braisler

So yesterday I came onto campus to find that my bike had been stolen. I work at a large university and find that having a bike makes it easier to get around. This is not a hugely big deal as it was a bike that I bought at a garage for $10 and just rode around campus, but it got me thinking about crime.

Yeah, that bike wasn't hugely expensive. But it was my bike dammit! And I will miss it.. and the cable lock that it was secured with. And yes, even a small theft like this is a crime. I reported it to the campus police office just in case, the extremely unlikely case, that something turns up.

I have been the victim of petty crime like this several times in my life. I've had a car stereo stolen out of my car. Another car was broken into and rifled through. A roommate used my credit card to buy online porn. Another bike was vandalized and the seat and post stolen. None of these crimes happened in particularly 'high crime' areas, or so I thought. What is interesting for me is that I never thought, 'Oh NO! I'm the VICTIM of a CRIME! Next their going to be knocking down my doors and raping my cat!' My reaction was more of a, 'Oh, that's unfortunate' and a shoulder shrug and carrying on with my life. While the previous reaction is obvious hyperbole, is my actual reaction too mundane? Should I be more outraged?

How many of you have had some crime committed against you? What was the outcome? How did you feel about being a victim? Does petty crime make you feel unsafe in the area where you live?

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You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.
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Punk.of.Ages

I've also been the victim of petty theft many times. My reaction has always been pretty much the same as yours...

I don't really put a whole lot of stock in material possessions though. Even when the iPod I spent my vacation money on was stolen out of my own bedroom, or the time somebody snagged $300 out of my pocket at a concert wasn't that big of a deal to me. I mean, i got angry. Of course I was angry, but there's really nothing to do about it and life will continue without [insert stolen possession here].

Now, if any of these things were stolen from me, I'd go bat shit crazy, but even then I don't know how I'd get them back.

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squeeeb

the first time i was a victim was in 7th grade, my brand new bad ass redline bmx bike was stolen from in front of the arcade. i felt like shit.

my house was robbed by my drug dealing, convicted of rape 3 times 18 year old neighbor. that too sucked the balls. no, i didn't get my shit back and no, he didn't go to jail. there was no "proof" even though he was seen selling some of my shit in the gas station parking lot and some kids came up and told me he did it and the day it happened, when i got home, before i knew i was broken into, he came over and said he didn't see anything.

i had a radio stolen from my barracks room, as well as a bad ass t shirt taken from my laundry once. petty shit, but still, MY petty shit.

you can't not feel bad, but you can choose to understand its just stuff, you lived how many years before you had that stuff with no problem? things can be replaced. there is nothing you can really do about it, so you just gotta let it go. the guy who took your shit is probably in a lot shittier position in the world than you are, or why would he have taken it? (and i don't necessarily mean financially, he could just be a miserable angry bitter unhappy person). your lack of outrage is the way to go.

in the future, if you do get a bike, write down the serial number, usually on the bottom bracket. it can help in retrieving your bike.

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onward to mayhem!

BadNick

Fortunately, I've only been ripped off via petty crime a couple times in my life...and I'm 60yo now, so I think that's not too bad.

