What would you do if you caught someone stealing from you.
 

Our rental house businsess is doing good. We met with new tenants last night to sign the lease, and exchange keys etc..
So I go out to the truck to get a tape measure, I exited the house from the back door instead of the front, and as I am approaching my truck , I can see the shadows of 4 sillouhettes at the rear corner of my truck. I stopped to let my eyes focus for a second, and I can clearly see 4 young colored guys, and one of them is trying to lift my turbo heater out of the bed of my truck.
My first instinct is to jump out and split the kids heat open with a pry bar, but I am older and wiser ,than 10 years ago. So I just kind of hang back and yell out" hey mother%$#&*, that is a good way to get your ass shot off". It was kind of funny , I dont think they could see me, and weren't sure where that statement came from. They all scramlbed, one made a cell phone call, and they casually struted away, all the while looking around trying to figure out where I was.
This stuff really pisses me off. Something goes off inside me , and I really wanted to cause bodily harm to the little bastards, but I guess this situation went as well as it could've. I still have my tools, and I dont have to fill out a police report

Go ahead. Make my day!

Archie Bunker lives!;)

Was that not politically correct?? It doesn't matter what color they were, what did matter, is that the fact that they were trying to lift tools out of my truck.

I get a big kick outta how colored guys strute.
I saw a gang of three of them struting yesterday.
The way one of them struted was hillarious.
His strute was funny because his ass was shot off.
Colored guys crack me up! :)

Probably not. If it didn't matter, you would have just said 4 guys. I haven't heard the word "colored" to describe anyone in a long time. Just thought it was funny in both the haha and strange way. But, I'm not colored so it wouldn't bother me. ;) Fwiw - just an observation - not busting yer chops.

Also - I would have probably just said I have dialed 911, but your solution seemed effective.

I find that calling colored people colored really screws with them. They don't get outright offended, and often seem amused. It's a good ice breaker, actually.

You did the right thing. Rush four guys with a pry bar, and about 15 seconds later, they usually have the pry bar, no matter how good you are.

HK, however . . . . . . ES NUMERO UNO!!!!! :D

Oh yeah, and theft is colorblind, man. On Pelican, it's not okay to describe the situation with things like . . . . adjectives. You should just say "guys." Oh wait, that's sexist too. You should've said "folks." Oh wait, connotates some kind of class division. You should say "people", maybe . But don't say "YOU PEOPLE", or you're screwed.

I know! And it really screws with me when they call me colorless. I can't help it that I was born colorless. Whenever I'm judged on the basis of my colorlessness it makes me feel so.....bland. :(

:D x2

It is truly amazing, how quickly things get "off topic" here on Pelican, I still love you guys though.

What do think the "C" in NAACP stands for?


People of all races use all types of terms to describe one another and it seems nothing is good enough or doesn't cause offense.



KT

Yeah the "colored" guys on the board are swingin'.

Yea, there definitely are few on here that have been completely brainwashed with the whole PC line of shyt.I don't really give a rat's ass what anybody calls me and I've been called most things by most every type in the book.I don't generally use derogatory terms towards anybody and I don't get my panties in a wad when I hear it directed at me either.Derogatory is in the mind of the beholder.

Good thing you let them go, so they can just mosey on down the street and rip off the next guy.

Maybe I'm a hopeless romantic (or redneck), but I like to believe there was a time in this country when good honest folks didn't let crooks just walk away. When they did their best to hold them for authorities, to make sure they didn't bring the same grief to anyone else. We are all in this together, after all.

Seems today the attitude is a cross between "don't get involved" and "thank god it wasn't me" and really giving a rat's ass if they move on to the next guy. We have been pussy whipped into believing we should not "take the law into our own hands" no matter what we see. Hell, it seems we can even get into a great deal of trouble these days for even trying to do the right thing, with the benefit of the doubt going to the crooks. That's a real shame.

To make matters worse, throw a little "color" into the equation, and the cries of "racism" and "profiling" drown out whatever it is the punks were doing. We live in very strange times indeed.

No worry. Us white guys got them way outnumbered.

Four against one? Not exactly good odds and he had no way of knowing what weapons they might have been carrying or what drugs they might have been on.

Dial 911? Good luck on having a cop turn up before the thieves make off with the gear.

Sounds to me like the OP did the smart thing, scaring them off.

This isn't the Wild West. The Wild West wasn't even the Wild West. (Least not the way Hollywood portrays it which is what most people really think of)

5,4,3,2,1,... how long 'til the howls start about them being "colored" and on drugs? :)

Last time I checked people of all ethnicities could carry guns, take drugs and steal things. I didn't even mention colour because it isn't relevant.

Lets see, I'm confused. United Negro College Fund, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, People of Color (as if honky isn't a color), and People of Color is poor grammar; it's a dangling modifier, you wouldn't say "People of Fat" or "People of Blind" would you?

Around here, the local newspaper identifies the race of suspects whenever the info is available.

What would I have done? Called the cops. We, as residents of Long Beach, are asked to report "suspicious activity." I have on a couple of occasions and gotten reasonably quick and courteous response.

