Truck Thief Gunned Down by Owner After AirTag Gives Away Location - Slashdot

Posted by EditorDavid

• ›

  Well, why does a vigilante man?
  Tell me why does a vigilante man?
  Carry that sawed-off shot-gun in his hand?
  Would he shoot his brother and sister down?

• Looking after your own property is a natural instinct. Until more details arise, it is not clear that the owner deliberately intended to act as a substitute for law enforcement.

  • Re:

    Do you mean that we should presume the shooter is innocent? Why should we not also presume that the deceased was innocent? Either way the penalty for theft is jail time, not death.

    • Re:

      We should presume both are innocents. The dead thief is not going to be charged with anything though, on account of being dead. So unfortunately for him there's not much the law can do for him at this point. That leaves the right of the car owner to be considered innocent until proven otherwise.

  • • Re:

      No, they are upset that someone values property more than life. AND that there was no due process.

      • Re:

        Again. You're assuming that the car owner went out on a revenge mission to retrieve his car by any means necessary. It could very well be that the car thief escalated the situation into a shootout, in which case this is just self defense. We just don't know at this stage.

• Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

• don't fuck with another man's vehicle.

• Had a company owned item stolen in Houston, Tx. It had GPS on it. The cops in Houston basically said: We don't have time. You can go look for your stolen property yourself. With several heavily armed people, we did. Item had moved, and the GPS was disabled. Didn't get it back. Ugh.

  • Re:

    I've heard similar stories everywhere. I wonder if part of the solution might be more funding for police. Among other things I suspect more funding for police might negate some of the factors that lead to police abuse and allow for less violent tactics [youtube.com].

    • Re:

      More than funding, I would think that higher standards would help.

      Stop hiring people who are in it for the thrill, or who lack empathy, or who are demonstrably prone to domestic violence.

      Require real justification for every weapons discharge outside a practice range.

      End qualified immunity. Require officers to carry personal liability insurance. Can't be insured? Can't be a cop.

      End the practice of police investigating themselves and clearing themselves of wrongdoing.

      Make it a crime for police to lie in any s

  • Re:

    Wow. Let’s set aside all the issues of a society that’s literally swimming in guns for a minute

    
    
    Your COMPANY hauled off and tried to recover a vehicle by sending a posse of not-police with a bunch of guns? Wow. That’s as risky as it gets. Ever heard of stray bullets? Bullet goes into a car, glances off something, exits the window, goes half a mile down the street and winds up in the head of a toddler. Cops are specifically trained to avoid this, and they still get it wrong sometimes. Un

  • Re:

    Very common all over the country. Police don't have time (interest?) in tracking down minor crimes. Vigilantism is the expected, if really terrible, result. In some parts of the country (like San Francisco) it feels like the police have just given up.
    
    Some of this may be due to widespread anti-police sentiment, but of course the effect is to increase that sentiment.
• I had always wondered if an air-tag or android equivalent could be used in this fashion, having had my car stolen - then recovered. It's getting dangerous to be an auto thief or to buy a stolen auto. Higher risk of getting caught.
  
  On the money side, Lo-Jack might want to reconsider their business model. Additionally, several expensive "support" services that rely on recovering stolen cars, detention lot owners for example, might find their numbers reduced. Overall a positive outcome.
  
  Article didn't mention how long it took for police to arrive once the stolen truck location was relayed to them.

  • Re:

    If someone steals my car then I don't want it back. I'll just take a check instead, this is the entire point of insurance. Fuck the insurance company, I'm taking my premiums back when something they cover happens.

    • Re:

      So everyone pays more for insurance since thieves are essentially able to operate with impunity. When they DO get caught, more often than not, they are back on the street in a few days and go back to their old habits.

      While I don't condone shooting thieves (unless they are threatening you with harm), there needs to be credible deterrence. They need to know that when they are caught they are going to spend quite a bit of time in jail and that the odds of getting caught are high.

    • Re:

      You're contributing to your own demise. Through insurance premia going up.

    • Re:

      Ding ding ding annnnd we found the smart one, ladies and gentlemen.