Back when I was growing up in an inner-city blue collar area of Phila, I'm sure there were times when I was "bypassed" by the local petty thieves/drug addicts because they knew who I was and who I hung around with. So they hit the next available easy target instead ...except once and I suspect somebody I knew better may have done this theft: I left my old bomb car parked down the street and one day I came out and it was gone. I only paid $100 for it so no big deal and I wanted a newer car anyway. But about a month later I found the car parked in about the same spot from where it was taken, with no damage. I guess somebody just wanted to borrow it for a while.
A couple years later, the replacement car was stolen as I was in one of my hangout restaurants on Penn's campus downtown Phila. I came out after a few hours and first thought I forgot where I parked, but then after some searching and remembering I concluded the car was stolen. I reported it to the police and they took all the info as required. A couple weeks later, one very early morning my buddy calls me to say he found my car and he's parked near it now, and I should come down to 16th & South where it's parked. So I get my gf to drive me down there, by now the cops are all around, they take the info, look at my documents, and tell me I can take the car home. Luckily, no damage since I really like this car, and only a few joints were missing from the glove compartment...I neglected to report that loss to the police. So two weeks later I'm on my way home in this car, it's late after the bars closed so past 2am, my brother is in the car with me. After leaving downtown, I'm about 15 minutes away near home and stopped at a traffic light when I hear a tap on my driver's side window and look out to see a guy in jeans and a sweatshirt pointing a .38 at my face! Within the fractions of a second I see this, out of the corner of my eye I also notice another guy coming up the other side of the car, as well as an obvious unmarked police car behind me...so that had a bit of a subduing effect on the adreniline rush I was having and the total panic attack I might have otherwise felt. I open the window and he yells "get out of the car with your hands up!...you're driving a stolen vehicle" and as my door opens he sort of throws me up against the car. In my freaked out near panic I'm now cursing at him calling him a stupid frickin' idiot, that this is my car and can prove it. So I show him the owners card/registration and my driver's license and it's starting to sink into his head that this might be my car. Later, they admitted that they had a 2 week old "hot sheet" with my car listed on it and they apologized...I imagined all sorts of alternative endings to this story, like me panicing when I saw the gun, hitting the gas, and him shooting me for driving my own car.

A couple years later when I lived in a nice apartment in downtown Phila on the second floor of a gorgeous old brownstone row house, I had a parking spot in a locked yard behind the house; but one night somebody got in there anyway and rifled through my car looking for stuff; nothing was broken and I had nothing of value in the car, so no real loss, just a sense of being violated to some degree.

Another time I was visiting friends in NYC and left my car parked on 34th St. right up the block from their apartment and when I came out the small vent window of my car was broken and the stereo neatly removed with no other damage...thanks to the expert thieves who know how to do it right. The cops told me that happens at least 30 times a night in their district.

Wow, squeeeb's suggestion about the s/n's plays a role in another one of my stories. My younger son's bicycle was stolen a couple years ago. We wrote it off since recovery of such items almost never happens. Then over a year later, one Saturday I get a call from my son saying he's at the local police station and I should come down since he and his buddies found his old bike. It turns out they saw a kid riding it and were sure it was my son's old bike, so they sent the fastest running buddy to follow the kid on the bike...the kid on the bike was a few years older than my son and his friends. So after a few blocks the kid on the bike stops to confront the buddy running after him and asks what's up. The runner buddy doesn't approach too close, but tells the kid on the bike that they have the cops coming after him since he's on a stolen bike, and by now he recognizes the kid and tells him "and don't try to run away I know who you are". So both kids go back to the police station with the bike...I think this does suggest that the kid on the bike may have told the truth when he said he bought the bike from another kid for $40. So I arrive at the police station, pull out the receipts for this bike and another I bought at the same time from my daughter's bike shop, the shop even told me to save these receipts and I uncharacteristically did so. So we flip the bike over and there are the same serial numbers as on the receipt. The cop says he has no choice but to confiscate the bike from the kid and give it back to me...I'm not sure that's legally correct, but it was fair in my eyes. So the cop also calls the boy's mother since he has to report the police interaction with this minor, but the mom refuses to come to the police station and is just pissed off about the whole thing. Anyway, even though it was gone for way over a year, we got this bike back.

In any case, I can't fully accept the mentality of "oh well, they're only replaceable material things of no significant value in life". There is a sense of someone violating my privacy and boundaries and showing no respect for another person and that pisses me off.

highthief

Knock on wood, I don't think I've had anything stolen from me since I was a very small child, over 35 years ago.

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Jinn

I think your reaction is justified. I've been mad too, but really.. what can you do?

Being mad at the theft really only hurts you in emotional time, and does nothing to affect the perpetrator. It's just like being mad at someone for somehow causing you 'wrong' in your past. People confuse forgiveness and think that it is about letting the other person get away with what they did, or somehow telling them it was was okay. Forgiveness is in fact for you, and you only. It takes the emotional burden of being angry about it off your chest, and it lets you move forward. You never have to tell the person that you've forgiven them, because it's not for them. And you don't have to let them escape without punishment. But you owe it to yourself to move on and stop letting the emotions associated with what THEY did affect YOUR psyche.

