LAist gets jacked; gets back

why call the cops when retards like you don't press charges?

thats a crucking frazy story. i don't think that you are retarded either. damn

you definitely need to file a report...

if only to make sure that the crime statistics are accurate.

If LAPD does not know about problem areas (and they only know from reports filed with them) how can they ever focus on preventing crimes?

I believe it. My homie is in a wheelchair and was working on his laptop, when a dickhead did the same thing, snatched his computer and ran off. That's real uncool.

I recall my mom telling me when I was little that if anyone ever tried to grab me to scream "fire" as loud as I good. People care more about their shit, naturally, and "fire" could hurt their shit - so they're more likely to react. Or at least come watch.

And the Pershing Square comment is partially accurate. I remember readings some articles about how it's much better to be in peril on a lonely moutain highway than in an urban area. On the lonely mountain highway - or any other sparsely populated area - people are more likely to hear your cries and think "uh-oh, better help." In urban areas, people assume with SO many others around SOMEONE will have called for help. But if everyone thinks that . . . . you end up stabbed in Pershing Square.

Moral: freakin' call the cops if you hear someone in trouble.

You're an idiot for not filing a police report. As such, you are contributing to the now-to-be-more-frequent laptop snatchings.

Were you outside with your laptop? Because I know that Starbucks - I go to Phoenix next door all the time. It's always busy and scattered with random chairs. Plus, South Pas is not your normal hangout spot for cholos who randomly run into Starbucks to steal a laptop.....

I guess this is why I don't run around coffee shops with my laptop. Besides it being a pain in the butt, of course.

Which Starbucks was this? There are only a few in South Pasadena but it would be cool to know exactly which one to avoid.

No. It happened at the one on Huntington and Fremont...not the one in the photo above.

I agree with how you handled it!

I think the most important line is, "if they were just snatching... i don't take it personally." Shit happens. Being robbed sucks, but if you're okay and your data is safe, you're a lucky man!

Retaliation is without question the worst part of any situation. Pointing the finger at "some cholos in an SUV" does absolutely NO GOOD, other than giving you a reason to always have to look over your shoulder. Being able to say, "fuck it, I'm over it," is a very good thing.

I always wondered if anyone would ever walk into a coffeeshop and grab my laptop. Now I know. Thank you for sharing.

well, easy for you to say, and you're probably right, from the perspective of whatever comfy suburban den you crawled out of. But your post was shitty, your anger's misplaced, and you're frankly way the fuck out of line. You don't understand what it's like to be worried that your girlfriend or your mother might be attacked walking out of the house for something you said. If I lived in Brentwood I'd file a report, but I don't have the luxury here to do that. These guys' mates have killed several people in my neighborhood in the last few weeks. I'm lucky to be alive, and I want to stay that way. What is clear to me is that it's the PD's job to protect people, and if they can't protect me, I can't help them.
It's all beside the point. Take your high-handed bullshit somewhere else, until you've walked in my shoes and had to sneak in and out of your own apartment when you were sure no one had seen you.

There's a real simple solution to all of that. Spend $40 on a cable lock and lock it to your table or chair. The crooks go for the low hanging fruit. If they see your cable lock, they'll probably hit the jerk next to you who doesn't have one. Or if they don't see it, they'll drop it as soon as there's resistance.

ONE: I do not know them personally, I had never seen them before the incident. I do not for a fact know that their mates were involved in any homicides, all I know is they were from a local gang, and the local gangs kill ppl around here all the time, and I don't want anything to do with them, and I'm definitely not going into some witness protection program over it. If you think the police don't know that gang members here are dangerous, you're crazy. They know. But they're not going to be there to protect me if I go and get these guys busted on a minor charge and a week later they're out and threatening my family.

TWO: I don't smoke pot, you can ask anyone I know. I resent the implication and the attempt to smear me. Your ad hominem attacks are pointless, and again, seriously misplaced. Get a life.

THREE: I don't have deadlines. I write here when I want to, and I don't get paid. Again, ad hominem attacks. You feel you need to attack someone for having done something you would never be able to do. I know why I'm writing here...it has nothing to do with making myself feel better at other peoples' expense. Do you?

FOUR: I have no further information about any crimes other than what happened to me. Again, I resent the implication that I'm somehow protecting criminals. I had something awful happen to me and am lucky to have gotten out alive, and the idea that I somehow wronged you personally in the process is sick and absurd. What kind of human being are you?

