I’ll be getting my driver’s license soon, after many years without. Of course, this means I’ll be purchasing a vehicle as well, shortly thereafter. And what I want is a full-size van - preferrably a conversion van.
I want a van because I want to be able to haul my music equipment easily. I don’t like pickups and I don’t like SUVs or station wagons or minivans. So that leaves me with a regular full-size van.
So I was mentioning this to my sister, and she strongly suggested that I not get a van. She claimed that guys in vans get pulled over all the time by cops who want to know “what you’re doing driving around this neighborhood”. The idea being, apparently, that many child molesters drive vans, and so by harrassing van drivers there will be a reduction in molestaion :rolleyes: My sister pointed out that two out-of-prison child molesters we know have both purchased vans.
Does this theory hold any water? I should mention that my sister used to work for a city police department (as an animal-control officer), so she may have some inside information that I don’t have.
Is the implication supposed to be that child molesters are molesting kids in the back of the van? Ridiculous. I know many child molesters and I can’t think of any who molested their victims in a van. They all did it in a house. So I suggest you don’t buy a house, lest you be mistaken for a child molester. :rolleyes:
Any cop who would pull over a van on the chance that it might be a molester is wasting his time. Even if it is a molester, unless they are molesting a child at that exact moment, what is the cop going to do? Arrest him for being a child molester in a van? Cops are way too busy to pull crap like this.
What about handicapped people who need the van to accomodate their wheelchair? Should they just stay home all the time lest they be mistaken for a molester?
That is a pretty “out-there” theory in my opinion. I have certainly never heard anything along those lines. Even if the van was the vehicle of choice for these “people” they would still only make up something like 0.01% of the people who actually own vans.
Complete nonsense if you ask me, go buy a van good luck with the music career!!
mittu - I don’t exactly have a music “career” (though I wish I did!) - I just want to be able to fit my amplifier and instruments into my vehicle when I need to move them. My bass amplifier cabinet is huge! I know it wouldn’t fit in my roommate’s car. Heck, I went down to Office Depot a couple months ago to buy a new 19" monitor for my computer. I called my roommate to come get me, and we simply couldn’t fit the box into his car. We had to unpack everything, put the monitor in the back seat, then break down the box and put it and all the styrofoam in the trunk. My amp is way bigger than that box.
Robert Ressler, founder of the FBI serial killers unit, has stated that many serial killers like to use vans for transporting their victims. Apparently they pretend to be having trouble getting something into the van, ask a victim for help, and then knock them out and take them somewhere else.
Ressler has stated that no woman should park next to a van in a garage. While the chances of becoming a victim are maybe .00000001%, it’s still too risky.
I guess someone has expolated this theory to child molesters.
Phase42: My band and I have had a 1980s Dodge van for about 4 months. Never been pulled over for anything, let alone suspicions of pederast…y. May I throw in the fact that this van has been wonderful? I don’t work for Dodge or anything, but for $800, this little guy has taken us roughly 6,000 miles in 4 months. It keeps chugging. Of course, the gas mileage will make you shudder.
If you’re going to abduct little girls off the street, at random, better to have a van than a car. You can just open the door, yank them in, and be on your way. No need to fuss with seats or anything. If you have an accomplice driving you can open the door, grab your victim, and be a block away within seconds.
NOT THAT I WOULD HAVE FIRST-HAND KNOWLEDGE OF THIS, MIND YOU!!! :eek:
Maybe that’s the theory that the OP’s sister is working on.
If you need a full-sized work van for something, get the van, ferOgsake.
And as far as child molesters go, I’m betting that would NOT be why work vans get targetted, if they do in fact get targeted.
More likely to me would be using them for theft. They’d be great to clean out a house or a business with…
Two different questions here:
A) Do child molestors use vans to whatever extent, but also
B) which has not been addressed: Do the police anywhere perceive a link between molestors (or any other type of crime for that matter) and vans and systematically pull vans over because of it?
I heard this story often as a little kid. Ooooh, the guy in the white van is going to get you! That came from my friends though, not authority figures.
I would think they’d have no reason to be suspicious, as long as you’re just chugging along from point A to point B. If you started cruising slowly around residential areas with parks and schools, you might get some attention.
Lecter was a killer in that movie/novel, but the reason Clarice Starling goes to see him in the first place is to ask his advice in catching an active serial killer; Gumb.
Get the van so long as it isn’t white. Driving a white van full of electronics won’t get you profiled as a kiddie fiddler, rather you may find people thinking you’ll make them a “great” deal on stolen^H^H^H^H^H^H overstocked equipment as soon as you open the rear doors.
If anything, that’s what the police would think, but I haven’t seen the “Homeboy Shopping Club” around here in years.
The unsubstantiated story I got (from the sherriff’s sister) was that cops in the past thought that vans were likely to contain hippies. Stopping one could result in an easy drug bust. These days, vans are more likely to contain soccer moms.
