crime and punishment.
|
It was the first nice day of spring the other
Sunday, so my fiancée and I went out to go for a walk by the
river. Nice breeze, blue sky, air still a little crisp…a gorgeous
spring day. As we were passing the MBTA parking lot next to my
building
where she parks when she visits, she stopped, turned around, and, in a
slightly panicked voice, uttered those fateful words: “Ummm…where’s my
car?”
Huh. Sure enough, the car in the spot where she usually parks was not hers. Neither was the one next to it, nor the one next to that, nor, as we soon determined, any other car in the lot. Dammit. Our first and last hope was that the car had been towed for some reason, but a call to the MBTA confirmed that no, this was not the case. They sent out an officer to take a report. He was embarrassed to have to ask “Now, are you sure it’s really missing and not somewhere else in the lot..?” Oh, man…do you see any green ’95 Integras in this lot? I got the distinct impression this particular interview was nothing new to the officer. That night we got the call from the police that the remains of the car had been found about an hour upstate, in South Lawrence. Assuming the car was taken sometime overnight Saturday, presumably after the T stopped running at about 1 am, the thieves had it for about a half a day, which was all it took to strip it clean. Obviously not the work of amateurs, or kids screwing around for a goof. Lesson learned: not only does crime pay…it pays well enough to work on Sundays. We made the drive upstate a few days later to retrieve the license plates and a few personal effects that had been left behind. The lot where it had been towed was in a slum. Poverty in New England is ugly in a way that is unique to the region; ugly old towns full of 150 year-old houses that were never intended to last even into the 20th century but no one ever bothered to tear down. The manager had told us there was another stripped Integra in the lot; as it turns out, it’s a popular car to steal. When the lot attendant pointed out the car, my fiancée literally did not recognize it: “No, that’s not it, mine has a spoiler…” But no; the plates matched, that was what was left of her car. The thieves had taken the engine, the radiator, the transmission, the instrument panel, the spoiler, the headrests (?!), the tires, and her nice book of New England maps. They had replaced the tires with little donut spares to roll it to where they dumped it. The guy at the lot told us that South Lawrence is a popular dumping ground and that Integras are popular targets, “like gold around here.” Supposedly the used parts go for triple the American rate in the Dominican Republic (?!). It’s interesting to ruminate on the logistics of such an operation…somewhere in that hole of a city there are some guys in a garage with a business plan worked out that says we can strip X number of cars in a month, load the parts onto a container ship, deliver them to our contact in-country, and turn a profit of Y. Makes you wonder if they have lines in the budget for bribing corrupt cops or bailing guys out of jail. I can see the whole thing laid out in Microsoft Project, complete with milestones and resource allocations. Do you get dental with that? In the old west, they’d shoot a guy for stealing a horse. I have to say this experience has left me inclined to think that a quick death at the hands of an angry mob or an ad-hoc firing squad is too lenient for our little hoodlums. I don’t care what your background is, whether you grew up poor, or you came from a broken home, or your momma just didn't love you. This was not a crime of passion or desperate circumstances; it was a carefully thought out career choice, pros and cons weighed, risk/benefit analysis performed. No one put a gun to this guy’s head and made him take the car. This guy had no fear of getting caught or being punished. If jail is just a place to cool your heals for a few years with food and lodging courtesy of the state, and in fact is a place to make new contacts and enhance your career prospects in your chosen profession, then maybe it’s time to rethink our punishment system. Crucifixion, anyone..? Lemme see, where’d I put the hammer and nails… |