Jeff, I have been down this road before, Call the police, wait 45 minutes, meanwhile the perps are long gone, police show up, I fill out some paper work, and another 2 hours of my life are gone. Or, I try to detain them, I risk getting my"own ass shot off", or get into some sort of scuttle, which ends up with me in court, or a couple of black eyes. Trust me when I say that I would have loved to handle the situation different, but what is one to do? Mind you, that this is out in front of a rental property in the city, not at my own home. I may have reacted a lot differntly at my own house, but this sort of stuff does not really happen where I live. I actually expect this sort of stuff to happen in the city. We usually unload all of our tools when we arrive, and leave the vechicles locked, and empty.
This is not even in a bad area of the city, it is just that we are on a busy street and there is a lot of foot traffic past our places to get to the corner market up the street. I guess when they see an "easy score" it just becomes too tempting.
I remember when I was a young boy, that My father and a neighbor caught some kids vandalzing another neighbors property. My dad and the neighbor went out, caught the kids, dragged them into the house, and scared the bejesus out of them. They held them in our home for about 45 minutes screaming at them before they called the police. If this siutation happened today, my father and the nieghbor would have been in some serious trouble. I think our hands are sort of tied. If we do anything rash, we risk serious legal troubles, and I really dont need that in my current life. Plus who knows these young kids may even be packing.
I am not pussy whipped by society , and would have loved nothing better than to whip the ever loving poo out of these guys, but at what cost to myself??

And the police don't have to fill out a report as to why some old white guy got the shiit kick out of him or was found dead next to a pickup truck.

If I was black I would rather be called colored, black is black, I have never seen a black person they are usually light brown, medium brown or dark brown.
Its easier to just call them colored. Lt. Brn, Med. Brn and Dk. Brn are just too many syllables :eek:

No seriously, I would have dialed 911

Shot the obama supporters & fed em to a Gator.(hey, I didn't use colored:p)

not all obama supporters are colored or criminals.:(

Hey, that's speceist! Why not a crocodile or a cayman?!

:p

I imagine most colored and colored criminals ARE Obama supporters. :eek:

Because we have gators very close.

Maybe not, as this shows, but there is what over a 90% chance there is, and yes, I pulled that number out of my ass based on the votes he got from lower income, high crime areas. I have no use for thieves of any color, size or shape:mad:
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1232822142.jpgSmokinggun.org

And it is extremely important that we are always hyper-aware of what color a person is, not only because it is critical information to have when reporting and solving crimes, but also because.........I forget why.

It gets more difficult everyday as more and more of them colored people interbreed with us white people causing the color in them black people that bred with white people to become more and more washed out, sometimes even to the extent that a black person cannot be distinguished from a white person at all!

Yet we proudly proclaim that we are a "melting pot". Hahaha! Seems to be a problem for some that the black at the bottom of the pot has been rising up and mixing with the white floating on top. :)

Hmmm.....there's a woman of fat ankle walking up to my front door. I wonder what SHE wants?

You did the right thing in not directly confronting the brash young darkies.

True..some are just regular folks...that are not very bright.

True..like right-wing 2%ers (well, they're probably brighter than that!).

Not ALL young darkies are brash, but those certainly seemed to have been!

It's a shame. It only takes a handful of brash ones to cast a pall over all young darkies.

It was dark and you had the element of surprise. If you are physically capable (can handle yourself reasonably well)...these fellows should have been taught a lesson.

I'm sorry, I was just venting. Not directed at you in particular, but at society as a whole. That includes me. I would probably have done the same thing. Just too many factors weigh in against doing anything; I was just bemoaning that.

What if - what if you could just hollar, and the neighbors would come out to help instead of hiding behind their curtains, peering out, hoping to not have to get involved? What if they came out and helped you to detain them (even cracking a few heads if the thugs were uncooporative)? What if the cops arrived quickly? And, when they got there, they arrested the thugs instead of you and the neighbors? What if the thugs actually stayed in jail for awhile when caught and convicted?

Dreaming, I know. But how did we let it come to this? How did we let it reach a point where good, honest people are so afraid and so hamstrung with regards to confronting crooks? Crooks have come to count on the fact that most folks won't do anything more than dial a phone to try to "stop" them, knowing full well that the honest folks don't want the legal baggage that comes with standing up to them. It's a shame. Again, just venting...

I think the biggest thing is they will have to suffer the discipline latter...Maybe a lesson for us all here, what to do really ?
Maybe call the cops while letting them steel it and be caught ?

Get a big dog and ride him around in the rear of your truck, thats what we do around here,

:)

Something similar happened to my neighbor a couple houses down. 3 white kids though, busting into his work truck at night. He caught them- one kid got a clump of hair removed from his head, the other kid bolted, the one in the truck stealing the change got his head bounced off the B-Pillar (actually dented the truck).

Neighbor recognized the one kid who's hair he got ahold of, returned the hair to the kids mother and told her she was lucky that was all that happened. She apologized for the kids behavior.

What area of Pittsburgh should I avoid in the future???

Sounds similar to "Gran Torino"....