Survival Arts

"Have you seen this thieving bum?" or, Batman with a Digicam

I have a few pet peeves, one of which is shopping cart thieves. I think this particular crime pushes one of my outrage button because it's an everyday occurrance, out in the open, that many people witness and almost no one does anything about. That type of thing rankles me. So, when I was driving through Cupertino (which like many American towns has a well-known problem with this type of thing) a few days ago, and saw this guy crossing the street across from Long's Drugs with the latter's property, I had to do something.

He was on the corner, and I was stopped at the light waiting to turn. I opened my window and told him he should return the cart. He was startled, and blurted out that he was moving the empty cart to a "collection center" a block away! Nonsense, and I told him so. He was visibly shaken, and turned around to return the cart to the nearby store. I pulled into the parking lot nearby to watch, and saw him making motions to resume his theft (thinking me absent), at which point I pulled up nearby and took some photos with the tiny digicam (a Sony CyberShotU) that I keep in my pocket whenever I leave the house. It's in this photo where I've informed him that I have pictures of him, and he's objecting that since I don't work for the store, I have no say in the matter.

He eventually returned the cart and did a bum-swagger off the lot. In the meantime, I parked my car and walked into the store seeking the manager, who was happily surprised, and requested that I use the store's memorycard-to-film converter to leave him copies of the photos I'd made. I took the Memory Stick from my camera, stuck it in the front of a neat little kiosk with a surprisingly idiotproof user interface, and within minutes we had a set of hardcopies for myself and for the store management, to be posted on what I assume is the "deadbeats bulletin board" where many retail operations post photos of bad check passers and other BOLO (Be On the Look Out) notices.

Yet another reason there are certain things I carry with me regularly.

Posted by Russell Whitaker at January 31, 2004 01:22 PM | TrackBack