Priorities
Carhead, Our eternal quest for Platinum Status, Preapocalyptic technological dystopia, TPD shortcomings, hit and run, vexation of the spirit May 28th, 2009
Last night somebody attempted to break into a car parked down the street a ways from my office. They didn’t succeed.
Right now there are four police officers swabbing it down for prints and investigating it. They’ve been there for awhile and it looks like they will be there for quite some time.
They weren’t happy about me taking pictures.
Anyway, it all makes me wonder. If they can afford most of an afternoon for four officers to swab down a car and investigate a failed break-in, why can’t they do more than make one single phone call for a bicyclist victim of a hit and run?
And regular readers of this blog know better than to get me started about assailants with baseball bats.
–Erik Ryberg
May 28th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Wow, you must work in a pretty important neighborhood – a whole bunch of cars get *successfully* broken into in *my* neighborhood every month, and TPD just mails you a police report form to fill out. Investigation? Fingerprints? You gotta be kidding!
May 28th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Hey Eric, weren’t you compiling a list of bicycle accident statistics gleaned from police reports? Has that produced any data that we can use when discussing TPD’s anti-bicycle bias? The reason I ask is that our new Police Chief has been making the gladhanding rounds to the local special interest groups since his appointment (tonight he’s meeting with GTL, http://www.tucsonleadership.org/), seems like a good opportunity to publicly toss a few embarassing statistics his way and ask him for a commitment to fix the problem.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
You say afternoon.
Shouldn’t the person get a ticket for being in a 2 hour parking zone?
May 28th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
You guys are tough. Scott, I did actually scratch my head over that after I wrote that post. Who knows, maybe this is important evidence in some horrendous murder or something and I should not be criticizing them. But listening to the officers talk, it sounded like a routine break-in. As for the compilation of statistics, Eric Post, another tucson bike lawyer, is doing that. It’s time consuming and he isn’t done yet, but I think he is getting close.
EBR
May 29th, 2009 at 6:10 am
[...] in Tucson Spend an Afternoon Investigating Failed Car Break-in (TBL via [...]
May 29th, 2009 at 6:35 am
We allow free or for a small fee the ability to store private possessions which fit into a specific description on public roadways.
Why should I condone this?
Even if there were bicycles parked there why? This is a roadway not a parking lot. If we don’t need the space for roadways, return it to the pedestrians.
May 29th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
In response to Scott’s posting . . . my car was successfully broken into last autumn. Investigation? Fingerprints? TPD form to fill out? Are you kidding? I never even got a form, though I was told by TPD that one would be mailed to me. Your neighborhood must rate higher than mine if you get a form to fill out. You should feel privileged.
May 29th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Thanks Kay, now I don’t feel so bad.
P.S. The form was probably stolen out of your mailbox.