It sounds like you're already there if you're having such a minor reaction to the crime. Unfortunately, most people aren't. Look at the number of people struggling daily with the emotion of crimes committed against them decades ago, or parents who did X or Y to them when they were growing up. They need to forgive for themselves, not for the perpetrator. If we let a thief affect us emotionally, they've stolen more than your bike, or your radio, or your car; they've stolen your life.

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MSD

Freshman year of college, I walked out to the garage to find someone with the back door of my car open looking around. I was dumb to leave it unlocked, but there's a police station one floor up and I didn't think anyone would be so ballsy. I said something like "Hey, find what you're looking for?" and whacked him in the side of the knee with the back half of my pool cue, which I carried because I didn't have a case for it (this was one of the few times in my life that I had a movie-like moment when I smoothly talked and acted as if I had rehearsed it.) Figures I was parked to the side of a fixed camera, but I didn't notice anything missing and didn't take the time to report it.

These days, my only real concerns for theft are my car, which I owe money on, and my guns. Even if I have no legal liability if someone steals them and uses them in violent crimes, I would still feel pretty shitty about it.

DaniGirl

I understand being angry, it really sucks when something that is your property gets stolen.
I have not had anything really expensive stolen from me, but I have had jewelery that my grandpa gave me when I was younger stolen from me. It was probably one of my parents or there friends. So I understand your anger, but what can you do, sometimes people suck.

Push-Pull

The few times I've had small crimes committed against me, I've been more pissed at myself for not preventing it.

I posted this in another thread, but I had a 2.5 gallon gas can with about a gallon of gas stolen out of the back of my truck one time. I was pissed for leaving it out in the open, but I decided to so something about it. I took another crappy gas can, filled it with water, used oil, sawdust, dirt, diesel, and just enough gas to make it smell like gas, and left it in the back of the truck. Sure enough, it was stolen. Later on, the wife and I were taking a walk around our neighborhood when I noticed two teens wrenching under a car. I asked what was wrong with the car, and the one replies that he's not sure, it just started running rough and stalling. (classic symptoms of crappy fuel) I just smiled and wished them luck.

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Wrexify

I don't know... I don't think being stolen from is ever the victim's fault. I was feeling this way after losing some expensive items, but then I realized I was immediately exonerating the thief. How do they get into our heads like this?

Only one thing you can do now: TRUST NO ONE

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Flinx

Oddly enough I got a chuckle out of this thread, not because people have had stuff stolen but because of the last time time someone broke into my car. Came home from work after a fairly long shift (about 20 hours) and didn't empty out my car like I normally did. During the DAY some punk broke into my car an stole a very cheap set of boxed 6x9 speakers. What he/she didn't steal that was on the front seat BESIDE the door he/she broke into was my car unlock kit (well over $400 of tools that can unlock ANY car without making noise), small toolbox full of MAC and SnapOn tools (probably over $1500 easy) and a CD folder containing an varied assortment of CD's of at least 40 to 45 cd's and small satchel containing miscellaneous towing straps and tools (havn't a clue what they would have been worth but well over a couple hundred dollars to replace). Also a some minor junk and flotsam that any work vehicle manages to acquire and be forgotten about till it's needed or tripped over. Imagaine my surprise waking up and going out to my car to drive to the holding compound only to find my car door open with a window smashed in and only being able to figure out the thief stole a maybe $80 set of speakers with boxes an NOT stealing tools he/she would have had to crawl over worth more then the dam car. Incredible. I believe I stood there for at least 10 minutes before my room mate came out and asked me whats wrong, all I could do was point and say "tell me whats wrong with this picture?". Took him about 30 seconds to figure out the stupid thief DIDN'T take the one thing that would have made his/her criminal life so much easier, my lockout kit was still on the front seat.
Some are probably wondering just how fast a lockout kit can open a car, well depends on the car really but when I still used it everyday it was the very rare car I spent more then 2 minutes on ,including the time it took to open the kit up an chose the right tool . Oddly enough the "high" end cars were usually the easiest to open (excluding BMW).

Rekna

I had a neighbor who had just bought a brand new stereo for her car. She didn't have it installed yet and left it on the floor of the passenger side. That night someone broke into her car and ripped out her stock car stereo but left the brand new on in a retail box on the floor.....