      
      
      Although it’s worth noting that not everyone is covered by insurance. You and I are probably NOT in the lowest socioeconomic quintile, where most cars are uninsured beyond the most basic legal requirements. It’s different down there. Still not worth getting into a firefight, but it does complicate these decisions for people who might not be all that smart to begin with.

• The article makes it out like the car thief is the victim. It's stupid to try and recover your stolen goods and the situation could have ended very differently. Laughable though how the articles author was so concerned with the criminal and if the victim will be charged by the police. (Texas isn't Canada after all!) lol

  • Re: Who's the victim here?

    The thief ain't a victim.

    Personally I don't care if he was dragged out into the street unarmed and execute at point blank range.

    • Re:

      >Personally I don't care if he was dragged out into the street unarmed and execute at point blank range.

      You should, because the kind of people who can do that aren't the kind of people you should be comfortable having in your community.

      There's not much difference between a vigilante and a murderer, and you'd never know if it was actually justified or if they just found an excuse and are now looking for the next one.

      Vigilantism is what you get when the cops aren't doing the job they should be doing (and m

      • • Re:

          Don't have the story. ex's boyfriend and it's really the property of the ex.

          Repossession contractor; there is not always the most professional people in that line of work. This is realistically possible since people living off a lot of debt is commonplace in the USA.

          Furthermore, this thing was likely on loan which requires insurance but also the loan company has insurance so this theft wasn't even likely costing the owner the full price of a new vehicle. Rather extreme effort... perhaps there was a laptop f

    • Re:

      Statistically the thief was a male in their late teens to mid-thirties.

      A lot of people age out of crime. In 10 years that thief might have become a productive member of society who regretted the dumb things they did in their youth, now they'll never have that chance.

    • Re:

      How do you know that the person driving the vehicle was the thief?

  • Both are criminals; 1 a murderer, 1 a theaf.

    This is not difficult if you don't have a bias for ranking property higher than human life (most Americans; not trolling, I am American.)

    You have every right to do everything except confront somebody with a gun who also has a gun. When that happens both parties have little choice but to play Russian roulette and it's entirely the players' fault for playing! duh.

    The mature intelligent civilized move is to NOT confront the criminal (but this is Texas, USA) and at most track the vehicle down then call the poli

• The police were doing a lot of labeling, but in point of fact the truck's owner had every right to seek out his truck. He had every right to talk to the person sitting in it.

  If the police were already there, and it was "a crime scene" then I could see that being a different matter. Just because the person in the truck was suspected of having stolen it doesn't mean that person has a special legal status that prevents the owner of the vehicle the suspect is sitting in from approaching him.

  The suspected thief was innocent until proven guilty, and so it's hard to see what law prohibits anyone from approaching them.

• This is the second report that I've read in recent weeks where an owner of a stolen vehicle tracked it down and shot the thief. I expect we'll be seeing more of this style of vigilante action for several reasons:

  (1) Finding your vehicle doesn't imply that you intend to get in a firefight. If the thief has one key, and you have the other, you can steal your property back again. Regardless, carrying a gun (just in case) is a sensible precaution.

  (2) Finding stolen property is low on the priority list of most municipal police forces, who must devote their efforts to dealing with violent crimes and assaults. It may be weeks before the police locate it (if ever), so why not go find it yourself? People are taking action because (in their minds) the authorities are not.

  (3) The sooner you locate your own vehicle, the less chance it will be damaged / destroyed / used to commit another serious crime.

  AirTags are only the tip of what is coming. I'm surprised that Apple hasn't built "Find My" functionality into CarPlay yet, but eventually it will happen. Potential stalking won't be an issue; if you're driving in a car that isn't yours, then the owner certainly has the right to track it without you being warned. And if Apple doesn't do it, then you can expect to see embedded automotive Amazon Sidewalk trackers on the market in the near future.

  In the very near future it will be practically impossible for a typical car thief to hold on to a stolen vehicle for any length of time. That's not a bad thing, as stolen vehicles are the enablers of much of the serious crime that occurs in larger cities.

