Nabbed!

The police descended in force on the intersection down the block last night. The super of a building there saw someone climbing up scaffolding and entering an apartment. And since there's been a flurry of burglaries in our neck of the woods, burglaries with a signature written in vaseline, interest in catching the thief was high.

It's not all that often that life resembles what folks see on TV. We had a big drug sting in the neighborhood a couple of years ago, complete with people jumping out windows to escape, but hardly anyone saw it happen except on the news. Life here is pretty tame; break-ins are more-or-less limited to cars parked in desolate places and to apartments where people leave the window to the fire escape open. We get an occasional mugging, but not much else.

At any rate, tonight there was an oversize SWAT-like truck and there were several police cars, and  K-9 dogs (which barked in the back of the truck, but I think that's all they did). The intruder was arrested, and I assume that he was suitably surprised to find a cheering crowd waiting for him outside.

The media originally said it was the famous bandit, but now it looks like it was just some shmo with incredibly bad luck.

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Little Guy was scared by the police activity. I pointed out that the only reason he even knows about this is that the burglar got caught. That guy, at least, was not going to be robbing anyone soon.

It's funny what kids don't know that we take for granted. I pointed out to Little Guy that robbers are less likely to come in at night (when people are at home) than during the day (when most people are at work). Criminals try to avoid having witnesses. 

Little Guy wanted to know what burglars steal. I said this one has been taking things like laptops and cameras and jewelry, things that are easy to conceal and easy to sell. They wouldn't want our big computer, because it would be hard to lug out without anyone noticing. And they're not after noisy things, like tubs of Legos. Important toys aren't generally that important to burglars.