Armed robbery, at work, when I was about 27.
On a few occasions:
When I was sixteen I was with some friends driving around when a few guys pulled besides us in a minivan and pointed a few shotguns at us. They thought we were hitting on some of their girls.
When I was seventeen I was jumped by a few guys while standing outside. But later we retaliated.
When I was eighteen, just before going to boot camp I was robbed by two guys for about $400.
All of it was basically my fault and I am lucky to be alive.
Were We the Victims of a Crime? I think so…
I was a Junior in college and at a fraternity costume party on Halloween. I was single & not seeing anyone…and I had met a really pretty girl. We danced and talked and before I knew it, the buses had stopped running and she needed to get home. So I said I’d drive her. Instantly 3 of her drunken roommates appeared and wanted rides too, so I said I’d drive them too, but it would be a tight fit. We left the party and walked to my ‘good parking spot’…a spot guaranteed to be gone 2 minutes after I drove out of it, and I piled the 4 of them into a Datsun hatchback. I started the car and off we went towards their campus.
Half way there at 2:30 AM (the time when bars are kicking the drunks out) we stopped at a light behind a white firebird. It was at this point that the roommates, who were far from sober, asked me to let them pull a ‘Chinese Fire Drill’. I had no idea what they meant, but pretty-girl was smiling, so I said ‘yes’. Both doors of my little hatchback fly open and these girls proceed to dance, in costume around the car. One was dressed like Al Capone and she clicked her plastic machine-gun in the air as she danced. Then they all jumped back in the car, we closed the doors, and we waited for the light to change.
The light changed, but the Firebird didn’t go anywhere. Instead, its door opened and a rather fat middle-aged man in a sport coat got out. He pulled a gun, a .38 snub nose, out of his waistband behind him and he leveled it at me. Then he started to move towards me, weaving and staggering in a way I knew all to well: he was definitely drunk, all the while pointing that little black hole of death at my chest. He stepped between our cars, staring at us all, and then in an exaggerated movement, he reached into his back pocket with his free hand and dropped a wallet with a gold badge in it onto my hood. (The gun stayed trained on me the whole time) He then walks up to the passenger window (wtf?), where pretty-girl was seated and taps the glass with his gun-barrel, indicating that she should roll it down. She does. He squats next to the car, his forearm holding the gun now inside the vehicle and pointed under her chest at her stomach.
"So, what do you all think you’re doing?’
“Driving home officer.”
WTF…we’re not the ones threatening people with guns in the street, but we have to explain Ourselves…?
“Where ya going?”
“To fill-in-the-blank dorm on X campus. The busses stopped running and the girls need to get home.”
Would you mind not shoving your gun in my date’s tits, you drunken Flatfoot…?
“Well, you know itsh not shmart ta play with guns on Halloween.”
“….”
No F-ckin’ Sh-t, booze-for-brains…! What genius gave You a gun…? The blackmail film must have included toddlers, farm animals, and corpses, and even the latter could have smelled the booze on your breath tonight, Alky
Then, after he was done massaging pretty-girl’s tits with the barrel of his gun, he got up, picked up his badge and stumbled back into his white firebird with the ugly blue bird stencil on its hood. And he turned left onto Rt. 27 and he drove off into the night.
I feel I was assaulted with a deadly weapon and that pretty-girl was sexually assaulted. But that’s just my opinion. My father threatened to stop paying for tuition if I tried to make a complaint. Pretty-girl was so freaked out that she never wanted to see me ever again. Years later, that same cop caused riots in that same small city by shooting an unarmed 12-yr old boy; it made all the papers. A few years after that, according to the papers, he ate his gun.
Had my bike stolen when I was around 12.
My car was broken into when I was 28 or so. Nothing much was taken but the window was smashed. Thats about it. (I’m not counting being assaulted at work. That has happened a couple of times. But thats just work)
When I was living near UCF while I was running down the sidewalk I was shot with a pellet gun in a drive-by by a carful of four kids who had taken off their license plate. If they had turned right instead of left they would have gotten away but they had to follow me while I was running and shoot at me again – this time the pellets didnt penetrate my skin and I was able to get a better look at the car. As “luck” would have it the next car going down the street on my side was a cop car which I flagged down, but he had his kid with him so he couldn’t chase them even though the perps were only a couple hundred feet away! (They did find them later, according to the cop who called me later that night. And thankfully the knee wound wasn’t infected, thanks for asking)
Then a couple months later I was egged from a car while running near UCF, which caused a welt not quite as bad as the pellet gun shot but in retrospect both attacks were just as dangerous considering they literally could have taken my eye out.
Ironically, where I live now and where I lived before I lived near UCF are both known as worse neighborhoods but I have never gotten attacked while running there. The previous neighborhood even had sidewalks as close to the street as my UCF-area running path so it’s not like they didn’t have an opportunity.
And UCF-area was also worse with regards to catcalls: few people shout out to me now, and in the area before UCF it was mainly women which I didn’t mind 
But I do have to run past a “troubled teenaged girls” shelter now, which means there are sometimes troubled teenaged boys hanging out nearby who sometimes get egged on by their peers to harass me. However, punk-ass teens are always more timid in the open than rolling in a car.
