Over the last weekend a piece ran in the Post Dispatch about a guy that had his laptop stolen. With the help of exactly no one, he managed to locate the thief by logging in to his computer and trick him in to typing in his name and address. The victim gave all the information to the police who did…nothing.
Four days after the June 20 burglary of his Pennsylvania Avenue home, Van Almsick grew tired of waiting.
“It was like, man, this is happening right now! I can’t wait for them to check into it,” he said.
Armed with a video camera and accompanied by two friends, he went to the house indicated by the tracking. He confronted the man who had been captured on camera and offered a deal: Give me the computer back, and I’ll leave, no questions asked. He got his computer but never found his other items, which ranged from iPhones to TV sets.
“I’m totally annoyed by police,” he said. “I felt like I had to do their job for them.”
That annoyed feeling your experiencing is because you did do their job for them.
The report above is just one of several the article included, but the best part was the interview with St. Louis Police Chief Dan Isom. Isom did an admirable job of saying the standard nothing, but unfortunately for him, we ran his comments through the Punching Kitty Translatmotron 2349234-9 (The extra nine is because this version also plays mini-discs. We got it at Costco.) and here are Isom’s comments quoted below, with the translation immediately following.
Begin Translation:
Police Chief Dan Isom said there are bound to be mistakes among the 140,000 yearly incidents the department handles. But he said his detectives do regularly take advantage of tracking software and GPS capability.
The problem, he said, is the result does not always come as quickly as people expect. Detectives take each incident and, in addition to investigating it, try to match it to larger crime patterns, which can take time.
Sure you have a photo of the guy as well as his full name and address, but what else do you have? How the hell are we supposed to wrongly imprison someone, dick around for three weeks so he can get away, or at least orchestrate a bloody shoot out in the street if you’ve got the guy red-handed? I mean, you did all the work, and then called to tell us where to go to pick up him and get your stuff back, the whole thing would have taken us 15 minutes! There’s the right way to do things, that then there’s this. What’s next? You gonna shoot the guy and text bloody photos of the aftermath to everyone in St. Louis all by yourself? I’d like to see you try!
[Isom] continued: “I certainly understand people’s frustration. I’ve been a victim of larceny myself.
Man I’ve got to move to the county one of these days.
Every crime is important to us,
That’s just something you say. Like how you say you love all your children the same, but we both know the one that plays with his trucks by repeatedly smashing them together is starting to get on your nerves and we both know he’s never leaving the house.
…but there’s a reality of looking at the number of crimes that are reported in the city of St. Louis…
We live in a crime ridden city, and I’ve pretty much given up on fixing it.
…and assessing which ones we have credible evidence to move forward on.
I forgot what we were talking about.
There are decisions we have to make each day about what we pursue.”
Look, flat out. Did you get stabbed or not? If you didn’t, you’re going to have to wait for a while…and by “a while” I mean it might be quicker to stab yourself and try to frame your laptop thief for it…also if you could transform yourself in to a little white girl, it wouldn’t hurt.
Do we make mistakes sometime? Certainly.
Like the time I said ok when you could ask a me few questions…
Is there miscommunication? Certainly.
For instance, I never pick up the phone when I hear it playing “The Bitch Is Back”! …oh, that’s my personalized ring tone for Mayor Slay…”Oh hey, like 30 more people died today, and like 1,000 more cars were stolen!” ….pffft! Always something with that guy!
But we use that type of information every day successfully.
At least I managed to get all my stuff back when I was robbed! The system works (for me).
via STLToday