Today, upon pulling into the driveway and getting out of the truck, I noticed an example of that which does not belong… A beat up little blue compact car with two tweaker looking types in it driving slowly around the culdesac. I warily eyed them and when they noticed me they moved along and left. Likely looking for places to rob. That is what the city, or really the entire state, has become. A haven for meth-heads and other similar types who look for any opportunity to steal. They do this with impunity now, thanks to our governor who made certain that they would suffer no significant penalty for such crimes. As I like to say, you may not get the behaviors you want from others but you always-100% of the time, get whatever you allow from others. And the state of Alaska has, against the wishes of its citizens, chosen to allow property crimes. Shoplifters are not even pursued. Car thieves, when caught, are given a ticket and sent away. Catch and release law enforcement. The cops must hate it as much as we do. They go to all this trouble to catch the bad guys and then some jerkoff judge sets them back into the streets because the legislature and governor approve. I am of the mindset that some of these people should just be shot. But if they are hell bent to set them loose, I would like to see them shipped to Juneau and dumped upon the governor’s doorstep. Let them be his problem for a change.
But…I digress. Rather than another rip at our useless elected officials, I actually have a story which the cruising tweakers reminded me of and which I shared with a neighbor who happened to show up about the same time the suspicious characters were leaving.
About 24 years ago, I was living upstairs in an apartment above the sign shop I worked for in Fairbanks. One day, my boss and I discovered some equipment and parts stolen from one of the trucks in the yard. A police report was filed, the officers took photos of damage, etc. Then the next day, it happened again! Once again, police called and arrived, report filed, etc. At this point I discussed the matter with my boss and I said that clearly these guys would be back. They’d gotten away with it twice, so they would likely try again. Such crooks are both stupid and predictable. So I told my employer that I would stay up and wait. After all, I both lived and worked there. And these were some high dollar thefts of hardware that my employer would be obliged to replace and this would cut into the bottom line and by extension, it would cut into money available to pay employees. This last item means that such an event could have the potential to negatively impact my ability to put food on the table. As such, these crooks were effectively trying to starve me to death. Therefore, they were fair game to be stopped.
So my brother and a friend of his came over and we stayed up late watching movies and waiting for the likelihood of another visit from our crooks. Our efforts were not wasted. Sometime around midnight they arrived. My girlfriend called the police and the rest of us went outside. Unfortunately, they either heard or saw us and only threw a few items in their truck and began to leave. Before I could get a definitive bead on them, they were off the property. So I lowered the shotgun and we jumped in the car and proceeded to follow them a bit down the road to at least see where they were headed and get any better description that we could.
When we drove back into our place, the trooper had arrived. He took a peek into the car and saw the three of us……and enough hardware to outfit a small South American revolutionary army. I’m not really a major gun guy, but my brother was and he worked in the gun business for a while and was all too happy to come help. The trooper began to laugh as he said, “I guess those guys are lucky they got away.” He proceeded to take the full report and my above logical statement for WHY they deserved to be stopped using any means available. He actually found my argument satisfactory and told me it made perfect sense.
In the next few weeks, this trooper made a point to give me updates on how his work on that case was proceeding. Sometimes he would call me, other times stop by. I think he was not only a good trooper but also figured he’d have less paperwork if he caught them before they tried to come back to our place again. Shortly afterward, he did in fact arrest the perpetrator and did actually recover some of the stolen equipment so everyone was happy, other than maybe the crook…but I am not concerned with how he felt.
Now about 7 or 8 years later when I was living in Anchorage, a rash of similar break-ins and thefts were happening on the airport I worked at. Usually cars being broken into and sometimes the aircraft (a BIG no-no!) and the cops were not getting much results during the two or three months that this was happening. Some of my coworkers who were on the night shift had their cars burglarized. When I came on duty the next morning and heard, I told them that I could not tell them to go out and confront the thieves but that if it were my car, I would…then I told them an abbreviated version about my experience in Fairbanks years before and that they could, if nothing else, pretty much rest assured that these thieves would come back since they’d been getting away with it so far.
A few days later I came into work and learned that they had in fact come back. And that three of our employees went outside from two directions and caught them! One managed to run and escape over a fence. He was arrested a couple of hours afterward. He was the lucky one. The other had to deal with those whom he had been stealing from until which time as the police arrived. One of the guys was into boxing and did so in a semi-pro venue as a side gig. When the police arrived, the thief told them that these guys had beat him up. And, I suspect he did sustain some injuries from his attempt at escape. It’s an occupational hazard for those who choose to engage in such activity. Our employees explained that in fact, the perpetrator had slipped on the ice in the parking lot, which is quite slippery this time of year.
The officers, who had been trying to break up this little theft ring for a couple of months, looked at the guy and said something to the effect of, “Yeah, looks like he fell down on the ice.” and wrote up the report and carted him away.
So, after learning of this the following morning I happily set to work upon my tasks and after work I stopped off and bought some pizza and brought it back to the shop and gave it to the guys on the night shift. They asked me why…..my response was simple: “Let’s just say I understand how slippery that parking lot is and I can see how somebody might fall down–18 TIMES!”