When I was in college my apartment was burglarized while my roommate and I were gone for several days over Christmas break. Nothing of mine was stolen, but my roommate lost three shotguns and a stereo, all of which actually belonged to his brother. Also, the burglar(s) had turned the heat up, plugged in the television, and spread out a sleeping bag on the living room floor; from that, and the multiple unflushed dumps in the toilet, we surmise that he/they had stayed at least one night.
In high school, my car was broken into at a party and several hundred dollars worth of stuff was taken, music and tools mostly.
In grade school, on a family visit to the Big City, a street junkie menaced me with a tiny pocketknife while my mother’s back was turned. It was a tiny knife. I laughed at it and walked past him. Probably not wise, in retrospect, but hey, I was a punk kid.
Since I seem to be working backwards in time, I should probably mention the Nigerian scam I was hit with in the womb…
Burglarized about 21 years ago in Pasadena, CA.
Car stolen 10 years ago, Woodland Hills, CA. To make it really sting, they left the broken Club™ in the parking spot where my car had been.
No violence against my person, though an angry driver brandished a gun at me once (Inglewood, CA).
Not sure what the OP was looking for, but now I live in a neighborhood where it’s so safe that I’ve been known to go for walks at 2:00 AM, and I leave one of my windows open enough that someone could get into my apartment in about five minutes without breaking a sweat. I don’t feel a sense of fear about possible future crimes.
I’m similar to Kalhoun. Here are the highlights:
Sexually assulted multiple times by an uncle (my father’s brother in law) in my teens.
Idenity theft. Father used my Social Security number to get credit cards, etc. I still check my credit reports every year and something pops up. :rolleyes:
Apartment broke into once. Car broken into twice: stereo stolen, then the replacement. All in the same neighborhood. Police took reports, did nothing else. :mad: Moved out of that area.
Age 19: while I was living abroad, backpack stolen on the night train from Venice to Nice–sadly, including one of my travel journals.
Age 21: window of car smashed (cost about $50 to fix) so they could steal my CD player (worth about $10). Wish I had left the door open.
(Various ages between 21 and 26: suffered various attempts to break into car–lots of pry marks on door handles.)
Age 26: Two weeks prior to moving cross-country, was trying to sell my car–I had just gotten it detailed and fixed up nicely. Someone smashed two windows and broke various special-order parts in the dashboard prying the stereo out of it… but didn’t have the decency to actually steal or total the car so I could get out of trying to sell it.
All in all, I’ve been very lucky!
About 4 or 5 years ago my husband’s truck was broken into on Christmas Eve. They mostly got away with some CD’s, and a few other misc. things.
Over this Fourth of July weekend, our house was robbed. They got away with just about everything we own that’s worth anything. All of our electronics, most of my jewelry, DVDs, computer software, some shoes and clothes, wine, even my pet toads. They cleaned us out and destroyed our house in the process, broke furniture, left holes in the walls where they ripped the home theatre system and pc speakers out of the walls, and just generally trashed the place. We’ve slowly been in the process of fixing the place up, preparing to sell it and get the hell out of there. We’ve sold just about everything they didn’t steal. Right now our house is fairly empty, and it is no longer our home. It’s just a house. Shelter until we move out, which won’t be soon enough.
Since I’ve moved into my house, I’ve had the following stolen:
ladder
bird bath
plastic flamingoes
loppers
safety glasses
tacky light up Christmas palm tree decoration
Okay, so I’ve learned not to leave stuff on the porch. Or, er, yard decorations in the yard. (The current flamingoes have been unmolested.)
I’ve also had my car broken into, but that was years ago in front of my parents’ house. The only serious crime I’ve been involved in is when I walked into Blockbusters mid-armed-robbery. I wrote a thread about it then.
Well, I’ve had my credit card number stolen twice, but caught it before it had gone too far and managed to get all the charges reversed.
I’ve also been a vicitm of domestic terrorism. (Actually, I hate calling myself a victim in this situation. It seems to give the bastards more power than they actually have.) To make a very long story short, my research lab was attacked by the Animal Liberation Front a few years ago. I was the first person on the scene, which was more than a little troubling. They stole all our research animals and trashed several labs and professors’ offices. Our building was closed off for several weeks since the bastards had overturned several refridgerators full of chemicals and noone was sure whether the place was safe or not. I also had the (hopefully once-in-a-lifetime) experience of being interviewed by the FBI. Nice guys…
Eventually we recovered, but it took a while. There have been threats made against us since then, and it’s unlikely we’ll ever find the cocksuckers who did it, but we’re moving on and still doing research.
Assaulted by a NeoNazi in Bratislava outside of the bathroom of a bus station. Completely out of the blue, and it didn’t help that i was carrying a massive duffel bag. It also didn’t help that I couldn’t understand a word coming out of his mouth, until I heard a “Hitler” and at last it all made sense.
