View from the cop: Crime & punishment
View from the Cop is moving to a new site on Wordpress. Blogger Steve Rose of the Sandy Springs Police Department gives his take on crime, offers safety tips and give his weekly picks from the police blotter. Follow Steve Rose to the new blog site.
AJC.com > Metro > View from the cop > Archives > 2007 > August > 14
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Stop crime, stop whining
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
What would you guess to be the first rule of preventing crime is? Maybe “lock your doors” or “call the police when you see suspicious persons” or “act crazy all the time so people won’t come near you?”
Well, no, although the last one is good advice if you ask me. The first rule to good crime prevention is this: Shut up and quit whining about what is and what isn’t fair!
Yep. That’s it. That is the first step to getting on with it.
Guess what folks, crime is out there and it’s going to be a part of our lives as long as we’re out there too. So complaining isn’t going to help. Now don’t get me wrong. Getting mad is OK, especially after your $3500 laptop gets gone courtesy of a rock through the window of your car. I believe in adequate time for you to vent. You can vent to me. Everyone does. After adequate venting time, you need to realize that you contributed to that crime as much as the bottom-feeder who’s putting your laptop up for sale on eBay for a lousy three-hundred bucks. That scenario right there plays out here a dozen or more times a week.
“I don’t know why you guys can’t patrol my parking lot more often!!” We hear you. We wish we could but we can’t because it isn’t practical. We can’t be in all those places all the time. I wish I could say that we had enough officers for each parking lot but the ideal average is still around 2 cops per 1000 fine citizens so that still leaves 998 disgruntled folks.
Everyone has an opinion of how we could do better and believe it or not that is one of the things we really want to hear but some things aren’t practical. If you say “Just hire another 500 cops” then I have to politely wait on your plan to finance it.
The single most effective tool in crime prevention is you not being dumb. Leaving that laptop in the car overnight was dumb. Leaving that i-Pod in the car while you shop is dumb. Putting that wallet with eight-hundred bucks and a ten-thousand dollar Rolex in a gym locker is really dumb (actually that one is Hall of Fame Dumb)—but it happens all the time. That’s right.
All crime is based on opportunity. Removing the opportunity raises the risk right? Therefore, Risk vs. Opportunity. You control your fate here folks.
When I go home at night I have to unload my car of laptop, guns, day planners, notebooks, various anti-designated hitter pamphlets, various love letters to Jimmy Buffet that I confiscated from my wife’s desk at work, CDs and occasionally turtles that I rescued from the road. (Why do they get halfway across and then stop??!!)
I hate making two trips to unload everything every single evening but I would, however, rather make the two trips than to have that feeling the next morning, and some of you know exactly what I mean, while looking at your broken window and realizing that you’re not going to find in that car what you left there last night. First thought: I want a do-over. We don’t have those in grown-up land. You just have to take the hit.
Complaining is a reaction. Lashing out to me or your wife (but not us together because that would be really awkward) or whoever you see right after you find out your stuff is gone won’t change it. One of the first things I remember being taught in the police academy, back when we had call boxes and the most popular cop show starred Toody and Muldoon, was to use prior information.
I am telling you now — hence prior information — that if you will get into the habit, (meaning more than twice,) of removing your valuables, also known as the opportunity, from your cars whenever you can but especially at night, you will put yourself in a very small percent of potential victims. Thieves are lazy and will gravitate to the path of least resistance. That’s a fact.
Services »
