By Kyle Jorrey
Sports Editor
It’s hard to describe the feeling you get when you first realize that you’ve been the victim of a crime — a real crime — not one of those wussy crimes like getting your car keyed or your CD collection stolen from a party.
It’s a combination of shock, surprise, frustration and anger — almost like getting the wind knocked out of you during a game of kick ball — except your gym teacher isn’t around to pat you on the back.
Two weeks ago I emerged from a friend’s house in the San Fernando Valley to find my rear driver-side window smashed and my car broken into. Stolen from the poor, defenseless vehicle: one wallet (money not included, debit card overdrawn) and a book bag. Not quite the score, unless of course the thieves had a particular interest in the history of Modern Asia.
But regardless, the inside of my car looked like something out of the 1993 Rodney King riots and I was determined to get some justice.
So like any good prime-time television fan would, I dialed up those entrusted to serve and protect. I called the Los Angeles Police Department.
As I awaited my cell phone call to go through, I took special care not to touch anything on the car that might yield fingerprints. I had seen enough episodes of CSI to know everything would have to be dusted, the whole area might even need to be yellow taped, and many a good case had been ruined by poor investigations.
Suddenly, I heard a voice on the other end — it was dispatch. Still shaken by the whole event, it took me a couple minutes to give the officer the information she wanted. I explained, in furious detail, what had happened, what was taken, and where I was; I even offered a hypothesis on how the offense went down.
“Looks like they hit the window with a baseball bat,” I said. “Maybe we could check out all the local sports equipment joints.”
Dispatch did not respond.
Funny how being a victim of a crime suddenly turned me into Kojak.
I awaited for the response, “squad cars are on the way,” instead I got something like this:
Dispatch: “So do have a number we can reach you at? An officer will get a hold of you by phone later today to do an official report.”
Me: “A phone number? Later today? I’m not trying to schedule a dinner date. Isn’t anyone going to come and look at my car?”
Dispatch: “No, we don’t really do that anymore. We get so many of these things that there really isn’t any time for officers to come on scene anymore.”
Me: “Then what should I do about my car? You want me to just jump in and head over to school with my window bashed in and shards of glass everywhere? What about finger printing? What about DNA analysis?”
Dispatch: “If you want to get it fingerprinted, sir, you need to bring the car by our Van Nuys station after four o’clock today. And as for the glass, just brush it off the seat. The car should be fine to drive …”
Just brush it off the seat? It should be fine? I felt like Evander Holyfield and the LAPD had bitten a chunk from the ear of my pride.
It appeared my perception was a couple freeway off-ramps away from reality.
Didn’t these people care that my car had been broken into? Didn’t they even want to catch the criminals who did it? I was angry, really angry, but I was also being stupid.
Eventually, I talked with another officer and she explained to me, in more detail, why it was that my case wasn’t getting special attention. She told me there had been four other cars in the same area as mine that had been burglarized that same night. She told me that if the LAPD investigated every report of vehicular break-in than it would be all they did.
I started to calm down … maybe I had been a little selfish, a little arrogant, to think that that LAPD was going to send down Starsky and Hutch to handle my case.
But really, that is how I felt. I was a victim, the victim of a crime, and everyone was going to help me.
This is not how things worked, I learned, and it was a valuable lesson.
Looking back, now that my window, stereo, books, notebooks and credit cards have been replaced, I guess I gained more from the experience than I lost – unless of course you count all the lurid and erotic notes from my Psychology of Sexual Behavior class. Sometimes life doesn’t go our way, whether we did anything wrong or not, and sometimes we don’t even get any retribution. Or retaliation.
Yeah, I’d love to find the punks who smashed my window, desecrated my one mean of transportation, and got away with those darn sex class notes, but I know that’s not a reality.
I can hope that one day they’ll mess with the wrong car, get busted, and have to pay for the trouble they cause people, but who knows?
Rather than dwell on that, or use anymore unpleasant adjectives to describe the LAPD force, I just have to swallow my pride. I have to remember that for all the bad things that have happened to me in my life, there is a story where I got a lucky break or a near-miss disaster.
In the words of the epic American hero, Davey Crockett, “Sometimes you get the b’ar, and sometimes the b’ar gets you.”
In this instance, they got me, but somewhere, sometime, I know they’ll get theirs.
And an important piece of advice from the “boys in blue” — never keep valuables, especially your wallet, in the car when parking in a public space, even if only for a short time. I guess that includes your book bag.
March 13, 2003