:eek: :eek: I have been working in research, using animals, for five years. We have always been told that this could happen, but I never gave it much thought. I am so sorry this happened to you!!
The worst experienced as a researcher was verbal abuse, which was misplaced.
I was an animal care tech. The back of our building faced the local Planned Parenthood office. One day I was taking out the trash wearing my usual work clothes: surgical scrubs and a lab coat.
Protesters: BABY KILLER!! BABY KILLER!!
Me: This isn’t Planned Parenthood! I kill mice!
Let’s see here…
I’ve had two cars stolen, one when I was 22ish and the other when I was 25ish. One was recovered with the battery missing but the vehicle still running. Managed to get that one fixed.
Had another car broken into and some personal items stolen, I was 20 or so.
Physically assaulted in the street twice, first one I just got punched a few times and got away, the second resulted in my boyfriend getting a broken jaw.
Home broken into by two guys when I was 25 and at home. Turnes out they thought it was someone elses house. I called the cops anyway but they didn’t catch them.
I was drugged at a bar once, no idea who did it but thankfully I was with people and it turned out ok.
I suppose it was technically a crime, but I did have consensual sex at a young age with guys old enough to have it considered statuatory rape or corruption of a minor or something. (I don’t consider myself a victim in that at all.)
Thats all I can think of at the moment.
It definitely sucks, but everyone should be aware that it happens more often than people think. The problem is that noone in the scientific community talks about it.
You know, the real kicker is that we think it was an inside job. Even worse, I sometimes still have to socially interact with some people who may have been involved. Fuckers.
It’s funny, but if you have mice or rats infesting your home most people wouldn’t hesitate about calling an exterminator. The second you put those mice or rats in a medical lab you have people trying to “liberate” them and give them a better life. :dubious: :rolleyes: :mad:
1 stolen car - Just last year. I bought another car the same day that police found my old one. So I spent about the same on towing, labor and repairs that I received when I sold it.
Countless thefts of car contents/vandalism of car - Way too many to count.
1 surprise assault by 3 others - I got jumped for no reason; it was a bad area and I was alone. I was very lucky.
1 stolen bike - I was 8-ish
1 assault by a police officer - He hit me in the back of the head after a routine traffic stop, and I fell to the ground. He kept on jamming his hand into the pocket of my brand new Tommy Hilfiger jacket, which was buttoned. I was just trying to open the button to make it easier for him, while not ripping the jacket. I guess he really meant it when he told me to keep my hands up.
There are definitely others that I can’t recall right now.
I’ve had major portions of my record collection stolen, five times. Most of my reference books went, too. Also, boxes of tapes, including all the stuff I ever recorded in a studio - gone.
The only time I left it alone, somebody stole my Gibson Les Paul Custom in a break-in at the music store. Somebody offered to fix my bass one time, and after I gave it to him, he moved.
Somebody, likely a crackhead, broke into our apartment while we were sleeping, and stole my wife’s watch and wedding rings, her purse and book bag containing several irreplaceable items. We discovered the next day that he had been disconnecting the VCR when my alarm went off at 5 AM. Our program didn’t record, and when I looked behind the machine, the cable was unscrewed. We moved out of that dump shortly thereafter.
Those are the major ones. I don’t even want to think about the rest.
Kind of a funny story:
Coming out of a bar one night and making my way to my car, I was approached by four ominous-looking teens. One of them said something like, “You got a dollar?” in a way that was frankly pretty threatening.
I was trying to figure out what to do, and I froze for a second… and one of the kids took a second look at me and said, “Oh, shit, it’s my lawyer.”
At which point they all took off running.
When I was little, a bunch of most likely teenagers (it was right around graduation time) threw rocks into our windows in the middle of the night. They smashed just about every window at the front of our house and threw stuff so hard that things inside got broken too.
We also had our new house vandalized while we were building it, the “B-team” were well known vandals in our area, they spray painted, stole lumber, pulled some fixtures out of the walls and plugged a toilet. My parents were very annoyed as it delayed progress on our house for a bit.
When I was 21, someone climbed in through my window and stole my bike, which I had ridden across 4 states the previous summer. I had put a lot of money and time into that bike, including hand-sanding every spoke hole, adding a women’s racing seat, Conti wide road tires, etc. Some stupid pothead probably traded it for a $20 sack. I consider this to be the worst one of all. I was seriously atteched to that bike. I still miss it.
My car got broken into in Berkeley in 2002, my friend and I had stupidly left our backpacks in the backseat during student move-in time. They opened my car door with a pair of child’s scissors. They didn’t get much from me, but they did get my friends digital camera and all of our cross-country road trip pictures. 
Someone stole the bar out of my hitch. Fucking Oakland.
My car also got broken into a couple years ago, they stole my stereo (broken, ha-ha!) my car owner’s manual (may have thought it was a CD case, ha-ha!, and one of those scooter-skateboard thingies. They guys at the shop said it was one of the worst jobs they had ever seen and the thieves must have been total amateurs. I hope whoever they sold that stereo to kicked their asses.