I just love this story, the story of what happened to a couple of car thieves when they ran into a Navy Seal:
The average sentence for first-time car thieves is 180days. That is less than sixmonths for being convicted of stealing a car. If the criminal is on drugs, he will be considered for diversion into drug-abuse classes. If a person takes drugs and is convicted of stealing a car, can he pay his debt to society by going to classes?
Shortly after that article came out, there was a report of someone who stole a car and killed his brother. He was sentenced to six years with a possibility of half off for good behavior. Here is the rub: That man previously had been convicted three times for car theft. I thought car theft was a felony. I also thought that for the third strike the minimum sentence was 25years.
He should have been in prison, but was not; he was out to do it again. Isn’t killing someone in the process of a felony first-degree murder? For that, he was sentenced to sixyears and might be out in three.
It doesn’t take a member of Mensa to figure out there might be a connection between the proverbial hand slap and the ranking of Modesto as No.1 in cars thefts.
A friend is an orthopedic technician and a former Navy SEAL/corpsman. I hold him in high regard because he learned a lot about treating wounds during Operation Desert Storm and has implemented some of those lessons in his job.
He had us rolling in laughter while recounting this experience with would-be car thieves. I do not recommend approaching things the way he did.
A little after 11 one night, in their nice neighborhood, his sons knocked on his bedroom door to tell him someone was breaking into their neighbor’s pickup. He got up with nothing on but his skivvies (that’s sailor talk for underwear) and grabbed a Louisville Slugger on the way out the front door. He noticed two people in the bed of his neighbor’s pickup.
He sneaked around in the shadows, as SEALs are wont to do, positioned himself between the car and the pickup and then signaled his sons, who made a noise to startle the would-be thieves.
The burglars ran between the cars into the swing of a bat. They both continued to run, but one had a broken arm flapping at his side. My friend said he was aiming for his head.
Every once in a while, the good guys win.
My friend should have given the bad guy a business card in case he needed some orthopedic work.
The bad guys are not afraid of the court system; apparently they have absolutely no reason to be. My advice to the bad guys: Be afraid, be very afraid. The next time you try to rip off a car, you might run headlong into a nearly naked sailor wielding a baseball bat.
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