[Leica] Police? Ha.

[Mike Johnston <michaeljohnston@ameritech.net>]

>>>I can't miss the opportunity, though, to exercise my credentials as
a card carrying conservative curmudgeon and say that "all that
ends well is NOT well"! The damn perpetrator has not been
apprehended!<<<


I'd guess the police are not terribly interested in devoting a
detective's time to something like a stolen R8 many months after the
fact. I once recovered an expensive turntable that had been stolen along
with the rest of my stereo when my apartment was burgled--the tonearm
clamp was busted, and as they carried the turntable away the arm bounced
around, ruining the cartridge. Since the thief didn't know how to
"change the needle," he took it to a local hi-fi emporium for repair. I
walked into the selfsame hi-fi shop armed with my insurance money,
looking to replace my stolen gear, and saw my turntable on the repair
bench.

Separately, I struck up a conversation with the "owner" of the turntable
and, in a  fiercely whispered discussion out of earshot of him, browbeat
the shop manager into retaining the turntable until the police arrived,
which he didn't want to do. It took forever for the police to arrive. By
the time they got there, I had ample evidence that the person who had
brought the tuntable in for repair knew exactly who the thief was, and
where he lived. He had told me that the guy's house was "full of all
sorts of neat stuff" they he was "practically giving away." It had
apparently never occurred to my turntable's proud new owner that the
stuff was hot. He was a number of frames short of a full roll, if you
know what I mean.

The police were utterly uninterested in pursuing the matter. They didn't
arrest the person who had the turntable in his possession (who was
moaning and groaning about his lost purchase price), and, when he
pretended to have forgotten to name the person he'd bought it from, they
let the matter drop. When I offered to supply the name for them, they
literally wouldn't listen to me. They just weren't interested in
pursuing it.

They did, however, retain my turntable for another three months as
"evidence." When I was finally called to come get it, I retrieved it
from the police impound building and carried it home by walking through
the streets of Portland, Oregon and on the bus; I was stopped twice by
policemen asking if I had a receipt for it! By the time I got it home,
*I* felt like the criminal. Thanks guys!

- --Mike