View from the cop: Crime & punishment
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AJC.com > Metro > View from the cop > Archives > 2006 > February > 20
Monday, February 20, 2006
Remember, bad guys have check lists
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s time for your quarterly reminder that you do have control over your destiny a bit if you will take some time and think about things that a lot of people never think about.
There has been a rise in street-level crime over the past 12 months, mostly in this general area. Many pedestrian robberies occur when the victim gets out or into a car parked in a medium- to large-size parking lot or isolated in some way, for example, at a bus stop after dark.
The victim is most often approached by one or two people and robbed at gunpoint of a wallet and cell phone. In some cases they take the victim’s car. If the robbery yielded credit cards, they’re used immediately, often at a nearby department store.
Pedestrian robberies are meant to take only a few seconds. One minute is a long time for either the victim or robber. The robber has to worry about someone coming along and seeing the crime. He also has to consider that the longer he is in contact with the victim, the less his advantage with the surprise and intimidation factor. (Sooner or later the victim is going to get mad.)
The victim’s safety, of course, is in jeopardy and will be until that contact is broken. Although both people are on different sides of the crime, the goal for each is a short meeting.
You read stories occasionally where the victim or witness turns the tables on the bad guy and takes control and saves the day.
I saw a video recently of the man, waiting on his pizza, tackling a robber who was standing at the counter, with a gun, robbing the clerk. The witness was behind and to the side of the robber, sitting in a chair alongside the front window of the store. As the customer rushed the bad guy, he tackled him just before he could turn around with the gun. It worked out very well for him.
I’m sure a lot of criminals who use a gun aren’t prepared to shoot someone but then again, you better believe that some are. If the robber had turned a half-second earlier, he would have had a clear shot. That man’s fate would have been in the hands of the bad guy.
Think about that part of it and don’t forget to think about all the people who would be affected if you are buried next week. All I’m saying is don’t get caught up in all the hero stuff until you think it through. Most of the time the crime springs so fast that you clearly do not have the advantage. Don’t risk your life for a few seconds of video-time on the 11 o’clock news.
I don’t know what the odds are, but I’m sure that at some point in our lives, we’ve all been involved in or near someone involved as a victim or bad guy. Wrong place at the wrong time stuff. How many of you can think back and remember a time or two where you were in one place that, if you were a little bit up there or back yonder, you could have been in deep — well, mud.
Not counting police stuff, I remember several incidents. Once in high school I was driving home on a cut-through street from Doraville to Chamblee. I heard something and slowed down to try and figure out what it was. I stopped my car just short of an intersection and saw one of those things you remember in slow motion, like when the Six Million Dollar man ran anywhere, only without the irritating tattering noise that accompanied it.
The cops were chasing a car. They were flying and crossed over a set of railroad tracks sitting on top of a small incline. I’m sure they were anywhere from 80 to 100 mph. The bad guys crested the hill and went airborne, ala Dukes of Hazzard, and flew over the intersection about 10 feet in front of me, landing abruptly into an apartment building. (They obviously didn’t know the street dead-ended at the apartments. The three men inside did live to tell about it however.)
The wheels of their car were about the same height as the windows in my car as it flew past me meaning that I was 10 feet from a bad night. (Another near-death experience involved my escape from the enemy during the Battle of Tijuana when I was in the Navy. … well, let’s move on.)
The moral of the story is this: Use common sense.
Crime prevention involves a lot of information that can easily become obsolete; especially now that technology advances at such a rapid pace. It’s impossible to remember all the things that you could do to prevent this and that. What you need to remember are some absolutes of committing a crime.
