Posted on 11/19/2011 12:02:23 PM PST by Feline_AIDS
Call the shift supervisor and complain, and demand they send somebody over to lift the prints.
Had the same thing happen to a friend, police told her if the items show up they might catch the burglar. Police are useless, she went out to pawn shops and found a lot of her things. She was able to retrieve some items but without police help whatsoever.
THEN call the mayor and your city councilman. Anybody in an elected position that you know, get on them (what are we paying taxes for, etc. etc.)
This is a case of the squeaky wheel.
And they can still get good prints off the glass if you haven't touched it. Leave it alone.
Fingerprinting is expensive in terms of time to capture and analyze the latents. Sure, on TV they take prints and get a match by the second commercial break, but reality is a little different.
Nobody hurt, relatively small amount stolen, cops not interested. I’ve been there. In fact I’ve had several instances where the cops did not care to do too much investigation.
If someone were hurt or a gun stolen, you’d see more interest.
For teh Craigslist, call, get to see the laptop, get the serial number. If you have the serial number written down, hand it to the seller as you pick up the laptop and ask him to read it off!
Pretend to be interested in the laptop and arrange to meet the guy somewhere and examine the computer. If it’s the same one... well I dunno. Get his picture somehow and ask for a name when you meet him.
Maybe the Keystone cops could do SOMETHING with a picture and a name (or alias)??
Take the laptop and tell him you know its stolen and the owner is your friend.
It’s quite possible the local TV stations have “action lines” or some such named service to root out fraud and bad service. Get one of those working on it and it’s likely the threat of public exposure will get some results.
Life ain’t a cop show where the forensics lab comes running to the scene of every burglary. In fact I suspect dusting for prints is pretty rare short of murder investigations.
Police are indeed useless. I had a credit card theft and the police didn’t do a thing. I know it was an employee at HP who did it because charges started showing up right after we made an online purchase through their home website and I found out the IP was in CA. Ironically, they bought several hundred dollars from Apple. Neither the police nor Apple would do anything. BTW, I will never be a customer of HP or Apple.
The Current FReepathon Pays For The Current Quarters Expenses?
Robbers frequently return a second time to get items they did not get the first time. They already know the house and the layout and where the stuff they want is. You should get an alarm and cameras. You can buy both and install them yourself for under $200 at COSTCO. Lowes has a good system also. Put the recorder where he cant get it; the attic perhaps.
If you cant get to it today buy a sign reading ALARMED! 24 hour video surveillance. Hang up a fake camera. Youve probably got a week to 10 days.
As for the cops, theyre useless. Theyre really in the revenue (ticketing) business; not crime. They only really investigate murders and then only if its somebody relatively important. This is why serial killers can knock off 10 hookers and nobody notices theyre all killed with the same MO.
check out the laptop, get the address and name, run the name and background with an identity search etc
You are lucky, an officer showed up.
Years ago when my home was broken into and a TV and VCR was taken all that happen was I got a package in the mail and a form to fill out. (This was back in the late 1980s when VCRs were fairly new and expensive).
As previous posters have noted, the police really are not going to do much. They collect data and if they happen to catch someone they will pin your crime on them and then it all gets plea bargained away.
You can complain as some FReepers suggest, but be prepared for retaliation. Parking and code enforcement may be to the letter all of a sudden, and the stop sign at the end of your block may get it's own individual patrol car sitting there to guard it from theft.
In the place I used to live, the official police position was that property crime was merely an insurance matter. They haven’t the least bit of interest in catching anybody. In fact, they prefer to take reports over the phone, rather than have to come to the crime site. Cops today are mostly unionized goons. Utterly worthless.
Three Wednesdays ago someone got into our building’s locked garage , broke our personal private garage lock and pulled the string out and released to lock manually. Our car was stolen and our garage was burglarized.
We discovered 7:30 the next morning. Called Oceanside PD non-emergency number. They took info over the phone and an officer was there in 45 minutes checking the scene and interviewing us. At about 8:45 an evidence technician came and took prints from several areas.
Last Tuesday we got a call. The car was found by parking enforcement in a neighborhood across the freeway on a little side street. The keys were in the car. Another evidence tech came and got me after taking prints, while a cop stayed at the scene.
5 personnel from O-side PD all performed courteously and professionally. And we got our car back.
Don't you dare touch their pensions.
Crime doesn't pay. Traffic violators do.
Last year or so mine and my wifes vans were broken into. It was the third or fourth time over the years. This time both passenger side windows busted out of our vehicles. Theives got nothing. Called police and they would not send anyone out. They took a statement from my wife ( who called the police ) over the phone and when it got to me I told them to pound sand. If they wouldn`t send anyone out it wasn`t doing me any good to give them a “statement”. I installed flood lights the following week that light up the driveway and the street in front of my house. Never a problem since...
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