On Friday night people decided to threaten my life. I was robbed at knifepoint by potential murderers. Fortunately, no one was hurt, the cops caught the criminals, and I recovered my stolen property.
I was excited about Marcus coming over. I walked to Greystone station to receive him and we were walking back to my place. The walk is 1.3 miles and we walked to within a block and a half from my place. We were on a major road in the commercial center of my little neighborhood, within sight of a deli and some shops. We were on a well-lit street which gets most of the local traffic including the buses. Suddenly someone came quickly behind Marcus and touched his backpack. My first thought was that someone was in a hurry and wanted to pass us, like a jogger. Marcus later told me that his pack was pulled. Very quickly, the person behind us was in front of us, and then another guy was with him.
“Give me your money and phones!”, he said. The guy who had talked then said something like “Where are you going?” and I was wondering what he was talking about because I was still standing there, and had not yet realized that I was being robbed. I turned around and looked and Marcus was already really far away and running. He had been mugged previously so he had more awareness of the attack. When I saw him far away I was wondering when he ran because he seemed to have had a lot of time before I even became conscious of the situation. I looked again and there were four guys surrounding me, two in front and two behind. I had not seen how any of them came around me. I was in front of a nice house in a nice neighborhood where everyone has nice lawns, and I never felt any danger here. They must have all been hiding in someone’s yard, I suppose. I looked down and saw that the guy in front of me who was not talking was with a guy with a knife, threatening to kill me right then and there.
“Drop your pockets!” I thought that was a strange thing to say but that same guy said this. I reached into my pockets and pulled out my phone, wallet, and keys, and just dropped them on the ground. One of the guys from behind me came to my front to pick up my stuff and as he did, I walked away. When I got to the street corner I turned to look at them all because I was far enough away to outrun them. The tall guy in a conversational tone said, “Hey, come here.” and at that point I realized that I had been robbed and could have died. He wanted me to come back so that all of them could kill me.
Just then very close by the bus arrived at the bus stop, and one of the guys said, “The bus is here!” I was wondering if that was their plan to get away, and they ran toward the bus but then it left. Then another guy came up to me and I was wondering if he was with the robbers. He asked me what happened and I told him, and he suggested that we go chase the attackers. I asked him if he had a phone but he told me that he did not. I told him that I wanted to call the police, but he insisted that he would chase them. I walked with him to the place of my mugging and looked at the ground. My phone and wallet were gone but my keys were there, so I retrieved them. I was happy that they did not steal my keys but I wanted my wallet and identification cards also. If any robbers are reading this blog and you want to be nice, take the money but drop the id cards. It is nice for your victims and also good for you to not be caught with ID cards. Tell your victims to give you cash and they will get it for you. The loot they got from me was like $35, so their rate starting the night with my case was almost $9 per robber per felony.
I passed the deli and walked to the grocery store and called the police with their phone. I told the police I was robbed and they asked me where I was and they told me that they already caught the guys. I was wondering how they could catch my robbers before I even reported the crime, especially since it was just a few minutes ago. They told me that someone else had just called them and that he was at a deli. I went to the deli and Marcus was there, and he had called them. Only a few minutes later the police were there. They asked us some questions and then asked us if we wanted to ride in the police car. We agreed and I was wondering if we were just going to tour the neighborhood.
We got in the car and the police started driving very quickly and turning corners sharply. I was wondering why they were in a hurry when they were so relaxed asking questions in the deli. They took us to a park and there were other cops there along with some guy. About three minutes later more cops brought another guy there and I recognized him as the guy who did all the talking in the robbery. A few minutes after that more cops bring two more guys, making four total. They were as I remembered – one tall white guy about age 23, and three shorter younger black guys maybe age 16-18. The cops started searching their stuff and found the knife and they had a pellet gun. Also I saw that the guy who said he would chase them was there talking to the cops, so I guess he chased and caught the guys.
phone generated walk data – see explanation at end of this post
The cops said that it is very uncommon to catch armed robbers. They recovered my things and gave them to me at the station. For some reason, the robbers tried to smash my phone. It is a cheap phone and it is smashed hard but they did not damage the screen, the phone body’s integrity, or any of the functionality. It just looks scuffed. All of the contents of my wallet were there except my money, which presumably they co-mingled with their own and which I suppose the court may give to me later.
The cops then drove Marcus and I to my place. Marcus and I often go to the city together and we wanted a chill night but this adventure was not so bad. Marcus got an adrenaline rush from this. He asked me if I was scared and I told him no, because by the time I realized what was happening it was already over and I did not feel any reason to become scared. I told him about the White Queen who cried in pain before accidentally hurting herself with a needle so that she would not have to cry while injured. I felt the same way, but in my cause I could not manage any feeling for something which was not still happening. Marcus asked me what I thought of him running, and if I thought he should have stayed with me. I told him that him staying was not an option to consider, and that no matter what was happening to me, it was his place to get away because he could not have contributed sufficiently to my protection such that I would want him there at the cost of delaying police intervention. He still was not entirely satisfied with his response even though he agreed and said that nothing good would have come from him staying. He also said that his instinct told him to run, and I told him that it is best to follow instinct and that now perhaps I will have instinct to recognize trouble and run.
We decided that it was a good outcome for a robbery; no one was hurt, the robbers were caught, and I got stuff back. Armed robbery is serious and I talked to a criminal lawyer friend the next day who said that they would likely all plead to get a year sentence. I was wondering what they were thinking and what would happen to them next. The police told me that all of the guys were from a bad neighborhood a few miles away, and that they should not come to my nice neighborhood. I agree that I like the benefits I receive from the class divide but also it is strange that I know their neighborhood and it is a bad place. People there are all poor, there is no healthy food, the streets and sidewalks are full of garbage, and I assume that there is high unemployment and poor education there. I used to teach boys in jail in Seattle and I wonder if they jails here have classes like in Seattle. Jail is not the ideal place to do any studying or self-betterment, or at least it would not be for me, but I hope that these guys do what they can to improve their career prospects. I certainly have spent time teaching boys like this in jail for such things.
The image above is from data which Marcus had. He tracks his walks with a phone app. Here is a Google map of the walk from the train station to the mugging. You can see that he stopped where we were mugged then turned around, went to the deli, then turned the app off. The graph is from another data set which plots elevation versus speed. On the right side of the graph there are two pauses marked by dips were we were stopped by muggers, followed my him running away, pausing to look back, then run more. He had this other application for which I have no screenshots which shows movement rate versus clocktime, so we could actually give the second the muggers stopped us if need be. Having phones in pockets produces a lot of information about a lot of things. I wonder what that means?