The Safe Job

Dan Kaufman, from the Committees of Correspondence, commented on my article about some thief who'd broken the window of his car; never having bothered to check the door, which was left unlocked. I’d written about stupid thieves who destroy much more than they ever get away with. (linked via title bar)

I suppose I should add to the list of destructive jerks; those wonderful folks who help raise our insurance premiums with each breath they take outside the cell block walls. I could go on quite a while; what’s that line from Alice’s Restaurant, the one Arlo Guthrie adds after having sung the first ten minutes or so and you’re not sure how much longer he’ll keep singing, “I could go on all night, … I’m not proud…or tired”, as he waits for the chorus line to come around again; hoping that this time the audience will join in with a little more volume, “You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant; excepting Alice, You can get anything you want… at Alice’s Restaurant. Walk right in it’s around the back, just a half a mile from the rail road tracks, you can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant, …Da da da da da da da dum…at Alice’s Restaurant…”

As a point of interest, I think it’s mildly amusing that a retired cop would enjoy Alice’s Restaurant with all the sarcasm directed toward, “Officer Obie”, who put him in jail for littering and the rest of the police in attendance. Here’s the link to the lyrics for the entire song.

http://www.arlo.net/lyrics/alices.shtml

I made a burglary of a residence at the home of a retired individual many years ago. His hobby was learning the art of cutting gem stones. He’d stored all his practice gems in a rather large old time safe in one of his bedrooms, the door to the safe was always left unlocked so he didn’t have to fumble with the combination. My thought was, “Why not leave them on the table if you’re not going to lock the safe?”, but this was his stuff and not mine.

He came home to find the house had been broken into as he followed the trail of concrete dust that had been tracked on the carpet. This old safe had walls that were filled with concrete as a means of insulation against fire. The thieves had pried open the top with sledge hammers and crow bars. They tore the top layer of steel off and broke the concrete into “Gorgan Dust”. ( Line stolen from The Last Star Fighter). Then came the next layer of steel and finally into the compartments that had the gem stones all in those fancy velvet protective flaps. There were pieces of safe scattered everywhere and the dust from the concrete had drifted into every room of the house. The thieves got away with a bunch of junk stones, the owner showing me that the really good stuff was in the next compartment and had never been touched. The door to the safe had never been tried as it swung open easily, the owner showing me as he pushed down on the lever arm.

Moving right along on the list of worthless thieves are the ones who break into convenience stores during the wee hours to steal a couple of six packs of beer. They have a couple of methods to accomplish the break in; tossing a huge piece of concrete through the front window is the most popular, followed closely by driving a bumper into the front of the store so that it takes out several of those windows along with the supports for those windows. They then grab a couple of cold ones and disappear into the night. I used to arrive after having been dispatched to one of these “Smash and grabs”; take notice of the damage, what I figured had been stolen and fill in most of the blanks on the official incident report before the owner showed up. I could then get his/her name to finish off the report and turn the building over at that time. The store front glass cost about $ 400 for each piece broken; the beer was about $ 20.

Last on my list, at least for today, is the young man who broke into one of his neighbors apartments here in Houston this past week. He saw an electronic gadget that he just had to have so he took it. On the way out he came up with the idea of covering his tracks, getting rid of his finger prints on all the other stuff he’d rummaged through. He set the apartment on fire and ran out the door with his prize. A few minutes later 8 apartment units had burned to the ground, their occupants escaping serious injury and death by only moments as the smoke filled each attached apartment. Some of the neighbors had seen him leave the apartment, the one that he set on fire, and it was only a matter of putting the cuffs on him as they led him off to jail. Did I mention that most of the families who lost everything in the fire were also temporary residents, evacuees from Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans? When asked about it, the suspect could only say he was sorry.

Was he sorry about the damage, the possibility that he could have killed folks because of his stupidity or was he sorry that he got caught? At least he got caught.