You've got too much time on your hands. I don't know who you think appointed you the moral arbiter of how one ought to handle being victimized by criminals, but I'm not the one to blame for what happened to me, and again, you are way the hell out of line. Take your shit out on someone else.

All I can say to the people who've attacked me here is that you lack compassion and decency, even when trying to explain that you're somehow more decent than I am. I went through some extremely traumatic shit that I'm lucky to have survived, spent the next three days in pain from head to toe, and you've got the gall to badger me and insult me.

I can't even walk down the street right now without freaking out. And you're judging me.

By all means, go ahead and congratulate yourselves on what superior human beings you are; your scruples are all in the right places. Feel free to insult me. Sure! I'm a pussy. If I ran to the police and begged for their protection, that would make me a big, strong man like you. You're right. I'm a moral coward. I'm the decline of Western Civilization. I'm the ruin of Los Angeles. Forget it; why be ashamed of living in a city with thousands and thousands of gangbangers, or in a country where 1 in 100 are in prison, when you can be ashamed of a guy like me, who never wanted anything but to drink a cup of coffee and work, and now -- pussy that I am -- am afraid to even leave my house.

I guess I'm a perfect target for idiots like you. Normally it wouldn't bother me but I'm not feeling that great since this thing and it's just SO APPALLING TO ME that there are people as compassionless as you attacking me over it.

Where are your grandiose morals, where's your sense of the civil and the urbane when it comes to insulting people you don't know and have never met? If you're so moral, where's your sense of sympathy? Where's your humanity? Or are you just perfect law-abiding machines? Is that really what it takes to have a just society?

Jesus. Take a look at yourselves. You should be ashamed. The fact that people like you even read my posts makes me sick. If I had any ill-will for anyone, I'd have it toward you. I'd rather have the thugs who robbed me over to dinner than a pack of sniveling little jackals and snitches like you supposedly upstanding citizens.

Josh,
It's because I have sympathy for the victims of crime, having been one myself, that your post infuriated me. You had a chance to contribute, in however minor a fashion, to doing something about crime, and you refused. Then you tried to excuse your refusal with some cockamamie conspiricy theory about the L.A.P.D. trying to steal your laptop.

Listen, I know how bad it can be to be a victim. I also know how indifferent cops can be. I once had a gun held to my forehead by a jittery junkie who robbed me of the only spending money I had for a month, only to have the local police (this was overseas) refuse to even bother with the paperwork. I know how devastating it can be to be attacked, how it can fill you with fear and make you ill at ease to even walk down the street. I'm totally sympathetic.

But the problem here is that you still refuse to acknowlege that you failed to do the right thing. You still insist that refusing to cooperate with the cops was the best thing to do, to allow these thugs to go merrily on their way and to find their next victim. For those of us who have been there, that kind of abrogation of justice is far too much to swallow. You should go back to South Pasadena, walk into the polise station on Mission, and file the proper report that you should have done when it was all fresh in your memory. Until you do so, you are the one who has to live with doing nothing. Lashing out ain't going to make the guilt go away, man.

BTW, if you don't want people who disagree with you to read your posts, you shouldn't post them to a public forum on the internet. That takes a bit of thick skin, brother. As for the ad hominum, I said that the pot comment may not apply to you, and if it doesn't, I apologize for the implication. I've smoked enough weed to know what I'm talking about though, and it seemed a likely explanation. And yeah, I doubted your story, because, as you acknowledged by clarifying yourself above, in your previous reply, you indicated that you had special knowlege of unsolved murders in your neighborhood. You gotta admit, that's a stretch.

You may not have a problem with pot, Josh, and good on you, but you do have another problem. By seeking to inflate the forces against you by claiming that the men who tried to rob you were murderers and that the PD might have conspired to steal your computer, you reveal another addiction entirely. An addiction to exaggeration. How do you expect your readers not to call bullshit on that?

I'm sorry you got robbed, man. And I'm pissed off that you helped them get away. End of story.

The police took an incident report; several witnesses at Starbucks gave full reports; two of the guys were caught on videotape. If they're caught, the state will prosecute them. Where I'm allegedly lack moral fibre is that, when asked whether I personally would press charges, I said "no."

I think this was a wise decision, and I stand by it.

Lastly, the paranoia -- I never implicated LAPD for anything -- I realize (and said) that it's a stretch that there was any larger reason behind stealing my laptop. However, for my own sense of security, I decided to make my remote suspicion a matter of public record.

if possible, maybe move to another city? crime still happens in other cities, but at least you'll relieve yourself of the paranoia attached to the traumatizing events in the city you're in now.