Here's my report on my first citizen's arrest, which I just made... and it was a triple. ... though the perps had an average age of probably 12. Long story, happy ending. Enjoy.
Yesterday morning, a little before lunch I get a phone call from my wife asking me to take lunch at home. She wants me to pick her bike up because it fell over somehow. So I come home, pick the bike up and realize that it fell the wrong way - away from the kick stand, and that the kick stand was up. WTF? She said that around 3 the afternoon before, she'd heard a bump in the back, which must have been her bike bouncing off a deck post. Weird, right? We figure kids saw the shiny red bike, couldn't resist and sat on it, then found out how heavy bikes really are. I told her to throw the cover on it.
So I go back to work... and around 4 she calls, sad and pissed. Someone has torn the cover off her bike and found some used motor oil left by the previous tenant and poured it on the seat of my bike! Now, my seat is nothing to write home about, which makes it worse - the vinyl has cracks that have exposed the foam underneath, so now my foam is full of nasty old engine oil. Goddamn it! I was shaking with rage as I hung up the phone, and was wondering who had decided to mess with me, and imagining how exactly I was going to kill him...
One thing the wife mentioned was that there is a hole in the corner of the fence to an empty lot, and she'd seen kids trying to come through who booked when they saw her on the back deck but that was nearly a month ago, so it didn't connect right away. Once it did, and once we put it together that whoever it was was coming around around 3 every afternoon, I started to plot...
I go home and the back yard is full of very fluffy leafy stuff, not grass, which takes tracks pretty well. I check the tracks, and sure enough there are tracks for at least two or three kids leading from the back fence. I'm tramping down huge acreage with my 10 1/2 boots compared to the footprints these little punks left, so I figure it's kids from the school across the park.
A plan forms and is rejected because I really shouldn't be beating the shit out of strangers' kids. A couple plans later, and I'm taking a really late lunch to be here at 3. My wife sits in the upstairs window where she has a perfect view and we wait... and wait. About the time I'm about to give up and go back to work, I walk back toward the fence to secure it better with some 550 cord and hope that'll get them to leave us alone when we spot four kids hitting the empty lot. We book it back to the house, my wife tosses me a Motorola and I step just around the corner of the house, under the downstairs air conditioner, which covered the noise of us using the radios perfect. Wifey gets pics of them as they come under the fence (and updates me on their positions) and cross the yard, then books downstairs to the back door. Now they're bracketed with my wife at the back door on their right, and me around the corner on the left. Both escape routes are going to bring them too close for comfort with an adult.
I peek around the corner real careful, and see a sleeve moving around, so they're at the bikes and messing with them, time to roll. I key the radio and say "go go go", and step out as I hear the back door open to find four kids, 8-11 years old or so with a "holy shit, we're going to die" look on their faces. They start to book it, but I'm already yelling in my best dog-training voice to stop and sit down. One runs by, I could have ran and grabbed his backpack, but I figured (rightly) that anybody I caught would roll over - all I need is one. I also wanted to accomplish this without getting physical at all - if I can't handle some middle-schoolers without having to break heads, something has gone very wrong, probably at my end. So shouting for them to stop and sit nets one almost immediately, he didn't make it more than five steps, another sits pretty fast, and another took a "hey!", he pauses and looks as I stalk toward him (menacingly, I hope - though I was pretty pissed off, so I'm pretty sure I was) "sit the **** down!" and his butt hits the ground hard.
They're already crying pretty good and very scared, so I ask if they have cell phones (so I can call parents), get three tearful negatives. Ask for parents' phone numbers, get three "I don't know" answers (maybe lying, but I kind of doubt it - I started to pity the kids a bit). Then my wife flips open her phone and dials 911, we inform the kids that it's going to be a matter for the police.
All the time, they're bawling their heads off, especially the one whose brother got away. That's the best part - two pairs of brothers, so the one that got away... well, he didn't. You can run from me, son, you might even leave me behind... but I'll get you.
Anyway. While we're waiting for the police, I'm gettting "nooooo" and snot and tears and all that, along with "we didn't do nothing" and sure enough "it was 'Jack'!" (name changed to protect the guilty). I had to send the wife out front to watch for the police because she wanted me to execute the little buggers on the spot and was obviously a little too agitated for her own good. I spent the time waiting for SAPD (who was actually pretty quick!) lecturing the kids a bit - "how would you feel if I came into your house and broke your toys?" And when they insisted again that they did nothing (riiight), I told them that this is what happens when you hang with people who do. I thought about educating them on Castle Doctrine in Texas, but decided not to do that right now. I'll save that for the parents.
One officer arrives and was a bit too nice for my taste, but the second one shows up and comes into the back yard while Officer Too-Friendly is chatting with the trio getting names/addresses in the front. Among the things he tells me: "You should have beat their asses." I love Texas! I tell him that I'm mostly interested in making these kids piss themselves so it won't happen again, and he's in agreement, so he goes out front, tells them they're all under arrest and cuffs them. I was standing there trying not to fall down laughing at the sight!
The best part of it was, they called me "sir" and my wife "ma'am", so I'm pretty certain that when they got home, their hides got tanned good.
All in all, I'm still upset that someone would mess with our bikes. Not much pisses me off more than people who will screw with someone's vehicle. But mostly I'm just happy that justice is being served.
I'd bet that there are three pairs of dirty shorts and four sore butts somewhere in San Antonio right now.
Texas is great. I'd actually put my Sig on and flopped a shirt over it because I wasn't sure how old the kids were going to be. If they'd been teens, I'd have probably drawn down, but no need in this case. It was a very strange first, though, talking to a cop while I've got a concealed handgun on my hip. They didn't seem to notice. If they did, they didn't care.