  • Re:

    I'd never use an Apple or Amazon or any other such product for tracking... I have my own system currently tracking my family's cell phones that's only accessible to us (and, in theory, any skilled hacker who knows I exist and penetrates my systems, but that's fairly unlikely).

    What's stopping me from tracking the family vehicles is the cost of having them phone home - the least expensive option I've found is a mobile 4G/1GB data-only plan for $10/month, and the combo of my vehicles' values and the odds of th

    • Re:

      There is Lora/LoraWan.You can buy small microcontroller boards with it built in.They can reasonably transmit 10 miles (at kbps but in reality you only need a few bytes) in most cases and there are public and private networks of receivers almost everywhere nowadays.Don't constantly transmit and hide it in a non obvious spot with access to a little electrical power and a battery. If you code it right the battery can last months even if they disconnect the car battery and it only transmits randomly sparingly,

• ... get ready for the next ten stories: "Yet another innocent man shot dead due to mistake by vigilantes".
  
  The police are trained and follow the law and make enough mistakes.
  
  Vigilantes will make society much, much worse.

• • by hsthompson69 ( 1674722 ) on Sunday April 02, 2023 @10:47AM (#63418904)

    The SAPD should just have said "Thank you."

    Armed car thieves should feel like their lives are in danger when they commit their crimes.

    • by DewDude ( 537374 ) on Sunday April 02, 2023 @11:11AM (#63418992)

      They can't support vigilantism. The fact is if people are encouraged to take the law in to their own hands...it would reduce the need for a police force and likely result in all sorts of innocent people getting killed for no good reason than an untrained idiot simply suspected them. You probably wouldn't like it if someone said "you look like the guy that stole my lawn mower" and wound up dead because that other person "thought" you had a gun and decided to shoot first and ask questions later.

      People like you support this type of stuff until someone *you* support winds up at the other end; then you're all "THIS WAS THE POLICE'S JOB".

      • by Aristos Mazer ( 181252 ) on Sunday April 02, 2023 @11:23AM (#63419042)

        The person driving might also not be the thief if the car was stolen and then sold. Or it might be someone who is just related to the thief -- not necessarily involved in the crime at all or knowing that the car was stolen. Heck, in the long-shot case, it's a good Samaritan returning the car to its owner. Probable? No. But weird cases happen. This is why we have trials before executing someone.

        • Re: Good

          Lots of prevarication going on there. Odds are thst the police will have to face many of the same questions. Not having been present at the scene of a crime and therefore less aware of the circumstances.

          Many of the protections against false arrest, accusations and supporting criminals civil rights are there to protect suspects apprehended at a later time. Not when they are caught red-handed committing the crime. Which the property owner is more likely to do on the spot.

          There are no exceptions in the law f

        • by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Sunday April 02, 2023 @11:52AM (#63419118)

          The person driving might also not be the thief if the car was stolen and then sold. Or it might be someone who is just related to the thief -- not necessarily involved in the crime at all or knowing that the car was stolen.

          So according to "stand your ground" the occupant of the stolen vehicle might have been fully justified in shooting the rightful owner.

          • Re:

            Yes and there have been court cases where both sides have argued as much. It's entirely possible for both parties to qualify for such protections simultaneously.

          • Re:

            You can‘t “stand your ground” in some else‘s property. That is standing someone else‘s ground.

            • Re:

              When both parties claim the same ground, there's the rub.

      • Re:

        There was a story a few years back about someone who lived near the geographic centre of the United States. When people's tracking tech couldn't determine the location of their stolen stuff with any more certainty than "somewhere in the US", they were being given a pin in the centre... Right near this person's house. They had a lot of angry people, and cops, turning up.

        • Re: Good

          I know this story. Later the company behind the pinning changed the location to a lake.

          • Re:

            Did anybody drown as a result? With the observable intelligence levels of some people...

    • SAPD is urging you if you are to get your vehicle stolen: I know that it's frustrating, but please do not take matters into your own hands like this. Our police department has plenty of resources that could go into finding your vehicle, i.e. our drone system, trackers ourselves,

      That's a hollow thing to say immediately after you've been ineffective at your job and someone has been forced to go do it for you.

