Chattanooga Pulse

I used to consider my sense of surprise akin to the phantom pains and sensations of an amputee; something that is clearly no longer there, but I am convinced I can still feel from time to time when the weather begins to change or when I am reminded of a prior trauma.  Or in this case, when someone says something galactically stupid.  Like the phantom limb itself, I realize it might be all in my head—so I’ll let you decide.

Local police officers set up a sting operation in which they had a woman appear to accidentally leave a purse on the trunk of their car, and arrested people who walked up to the car, took the purse, and took it to their own vehicles to keep for themselves (otherwise known as “stealing”, something that’s been widely recognized as being illegal for at least two to three years now).  In the few hours this was conducted, eight people were arrested for theft, and 35 more were not for their attempts to turn the purse in to lost-and-found or to the owner herself. Apparently people have been stealing stuff from parking lots in such numbers and for so long, folks have been calling the police about it…a few hundred times a month.  Who knew?  Rather than take a few hundred more reports documenting crimes, the cops decided to take a few hours to discourage this and prevent many tens of hours taking more of these reports.

This event was presumably advertised so that not only would the eight arrested be deterred from future actions, but others would get the word that the police would be watching even when their individual integrity was not, and all was good.  As a taxpayer, I was impressed with the proactive use of my dollars, but not being an ass-hat purse thief I wasn’t all that impacted, so I moved on without much thought and read the next article.  (It was about the City of Chattanooga hosting a ceremony to celebrate the inclusion of dogs being allowed at Ross’s Landing Park; ultimately this has nothing to do with the story, but I wanted to pass it on as “shit I couldn’t possibly make up.”)

One day later in the same publication I see an opinion piece stating that the whole operation was a set-up and “stunk to high heaven”.  That the theft of a purse theft wasn’t a “real crime”, and that these kinds of sting operations would lead to a totalitarianistic government in which you would disappear for not “having your papers”.  OK. “What?”

I was surprised, but also suddenly left with ominous questions.  Is it only “stealing” someone’s cash, identification, credit cards, checks, cell phone, digital cameras, and family photos if it’s from your mother or sister and not a police officer?  Are there rules to “theft” that are not being followed by police and are only known to thieves themselves?  Is it true that if enough people get caught committing blatant crimes…it will lead to the End of Democracy As We Know It?  I mean, holy crap!  Not being a window-licking idiot, I had never thought of these things before!

I was on the verge of moral panic until I remembered one bit about the original release:  That nearly four times as many people DIDN’T steal that purse.  That 35 people knew what this genius did not, and tried to return the purse.  That many more knew it was wrong to take it than those caught, not even considering the uncounted others that just passed it up as Not Their Problem.  That maybe…just maybe, this respondent “just didn’t get it”.

You get one thing though, brother:  You get included on the Nimrod List.  (It’s like the “Bucket List”, except for dumbasses.)  You’re there with the guy who got a speeding ticket on West Shepherd Road and claimed it was only for revenue generation, when in fact it was because of the kid that was killed by a speeding motorist (like him) two days before.  The guy who solicited sex from an undercover cop between a church and a duplex and called it a “victimless crime”, when in fact it was because a single mom was complaining that her children couldn’t play in their front yard because disease-infested prostitutes and the johns they attracted kept littering the area with used hypodermic needles and used condoms and the other novel sundries that accompany the Oldest Profession.  And with the guy you’ll apparently love the most who found himself locked inside a car that was left running in someone’s driveway on a cold morning as if to warm up before going to school or work that turned out to be a bait car for auto thieves, because in response he too, called it “entrapment”.

It’s not “entrapment” just because you got caught, you nitwit; it’s just plain “getting caught”.  Or better yet, it’s just plain “accountability”, but I hardly blame you or anyone else for not recognizing that word these days because it’s so rarely used, much less implemented.

In the mean time, how about writing a note to keep your hands off purses that don’t belong to you since it’s such a tough concept for you to remember?  Then write down “theft” is a crime, no matter the victim.  Or if that’s too much, just write “I’m Stupid” on a piece of paper and hold it up for us to see.  And if you forget to hold up the sign after a while?

Relax:  We’ll probably figure it out without it.

When officer Alexander D. Teach is not patrolling our fair city on the heels of the criminal element, he is an occasional student at UTC, an up and coming carpenter, auto mechanic, prominent boating enthusiast, and spends his spare time volunteering for the Boehm Birth Defects Center.