if you witnessed a public parking lot thief, wwyd?
gothamyte
from that Adam Westsiiiide of Gotham
today, i was about to pull off from an outdoor public parking lot that i was at, when i noticed directly in front of me, a young punk brazenly trying random car doors during broad daylight around 5pm, testing to see which ones were unlocked. he found one. then he tried removing what he could from their backseat, etc. it's unclear if he noticed me even though i was like a good stone's throw directly in from him, we're both facing each other, but he was too focused on his task at hand to pay attention to me.
what would y'all have done?
coincidentally, there was a female cop who was posted at that lot at that time. but she was parked behind me, blocking me in, just chillin' and so she pulled up about 50 feet forward so i could exit, but now that put her out of range of the parking lot, so that young punk moved in soon as the opportunity came.
for a second, i thought about honking my horn until he looked up at me and then i would shake my head "no" like, i see you, c'mon, don't do that, man. instead, i drove up to the police woman on my way out and informed her. i'm guessing by the time she backed up the 50 ft, he'd notice and be gone.
maybe i shoulda done both.
anyway, no matter where you are, always lock your doors, y'all.
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can't remember the last time i witnessed a thief in progress so i couldn't think of the best response. a tiny part of me was like, well, the owner of the car needs to learn this lesson. and since the punk didn't exactly force his way in, and/or break glass or anything, just took advantage of an unlocked car, i dunno....and had the cop not been there, i wonder if i would've went ahead and honked my horn at him.
and by the way, i've had my car broken into 2x. had stuff stolen--they broke my window in broad daylight in a relatively busy, well-manicured upscale neighborhood which shocked the hell outta me. it was a good lesson to not leave anything visible in my car seat no matter where i am....
no idea how many cds i had in it at that time. it was full. and it was big enough, i realize now that it probably looked like a laptop bag.
some passerby probably thought it was a laptop resting in my passenger seat and broke my back window to get into my car.
broad daylight. busy residential area. i knew it was only cds, so i didn't think that to anyone else it could appear as something else.
when I returned about an hour later I discovered that I had actually left the car totally unlocked. thankfully nobody had tested my doors on my car to see if it was unlocked.
How do you know that. Just because you found nothing missing doesn’t mean nobody looked. :)
As for what one should do in the above situation, aim for center mass, not the head or legs. Or let a cop know. If you’re a total wuss.
>As for what one should do in the above situation, aim for center mass,not the head or the legs<
That’s a surefire way to get yourself charged with intentional manslaughter, better to be a total wuss than incur the cost of defending yourself and the very real risk of prison time.
What I did is very close to what was said above, attract attention to the incident. What I would do depended on the exact situation. Many times I would just ask if they locked themselves out of the car and needed help. Just drawing attention to them most always did the trick!
I'd say there is a better than 50-50 chance the perp has a drug habit that their opportunistic petty theft is feeding. That makes them potentially very unstable and unpredictable.
I would say your safety comes first. Don't be a Bruce Willis. Be a good witness. Tell the cop in the parking lot what you saw. Let the professional handle the law enforcement.