      A very small part of me is also wondering if the cops are secretly cheering for this guy while the police's public relations department is telling them "We CAN'T publicly encourage this behavior. Here, issue this statement."

      I think the crime rare comes mainly down to the fact that criminals like this have DONE the math and decided it's worth the risk. So when victims start jumping into the ring, it changes the numbers. This guy just lowered the auto crime rate in his area by increasing the risk of car theft. Normally, IF you get caught. the police will arrest you and you'll probably go to jail. Pissed off armed citizens might shoot you and you might die. Most criminals notice this, and a few will find something else to do rather than try to steal their next ride.

      • Cops are not, and should not, be in the business of preventing crime. They are there to capture those who are suspected of breaking the law so that courts can apply punishment. Pre-emptive arrests are the basis of fascism: the cop on the street who thinks someone looks suspicious and intervenes walks a fine edge of racial profiling and stereotyping non-conformist behaviors. Their presence can serve as a deterrent to law breakers because they're physically proximal and can respond quickly if someone reports a crime, but directly intervening creates abuses like NYC Stop And Frisk policy.
        
        A car being stolen is not a failure of the police. Stopping theft is not their job unless you really want a totalitarian state.

        • Cops are not, and should not, be in the business of preventing crime.

          I don't know, I think a crime prevented is a hell of a lot better than just capturing who did it. It tends to be a hell of a lot cheaper, for one.

          For that matter, capturing criminals is indeed intended as a crime-prevention measure, by incarcerating or otherwise punishing them, the theory is that they're less likely to commit crime in the future.

          A competent police force should reduce crime by that alone, along with the perception that, no, you're not going to get away with it.

          That said, they should absolutely stop crimes like spree shootings before the fact if at all possible.

          • Re:

            It definitely is easier and cheaper. No question there! The cost of recovery-after-the-fact is largely the price we pay for having the freedoms for non-conformity. I hope most Americans continue to willingly pay it for all but the most egregious crimes.

            > That said, they should absolutely stop crimes like spree shootings before the fact if at all possible.

            With open and concealed carry both being legal in many places, it's hard to say that a cop has any right to intervene before the shooting starts. Most

        • Re:

          >>Cops are not, and should not, be in the business of preventing crime.
          
          Which would you rather hear?
          
          "We prevented your loved one from being murdered"
          or
          "We caught the guy who murdered your loved one"?

          • Re:

            Oh, the former, no question. But I do not generally vote for laws that enabled that because "we prevented your loved one from being murdered" turns out to be the same as "we locked up a lot of people for being Black/Brown because we thought they looked suspicious."

            From "A Man for All Seasons":
            William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
            Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
            William Roper: “Yes, I'd

        • Re:

          Quite wrong. The _means_ to prevent crime need to be different than the ones used afterwards. But would you really say, for example, that a specific court in New York should not have more cops present to prevent violent crime, say, next Tuesday?

        • • Re:

            Depends on the circumstances, but in many case, yes. That is exactly the cost of US-style liberty. In the USA, the First Amendment largely protects against private speech where you threaten to do horrible things, and that protection exists because trying to preemtively arrest such people has a chilling effect on other types of speech we definitely value protecting, mostly around calling for revolution against our politicians. The right to call for armed revolution is fundamental to American democracy, and t

            • Re:

              To put it in UK terms: the difference is between the IRA and Sein Fein, even though the latter completely supported the former, sometimes openly, in the past. A US-version of Sein Fein would be free to operate; a US-version of IRA would not be.

              • Re:

                And in the UK Sinn Féin is free to operate while the IRA is not so so far you have not made a compelling argument for a difference.

    • Re: Good

      Thank-you? For stealing their kill?

  • by fabriciom ( 916565 ) on Sunday April 02, 2023 @11:08AM (#63418974)

    Where you there? Do you know what happened?

    Nice place to live, where any citizen takes a gun and kills anyone with out legal prosecution.

    • by lilTimmy ( 6807660 ) on Sunday April 02, 2023 @11:11AM (#63418988)

      Yeah, what happened to innocent until proven guilty? Or does that only apply to rich people.

