ask to see my receipt and all that crap. I politely inform them that it's okay, that I'm not a thief (though I've stolen plenty of things from there), and that I didn't steal anything. If they give me crap. I give it back, and I don't break stride.
The one time I actually got confronted was when I had a cart full of groceries. Like....refrigerated stuff, and I'd spent over $100. The manager ended up coming over, and I put it plainly. "Look, if you want to check through all this stuff we can go over to Customer Service and you can sort through it while they're ringing up my return. If you're going to assume I'm stealing from you, I'm not going to bother actually giving you my money."
He apologized, and left me on my way.
o_O
Apparently the number of TVs you could expect to successfully take is greater than ten and less than twenty, yes. ;-)
But that definitely falls in the "just look like you know what you're doing" category as well.
We wondered if the thief might be autistic. Or just horribly unconfident about his juggling abilities.
edit: Oh oh, in my house in Ithaca, the back door to the kitchen got left unlocked and someone stole all my Wii/PS2 games (left the consoles), a stack of shitty DVDs (Kangaroo Jack-caliber), a bunch of bananas, and five Pilsbury biscuits my roommate had made the night before. Considering the location, we figured he was just really baked.
I never said I wasn't a hypocrite.
As for getting robbed/nearly robbed. I used to deliver pizzas for a living. It was a small town, and had some pretty shady neighborhoods. I pull up to this house, and there's a minivan in the front yard. This lady gets out and says, "Hey, I didn't order a pizza."
I check the number and address, she confirms, then repeats that she didn't order a pizza. As she's walking up to the house she says, "You 'bout to get robbed."
She goes into the house, and starts yelling at someone in there if they ordered a pizza or not, yells at them a few times, gets responses that I don't understand at all, then says, again, as she shuts the door, "Yeah, you 'bout to get robbed."
I thank her, head back to my car, and start heading onto my next delivery. I call the manager to let him know what happened, and he says, "Well, man, look, I mean....if you really don't feel safe...." to which I respond, "It's not about feeling safe, it's about feeling stupid when I'm testifying and have to say, "Yeah, well, they said I was gonna get robbed, but, you know....I didn't believe 'em."
Fucking pizza delivery. Man, I've got stories.
Yeah, what the fuck.
"I'm not a thief, but I'm a thief."
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
I head towards the exit and one of the greeters stops me, asking to see my receipt. I calmly hand her the receipt, she looks over it intently, clearly lingers a bit on the signature, and then nods, hands me my receipt and waves me through. That one greatly confused me.
Cops never figured it out, but figured it was someone my roommate knew who didn't like me, since nothing of his was taken, but they managed to find my laptop under a pile of clothes in my closet. I learned a valuable lesson about renter's insurance, and why I should have it.
Awesome.
All in all, it wasn't too bad. The guitar he took wasn't the most expensive, but it WAS the one which had the most sentimental value to me, which sucked. Insurance covered it and gave me more than twice what it was worth, though.
The police came and took fingerprints and ended up spilling that black greasy crap all over the couch, which really sucked. $500 to get it cleaned.
They opened an investigation but of course nothing ever came of it.
Yeah, no, I'm definitely a thief. I've stolen all kinds of shit. Kind of a thrill. Probably a bit of a klepto.
I am unsure as to how this is an "attempted break-in" rather than just some crazy person banging on your door.
And yet, every time they check my receipt/bags, they never find anything.
One time, back when they were putting those dumb sensor tags on everything, like deodorant, I decided to try to steal some just to see if this particular idea I'd had would work. I took two, pocketed one, and put the other in my basket. After I checked out, I went into the bathroom, put the purchased (and sensor-deactivated one) in my pocket, and put the un-scanned one in my bag. Headed out, triggered the sensor. They asked for my bag, waved it in front of the thing, it went off, they pulled out my receipt, checked the items, saw I'd paid for the stick of deodorant, handed me my bag, and sent me on my way.
I'm....probably a klepto. I genuinely find stealing a bit of a challenge. Like...how can I outsmart theft-detection/deterrents, ya know?