So many scumbags

So many scumbags

There are some scumbags in the world.  Last night one or more of them broke into my dad’s garage, stole all of his tools and his 1952 Velo Solex, a kind of bicycle with an engine, his latest pride and joy.  He has an eye for the unusual, my dad, his “boat”, an Escapade, is in fact a kind of pedalo, only a bit cooler and without the swan neck at the top.  And no child sick.  I think it has a go faster stripe and everything and it’s surprisingly nippy.  He ALWAYS gets an audience when he takes it out which is, I suspect, why he has it.  His car is an MG Midget the colour of, well, diarrhoea.  MG say “bracken” but no, diarrhoea.

Anyway, the engine of the Solex wasn’t attached at the time and the thieves left that behind, as clearly they didn’t know what it was they were stealing.  Which begs the question, why bother?  It’s obviously a very old bike and you’re hardly going to get much for that, especially without the engine if by some miracle you actually knew what it was you had.  I can’t imagine a Burberry cap wearing chav larking about on it, not even in Portsmouth.  I’m worried that the bastards will just dump it somewhere meaning that the whole exercise, apart from getting a lifetime’s worth of tools, was mostly pointless and only served to upset.  And, of course, the police were no use, sending a “scene of crime officer” no doubt with “SOCO” emblazoned on the back of their jacket in CSI stylee.  Nice.  Apparently they faffed about looking for fingerprints and couldn’t find a single one.  You could argue they’d also struggle to find their arse with both hands.  Just saying.

I too had a fairly recent brush with some scumbags.  These ones were particularly blatant and less than bright.  The weather was pants, it had been raining and very windy and I noticed one day that my shed door had blown open.  I didn’t think much of it as I had things to do but later in the day I noticed some stuff had also somehow got outside the shed.  Namely an old headboard, some wood and a bike.  Now, I couldn’t be sure they hadn’t always been outside the shed, at least until I saw two hoodies walk out of my shed carrying another bike.  In broad daylight!  I couldn’t believe my eyes!  I didn’t really know what to do.  I paced a bit and went looking for the phone.  Was this enough of an emergency to call 999?  I wasn’t sure.  But I didn’t want them to get away with any of my stuff so I went to the patio door and banged loudly on it.  Shitbags 1 and 2 turned round, clocked me and legged it over the back wall from whence they came.

I dialled 999 gave the description, checked the shed to see if they’d actually got anything but wasn’t sure.  One of the quick release wheels was missing from one of our bikes but apart from that I couldn’t tell.  But about 5 minutes later I had a call, a police officer had responded and caught one of the little buggers.  How unusual!  He had a bike and they wanted to know if it was ours, but sadly I couldn’t be sure one way or the other.  And despite the fact my description matched exactly what the little bastard was wearing the CPS decided not to proceed.  Even though the policeman had caught him red-handed and he’d resisted arrest too.  I’m not a fan of the CPS.  (If you’ve not caught my earlier posts, why not?  And why I don’t rate the criminal justice system starts at Hope Springs?)

The thing is, I am very vocal about rehabilitation of offenders and passionate about re-educating the wider public to see them differently.  Most of them.  But it’s people like this that give ex-offenders a bad name.  These are the scumbags that most people imagine when they hear the word offender.  These are the scumbags that Daily Mail readers want to lock up and conveniently mislay the key.  Up to a point, even I agree.  Can they be rehabilitated?  Maybe not, they want something for nothing and don’t care who they hurt to get it.  I’m generalising but they’re not usually clever enough to avoid capture yet only get short custodial or community sentences for relatively petty crimes.  There is neither the time nor the resource available to rehabilitate offenders on shorter sentences, try as they might, and so for people like this prison becomes a revolving door.  So many things need to change, I’m working on finding some way of making a difference but I think I’ve got my work cut out.

5 Responses »

  1. I have a whole street of twats like you describe, just itching for you to leave something of “any value” outside then woosh, like David Blaine street magic, it’s gone only to re-surface at the next street corner to be sold for the little shits next hit from the bong.
    What really get’s me is the police, despite actually catching these people red handed don’t seem to want to do anything about it. I have no respect for the police on matters of this nature and having been stolen from in the past I resort to taking the law into my own hands much to the surprise of the afformentioned theives.
    Worse thing is you actually get in more trouble for fighting back, but why not I say as it’s the one and only time you seem to get a reaction from the police and even more comical is they start defending the scumbags!
    I know it’s been debated many times before, but I think you should be able to defend your own property. If I caught scumbags theiving from my shed red handed I’d be out there like a shot, windmill style with a disturbed look on my face. I’m not the smallest bloke in the world and by no means the largest, but I just won’t stand for it anymore. These people need to know if they steal then there is a fairly good chance they are going to recieve pain in the process.

  2. Bastards.You poor Dad :-(
    I could have understood someone targetting a specific item for it’s value or collectability but they were obviously brainless morons grrrrrr

    You have got your work cut out, what there needs to be is a sudden steepening of sentances for repeat offenders – not as a “throw away the key” type punishment but as a way of keeping them in the system to assess why they keep reoffending and how to break the behaviour.
    Think it reasonable to say that if someone keeps getting picked up for petty theft that is obviously their occupation and not a one off.

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