      • • Okay let's assume that's valid legal theory (it isn't).

          In what country is theft punishable by summary execution?
          =Smidge=

          • Re: Good

            Texas.

            It's theoretically legal throuout the USA. The Constitution treats "life, liberty and property" equally. We just need a clear test case to take it to the Supreme Court.

            • Re:

              The USA has a legal system that does not allow summary execution anywhere in any district for any reason. Life, liberty and property all don't matter, none of them permit summary execution. In fact no country with a legal system based on common law allows summary execution because that would be fundamentally incompatible with a common law legal system.

              I invite you to read up on what this conversation is about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

              • by sinij ( 911942 ) on Sunday April 02, 2023 @01:08PM (#63419442)

                You are using loaded language to attempt to poison the well [wikipedia.org]. Invoking summary execution [wikipedia.org] is designed to summon images of Viet Cong shooting civilians. This is not the case here, where a thug that was committing a crime pulled a gun on a property owner and lost his life in the resulting firefight.

          • Re: Good

            Fuck off with your bullshit "smidge"

        • Re:

          No. My vehicle was stolen a few years back. The person arrested driving my car later turned out not to be the thief. It was someone who had innocently purchased my car from the thief when the thief put up a Craig's List ad for a used vehicle.

          • • Re:

              The point is that it doesn't make the person driving the stolen car the thief, the criminal.

              It makes them as much or more of a victim than the person who had the car stolen.

              After all, the thief now has their money, and getting that back is a lot less likely via insurance than getting some portion of value from the insurance company for the stolen car.

              • • Re:

                  The legal owner may not have the title if the vehicle is a new vehicle that isn't fully paid off, and the sale may involve taking over the payments, or may pay off the rest of the loan, in which case the new owner would not be able to get the title until after the loan is paid off.

                  And at least in California, there is a 10-day window to register the vehicle after purchase. That's plenty long enough to get caught with the stolen vehicle.

                • Re:

                  Okay, IF the car thief in the Op pulled a gun, then yeah. The article mentioned the possibility of a gun*, but that isn't assured yet.

                  Whether or not there are any charges from this, given that it's Texas, is very much up in the air, but I'm leaning towards no.

                  For the person arrested driving the car NOT being the thief, well:
                  1. Not everybody knows you need title for a car
                  2. The thief could have promised to totally mail it to them
                  3. As 1&2 imply, there are ignorant idiots out there.
                  4. We don't know t

                  • Re:

                    “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
                    - Albert Einstein

                    You're still not jaded enough, I see.

                    I mean, I just read about a university medical school student who didn't know that you need to plug a laptop in occasionally to charge it.

                • Re:

                  This is not known. The article states "an investigation is ongoing into whether the suspect actually had a weapon in the first place."

    • No crime was committed

      If it's completely obvious to the officers involved that the killer had that right, why bother arresting him?

      If the local prosecutor, on reviewing the evidence (including reports from the officers and witnesses), decides not to prosecute, why bother prosecuting?

      You're framing this as if it was an extra-judicial execution, but in fact the legal system allows for people to kill other people in certain circumstances. And more importantly, the law allows that if everything seems to be within the law, that we ca

    • Re:

      ramifications.
      common texan saying.
      come and take it.
      it is the reason why laws were shoved down the throats of texans.
      it is.
      a process

  • Re:

    A suspect is dead and the person who values a truck over human life is alive.

    This is what make me concerned. For some human life is worthless. One work colleague work carry a loaded gun in his truck waiting for someone to do something so he kill them. Another would always carry in the store hoping that a thief would give him and excuse to kill.

    Who are these people? Wanting to kill. And you know if their kid took a pack of gum and a shop owner legally killed them running away, they would cry how unfa

    • Re:

      The person that valued the truck over their life seems to have died. Not sure what your point is.

      • Re:

        > The person that valued the truck over their life seems to have died. Not sure what your point is.

        The person was on a test drive and was considering to purchase the truck. They didn't know it was stolen. After driving for a couple of minutes the driver got a call from his wife who was crying and in distress after her mother had passed away. The driver pulled into a parking lot to speak on his cell phone with his wife in safety.