Yesterday morning, a little before lunch I get a phone call from my wife asking me to take lunch at home. She wants me to pick her bike up because it fell over somehow. So I come home, pick the bike up and realize that it fell the wrong way - away from the kick stand, and that the kick stand was up. WTF? She said that around 3 the afternoon before, she'd heard a bump in the back, which must have been her bike bouncing off a deck post. Weird, right? We figure kids saw the shiny red bike, couldn't resist and sat on it, then found out how heavy bikes really are. I told her to throw the cover on it.
So I go back to work... and around 4 she calls, sad and pissed. Someone has torn the cover off her bike and found some used motor oil left by the previous tenant and poured it on the seat of my bike! Now, my seat is nothing to write home about, which makes it worse - the vinyl has cracks that have exposed the foam underneath, so now my foam is full of nasty old engine oil. Goddamn it! I was shaking with rage as I hung up the phone, and was wondering who had decided to mess with me, and imagining how exactly I was going to kill him...
One thing the wife mentioned was that there is a hole in the corner of the fence to an empty lot, and she'd seen kids trying to come through who booked when they saw her on the back deck but that was nearly a month ago, so it didn't connect right away. Once it did, and once we put it together that whoever it was was coming around around 3 every afternoon, I started to plot...
I go home and the back yard is full of very fluffy leafy stuff, not grass, which takes tracks pretty well. I check the tracks, and sure enough there are tracks for at least two or three kids leading from the back fence. I'm tramping down huge acreage with my 10 1/2 boots compared to the footprints these little punks left, so I figure it's kids from the school across the park.
A plan forms and is rejected because I really shouldn't be beating the shit out of strangers' kids. A couple plans later, and I'm taking a really late lunch to be here at 3. My wife sits in the upstairs window where she has a perfect view and we wait... and wait. About the time I'm about to give up and go back to work, I walk back toward the fence to secure it better with some 550 cord and hope that'll get them to leave us alone when we spot four kids hitting the empty lot. We book it back to the house, my wife tosses me a Motorola and I step just around the corner of the house, under the downstairs air conditioner, which covered the noise of us using the radios perfect. Wifey gets pics of them as they come under the fence (and updates me on their positions) and cross the yard, then books downstairs to the back door. Now they're bracketed with my wife at the back door on their right, and me around the corner on the left. Both escape routes are going to bring them too close for comfort with an adult.
I peek around the corner real careful, and see a sleeve moving around, so they're at the bikes and messing with them, time to roll. I key the radio and say "go go go", and step out as I hear the back door open to find four kids, 8-11 years old or so with a "holy shit, we're going to die" look on their faces. They start to book it, but I'm already yelling in my best dog-training voice to stop and sit down. One runs by, I could have ran and grabbed his backpack, but I figured (rightly) that anybody I caught would roll over - all I need is one. I also wanted to accomplish this without getting physical at all - if I can't handle some middle-schoolers without having to break heads, something has gone very wrong, probably at my end. So shouting for them to stop and sit nets one almost immediately, he didn't make it more than five steps, another sits pretty fast, and another took a "hey!", he pauses and looks as I stalk toward him (menacingly, I hope - though I was pretty pissed off, so I'm pretty sure I was) "sit the **** down!" and his butt hits the ground hard.
They're already crying pretty good and very scared, so I ask if they have cell phones (so I can call parents), get three tearful negatives. Ask for parents' phone numbers, get three "I don't know" answers (maybe lying, but I kind of doubt it - I started to pity the kids a bit). Then my wife flips open her phone and dials 911, we inform the kids that it's going to be a matter for the police.
All the time, they're bawling their heads off, especially the one whose brother got away. That's the best part - two pairs of brothers, so the one that got away... well, he didn't. You can run from me, son, you might even leave me behind... but I'll get you.
Anyway. While we're waiting for the police, I'm gettting "nooooo" and snot and tears and all that, along with "we didn't do nothing" and sure enough "it was 'Jack'!" (name changed to protect the guilty). I had to send the wife out front to watch for the police because she wanted me to execute the little buggers on the spot and was obviously a little too agitated for her own good. I spent the time waiting for SAPD (who was actually pretty quick!) lecturing the kids a bit - "how would you feel if I came into your house and broke your toys?" And when they insisted again that they did nothing (riiight), I told them that this is what happens when you hang with people who do. I thought about educating them on Castle Doctrine in Texas, but decided not to do that right now. I'll save that for the parents.
One officer arrives and was a bit too nice for my taste, but the second one shows up and comes into the back yard while Officer Too-Friendly is chatting with the trio getting names/addresses in the front. Among the things he tells me: "You should have beat their asses." I love Texas! I tell him that I'm mostly interested in making these kids piss themselves so it won't happen again, and he's in agreement, so he goes out front, tells them they're all under arrest and cuffs them. I was standing there trying not to fall down laughing at the sight!
The best part of it was, they called me "sir" and my wife "ma'am", so I'm pretty certain that when they got home, their hides got tanned good.
All in all, I'm still upset that someone would mess with our bikes. Not much pisses me off more than people who will screw with someone's vehicle. But mostly I'm just happy that justice is being served.
I'd bet that there are three pairs of dirty shorts and four sore butts somewhere in San Antonio right now.
Texas is great. I'd actually put my Sig on and flopped a shirt over it because I wasn't sure how old the kids were going to be. If they'd been teens, I'd have probably drawn down, but no need in this case. It was a very strange first, though, talking to a cop while I've got a concealed handgun on my hip. They didn't seem to notice. If they did, they didn't care.
I would have at least dressed up like Freddy Krueger or Jason or something to really scare them! lol j/k
