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photography

... and it's found.

The car, pictured at right (Carin's photo, not mine), has been found resting happily in the ghetto section of town. If I squint, I can see my apartment from there. I had picked up the rental car about an hour before we got the call from the cops saying that they had found it. It's just as well; the tire is very, very flat (as can be seen in the photo), but luckily, it's the one that we just got from Wal-Mart, and they'll be replacing it with a working tire for pretty much no money. The thieves left a discman, a toolbox and a variety of other items, but they took Carin's portfolio and my favorite henley.

It appears that they pried their way in through the sunroof; it's all chewed up on the inside, the dome light is broken, and there's a twisted piece of metal which they apparently had used to jimmy the ignition. I'm happy to have it back, make no mistake about that... but when I saw the car in its present condition, it made the theft feel very real, that some jackasses had been there, in my damned car.

The cops were exceedingly good about this; they called AAA for us, and stuck around while waiting for the tow truck, which was piloted by a heavily tattooed kid who moved surprisingly quickly. (Maybe he does repos most of the time?) While we were waiting, we spoke with the cops, who explained to me that the shoes-over-wires thing (tying a pair of shoes together and throwing them over the power lines) is a ghetto thing--it doesn't mean anything in particular; it's just something that people living in the ghetto do.

An indeterminately-aged man in sunglasses, big shorts and an A-shirt stumbled by drunkenly, and bantered with the cops, who referred to him as "Mr. Casper", which, come to think of it, may have been his actual name, or possible an ironic nickname that he acquired because he was very dark-skinned. (I don't think it was an insult, given that the cops treated it as though it was his actual name, even after he'd walked off.) Carin mentioned that he sounded friendly, but the cop told her that Mr. Casper is a bad guy, who was previously "incarcerated [...] for taking someone's life"; I think that's how he put it, which sounded weirdly poetic. He opined that a good cop knows everyone in the area he serves, which was an aspect of police work I really hadn't thought of, and which doesn't sound very glamorous, but, come to think of it, probably does more for effective police work than anything else.

I appreciate that the officer who took the statements from us was looking around for the car; I'm a bit sorry that he didn't get a collar for his troubles. I did wonder a bit if I got such good service because I'm white, but I'd have to ask someone who's not white who was in a similar situation to find that out. For my part, it made me feel good that he had time enough to look around for my car--either there's not enough serious crime in the area for him to be working on that (though I just realized that car thievery is a pretty major crime), or they're well-staffed enough that he could take the time to look around for our car. (Also, he did say that crime had dropped considerably since the casinos came in and pumped scads of cash into the local economy.)

Whatever the cause, I'm pleased with how my local government has worked, and I feel an urge to send a thank-you note of some sort. I may have problems with police sometimes (in the sense of disagreeing with their methods, policies and attitudes, not in the sense of being hassled by them), but they're the sort of things which can be solved by greater transparency and accountability. (Such as, for instance, the mass arrests at the 2004 RNC, nearly all of which resulted in no charges being filed, and which involved a tremendous abount of lying from cops.) I emphatically do not have Jeff's "fucking pigs!" thing, which, so far as I can tell, he has because he doesn't like to get ticketed for driving like a maniac.

After dropping the car off at the Mart to get the tire repaired, Carin and I continued on our previously-schedule day, in somewhat modified spirits. (I'd say higher, but the theft of the car had suddenly been made concrete for me, which isn't exactly a big upper.) I took Carin to a diner that my folks used to bring me to all the time, where they make their own ice cream (delicious!) and fry cheese (shown). Afterwards, we went out to see "Hot Fuzz". It was goddamned hilarious, and oddly relevant in that it dealt with police work in a more-than-trivial fashion... that is, before the second movie started. See, it's like two movies, both of them excellent, sandwiched into a layered confection of excellence.

Comments: Crooks and Liars