Darwinian Award Nominee

 

And the Nominee Is ...

I can't make this stuff up ... really!

This past weekend I was one of the technical staff on the television crew covering the Baltimore Ravens football game with the Packers. The game wasn't going that well and the rain had just ended so the rest of the day was actually looking good ... except for the Ravens offense.
However, on our lunch break the generator operator came into the tent and sadly reported that his new IPad had been stolen right out of his truck. What is rather sad ... is that the crook made off with the computer with dozen's of police surrounding our location, over 50,000 football fans and within 100 yards of our TV set erected outside one of the main entrances to the stadium. Sad but true. We all thought our colleague would never see that IPad again.

Then this sad story takes an unpredictable turn. What we learned was that it is common on most IPad's that a warning message appears on the screen if you turn it on without the correct password. The note gives the person in front of the screen the owners contact information. Low and behold, within a hour the thief calls our colleague and tells him he has found his IPad and will meet him later at 9PM, "cause he can't leave the game until its over." Our colleague makes the arrangements and then comes into the tent to tell us the good news. Somehow our colleague reconsiders and decides to call the police. They come to the lunch tent and he tells the two Baltimore Police officers the story. The two officers chuckle to themselves but in a serious tone they tell our colleague in no uncertain terms ... "you are not going to meet this guy. It's a setup!"
So the two policemen wisely advise our colleague to call the thief back and tell him you are going to meet him at 2:15pm and that, "they will send an undercover officer in your place to retrieve the IPad."

Our colleague calls the thief back and describes the change in plans and says, "the boss is letting him take a taxi over to meet him." The thief agrees and then cautiously says, "you aren't going to send the cops here are you?" Our colleague replies, "Of course not!"
An hour later as the story is told by the Baltimore Police officers, "the undercover officer drove up to the meeting place and the suspect, along with three other thugs were waiting for your colleague." Further, "that the guy is a common thug, known to be a petty theft and has stolen dozens of items just like this one."

Like most criminals this guy and his thugs had nothing better to do than to steal and attempt to harm innocent law-abiding citizens. If they would simply use that energy to do something productive they might just turn out to be model citizens.

Our colleague was going to be jumped, robbed, beat-up and perhaps worse - a senseless victim of a violent crime. In this case the advice and work of the Baltimore Police Department and the careful work of these two officers probably saved our colleagues life! Thank you men!

So I guess there are several lessons to learn by this event ...

Don't leave any valuable item in plain site even if there are thousands of "good folks" around.

Call the police and don't try to be a hero or become a victim.

If you are a thief ... don't trust your victim!

This guy gets my vote for the Darwinian Award for 2013


IN MY RIGHT MIND
Gary S DeMoss