        I also don't know if that version is true.

        • Re:

          It is however the reason why vigilantism of this type needs to be treated as murder. Vigilantes kill or harm the wrong people far, far too often and that is precisely the reason why a modern society makes it a rather serious crime.

    • Re:

      These people are cave-men. They do not understand the worth of civilization. They would destroy anything and everything if it was up to them.

• • Texas law is unusual in that it authorizes the use of lethal force to protect or recover property (Texas Penal Code Title 2, Section 9.41). That law doesn't, at least on its face, cover this kind of situation -- I would guess the truck's owner will argue self-defense instead, but Texas law certainly doesn't require "equal force".

    There's also not really a federal law angle here, so the feds will almost certainly not be stepping in.

    • Ouch that's terrible

      It looks like he killed the thief but it would have been just as easy for that moron to fire a few stray shots and kill a kid or some rando. People forget that one of the big reasons we don't allow idiots to carry guns, or at least why we didn't use to allow idiots to carry guns, is because when idiots carry guns they fire them indiscriminately and without proper trigger discipline or training.
      
      And I'd like to know given the nearly unlimited amounts of cash we give the cops plus all the money they steal

      • Re:

        I don't know what you're talking about as Texas has always allowed people to exercise their second amendment rights. Idiots have always been allowed to carry guns, just like the first amendment allows them to have opinions, even terribly wrong and horribly misinformed ones.
        
        Consider yourself fortunate if you've never had to deal with the police over stolen property. They don't give a shit and will just fill out a report so you can file an insurance claim. If your car gets stolen it's probably not coming b

    • • Re:

        I'm not an expert on Texas law, but they do have some old laws still on the book that might make it justified homicide assuming he killed the actual thief. If he shot anyone else he's probably guilty of murder, but there are plenty of instances in which killing a person may be justifiable under the law. I recall a case from a few years ago where a man beat another man to death because he caught that person molesting his child. I don't know if there was a particular law to justify his actions, but the DA de

      • Re:

        Most felonies are defined by state laws, not federal laws. You have some very wrong ideas about how United States laws work.

  • Re:

    Unless it's spun like a civil rights case with Texas not implementing federal law, how would the feds have jurisdiction?

  • • Re:

      "...While it is unknown exactly what happened, Police say it seems the suspected thief may have pulled out their own firearm. The vehicle owner responded by shooting and killing the suspect while they were inside the truck. It is unclear whether the vehicle owner will face charges over the matter, and an investigation is ongoing into whether the suspect actually had a weapon in the first place."

      I most certainly did read it. I also comprehended it. Try again.

• • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 02, 2023 @10:54AM (#63418926)

    the current system cherishes bad citizens and disadvantages the good.

    Due process and the rule of law can certainly be a hindrance sometimes, but I don't think that means that "the current system cherishes bad citizens." You undermine your own argument by making an idiotic assertion like that.

    • Re:

      Very few jurisdictions if any try to make the victim whole again. The victim is often left to fend for themselves. If ever you are a victim of a violent crime hope you have the proper insurance to cover medical and monetary damages.

      The assertion is not idiotic if you were a victim you understand where it is coming from.

    • • Re:

        Visit your county's public defenders office, see what kinds of cases they are working on. Not a single one will be about a 'woke' topic or political enemy. You will also find public defenders overwhelmed with work, no spare time at all, because they are busy handling 'real crimes'. Our system allows for equal representation because assholes like you would kill or jail everyone if we didn't. Not everyone accused is guilty and most prosecutions are not fair in that you don't need to throw the book at every si

  • Re:

    Yeah we should impose the death penalty on theft./s

    You're a fucking moron. A dangerous one at that.

  • Good thing nobody, nowhere EVER mistook a person for someone else, huh.

    • Optimize the values

      You make a good hypothetical point that fails in the face of statistical likelihood. Like everything else in the universe, a value is multiplied by occurrences.

      That would be a bad thing, let's assign a value of "badness" to that event. We can also look at the other side and assign a value of "badness" to stealing a truck. Your job is to optimize the situational value.

