In the thread discussing a Texas man’s shooting of two men who had just burglarized his neighbor’s home, one poster says:
This surprised me. Since we’re discussing possible shooting responses, I don’t imagine he’s picturing pre-adolesence shoplifting of bubble gum. And if that kind of theft is removed from the picture, I don’t believe a significant number of people have theft or destruction of other peoples’ property in their backgrounds.
But I could be hopelessly off-base. So – a poll. Excluding pre-adolescent shoplifting type crimes, do you have a background that includes theft or destruction of property?
No, can’t say that I have. Why? Number 1, it’s wrong. I’ve had stuff stolen form me before and I know how much it sucks. And number 2, I didn’t to get arrested, shot, beat up, etc.
And I’ll note that when I was a young child, the neighbor on the other side of our shared fence made it very public to the rest of the neighborhood that if he saw anyone on his property, he was going to shoot at them. Regardless of what people say about teenagers specifically doing things that they’re not supposed to, you look someone straight in the eye and tell them you’ll kill them gladly and they ain’t coming over that fence regardless of how raging their hormones may be.
Let’s just say it like this; 4 or 5 years ago right after New Years my girlfriend and I were sleeping when her phone starts ringing off the hook. She answers it and wakes me up and says “Honey, it’s the police, they’re downstairs and say that something happened to my car!”
Well we had left her car at work the night before so I could take her out to dinner, and her office is right across the street from a forest preserve, so I figured that a lone car in a lot at night…well, shit happens. I pulled on some jeans and a t-shirt and went down with her to go talk to the cop. As we get to the large foyer in our apartment building I notice…there’s broken glass everywhere and the lights are out. Our building was one of those where anyone could access the foyer where the mailboxes and such were, but you had to be buzzed in to make it any further. There was a couch and plants and stuff, it looked pretty nice. Well someone or someones had gone in there and trashed the place pretty good. Windows were broken, lamps pulled out of the ceiling and the couch was gone.
So we carefully pick our way across the damage and the cop calls out my girlfriends name. After confirming that it was us he said “Yeah, sorry about your Nissan…”
Wait. She drives a Hyundai. * I* drive a Nissan. What the…
And that’s when I see that the vandals had picked up the rather large couch from the foyer and carried it outside and thrown it on the first car in the parking lot. Mine. Our cell phone bill was in the back seat, that’s how the cop got my girlfriends number. The windshield was smashed through with the leg of the couch and the hood was dented like someone dropped a large piece of furniture on it. For about 10 seconds my blood boiled and I was ready to start up a posse and find these punks.
Then I started laughing. Pretty hard. The cop looked at me like I’d come unglued, but I looked at him and my girlfriend and said “Karma is a real motherfucker.” The cop didn’t think that was so funny, but it’s true. What goes around comes around. And while I never did exactly that, my karmic debt sheet still isn’t balanced. That little adventure cost me around $600. I still have a long way to go.
The only thing criminal I’ve done is starting a bonfire in a public park. We took all safety precautions, but it was still illegal I’m pretty sure. Drinking and smoking around a nice comfy bonfire by the lake, I don’t regret it one minute.
Criminal Tresspass: partying in abandoned houses & factories, in open pastures and under railroad trestles. Sometimes at night when taking shortcuts through people’s yards they’d shoot guns to scare us off.
Petty theft: stole sweet corn from farms. Yummy!
Grand theft: broke a chain and took a railroad handcar for a joyride. Fun!
I had two friends who went “garaging;” sneaking into people’s garages and basements, and then selling the proceeds to a local antique dealer. (his name was Hoppy Cohn, and stealing anything became “Cohning” it) They took sawed-off shotguns with them on their forays for the added thrill. (These guys would go out of their way to take short cuts through yards where people would shoot guns to scare us off) One of them later hanged himself in jail. Artful Dodger to Hoppy Cohn’s Fagin, he saw a worse fate than transportation to Australia.
At some of the parties, if a girl got too loaded and passed out there was a chance she’d be sexually molested. I never saw that happen, but it did happen.
(when we were teenages my parents had moved from the city to that small town to shield us from trouble.)
Once when I was about eight years old, my sister and I (she would have been six) were at the drug store and we put some candy in our purses. I felt guilty about that for years. That fits the exclusion, though.
No. There is a law I’ve been breaking, off and on, for about 35 years now, but I believe I’m the only one I’m hurting. And it involves neither theft nor destruction of property.
I have an almost pathological hatred against vandalism and theft so no for me. My mind automatically associates them with other capital crimes. Visiting Europe usually drives me crazy at certain points because of the difference in attitudes about property crimes. I am no saint myself and I have done plenty of things wrong but an admission of shoplifting or vandalism will force me to shun a person forever just as quickly as if they ran a professional paedophile ring.
I’ve TP’ed some houses, if that counts as “damage”. Various drug offenses, some sex crimes (I was eighteen, she was sixteen - I think that counts). No violence or stealing.
I was in a very weird place emotionally during my teens and was involved in several incidents that in retrospect could have easily inspired violent responses from homeowners. I was far too self absorbed at the time to realize just how big a deal some of the things I did were.
Drum & Bugle corps probably saved my life, or at least showed me a different path. Even today I think I would have ended up in a far different place if I had not done corps.
Ya, we did a lot of stupid stuff as teenagers. Only rule we had was no intentional destruction of property, but unintentional did happen from time to time. Let’s see a general list;
Trespassing
Breaking and Entering
Grand theft Auto
Kidnapping (friend’s little brother he ended up naked in a field 20 miles from his house, on of my good friends now)
Arson (it was an accident and we did call the fire department but the vacant lot still burned)
A variety of driving and drug offences but I think that is outside of the scope.
But don’t think I deserved to die for any of them and we ended up giving the car back two days later when we couldn’t stop him from calling the cops any more. We were shot at for some of the trespassing though and I thought that was fair.