      There's also a situational value to being shot by the person stealing the truck. In that case, we would sum the badness of stealing a truck wi

    • • Not psychos... just people who have never been on the wrong side of identity theft, racial profiling, or just the problem of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Innocent people do get caught up in the wake of criminals, and vigilante justice does a poor job of thinking, analyzing, and evaluating before acting. Cops are trained to do that. Not all of them do, but a lot more of them do than extra-judicial citizens without training would.

  • Re:

    Good. Arm the citizens. Remove all questions of fault in self-claimed self-defense. Then we can defund and eliminate the police because everyone is out there enforcing the law.

    Except people tend to be "shoot first ask later", automatic assumption of guilt, and rejection of fair trials.

    • That's been done before of necessity

      The owner had every right to seek out his property. The thief resisted.

      There is ample precedent for citizen intervention in the US where law has failed including throughout the 1800s. Horse thiefs hung steal no more horses.

      Every justice system has casualties but today the losses are nearly all among the victims not the perps. Enough.

  • Unless some bozo with a gun decided you stole his truck and rather than ask you nicely to return it decides he'd feel better if you had a bullet in your head regardless of how innocent or guilty you are. Then again, maybe he was attempting to shoot the real perp and you just happened to walk into his line of fire. Or maybe his shot goes in through one open window and out the other killing some tot riding her tricycle or giving her a brain injury to enjoy for the rest of her life.

    Remember, an armed man is just a normal temper-tantrum or an alcohol induced rage away from shooting you. We all know citizens with guns are out there for our safety. And by the way, the Red states in the South and the West have the highest per capita gun murders.

    This should give you an idea of just how out-of-control the U.S. is with respect to the rest of the world:

              https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]

    And the Red States must be tired of winning, notice the bar and scatter graphs about half-way down (you don't have to worry your pretty little head with reading the op-ed):

            https://www.nytimes.com/intera... [nytimes.com]

  • Re:

    Wage theft exceeds all other theft combined [epi.org]. If you actually care about theft, that's the place to focus your anger. When we start making inroads into that problem, we can come for the next class of offenders.

  • • • Re: Good and this is why:

        Can we get a "Godwin's Law" flag implemented for articles? So I'll know which ones to skip.

• • Re:

    It's a car. Either it was insured or the owner is a complete moron (and the fact he just killed someone over a simple theft indicates it's the latter). There was no need to "fetch" your stolen property yourself.

    The majority of vehicles in Texas get recovered by police. Majority. And yet you're here justifying vigilantism because you perpetuate the absurdity that the police are the bad guys.

    You're part of the problem.

    • Re: If only

      Uh no. He is not wrong.
      we just moved to Washington state from Colorado. Both states are suffering massive crime increases where the Dems control.

      The western side of Washington is ran by the Dems. Criminals, including murderers, are caught, booked, then released in a matter of hours. Druggies are all over the state, but esp in the west. The home Depot on 99, that I go to almost everyday, had cars stolen everyday. The police were there daily. 1 crook that I saw being taken away in the AM for theft, I saw b

  • Re:

    "Yes sir...while putting our full force behind finding your stolen vehicle; 3 women were raped, 2 stores robbed, and a mass shooting occurred that would have been prevented had our officers been able to do their assigned duties. But..you know...your stolen vehicle was more important."

    • Re: If only

      Usually, stolen vehicles are used as getaway vehicles from armed robberies, smash and grabs, drive-by shootings, etc. The faster they are solved, the less subsequent crime occurs.

• • • Re:

      No one "defunded" the San Antonio police. This happened because its Texas, I would expect to be shot at if I stole a truck in Texas - everyone is armed. If you are going to steal you steal anything but an armed Texan's truck.

• • Re:

    Here's another case where someone mistook two Metis hunters for thieves, chased them down and murdered them [www.cbc.ca].

    The trouble with vigilantism is that an innocent person and guilty person both react similarly to a non-law enforcement officer with a gun.

• • Re:

    How is he worse? He got rid of a criminal for us.

    • Re:

      You seem to be a psychopath. At least that would explain why you do not understand what is going on.