THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, March 21, 1995 TAG: 9503210009
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: By STEVE STONE
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
Lying there, face down in the dirt, my left palm already oozing blood from my graceless fall, I felt the fool. What the hell was I doing chasing a shoplifter?
I looked up to see my quarry running off.
Since the moment I started chasing him from my neighborhood 7-Eleven where he had scooped up an armful of merchandise, he had been looking back over his shoulder at me as he ran. Now our eyes met for a split second.
He looked satisfied.
It could have ended there. Some friends tell me it should never have started. I should have minded my own business.
That's how we fight this war on crime in our society, you see. We sit back and complain, we invest in security gear and we expect the cops to be there one minute before we need them.
But don't take action yourself. Just be a victim. Be safe.
And while you're being safe, be ready to pay. Because every stolen product is paid for - by you. It's simply become a part of the formula for coming up with the market value of any product: original cost, plus overhead, plus theft losses. Add those up and tack on a reasonable profit margin and you have the retail price.
Well, friends, wars are not won solely by sending out your elite, front-line troops. In this case, the police. Wars are won when the battle is pressed on a broad front using all available resources.
And to win wars, you have to accept casualties.
So long as we write off the costs of crime and put a premium on individual safety, we will simply pay more and more for a return of less and less. And as long as we are unwilling, each of us, to take personal action against crime, then we merely serve to create an environment in which committing crime becomes a safer choice. We make ourselves victims.
I was sick of being a victim.
I got back up and resumed the chase. The guy looked over his shoulder again and appeared clearly shocked. Just as I was considering how to tackle him, he stopped and gave up. A store clerk who had followed in his car pulled up to offer help.
Yeah, he might have had a gun or a knife. But that's one reason why I fell: I was paying more attention to what he was doing with his hands than to what I was doing with my feet.
I kept plenty of options in mind as to where I could jump or duck if he started reaching.
And had he reached and had I not made it to cover, I might have been shot.
Is being shot worth some convenience-store merchandise? Nope. Is it worth sending a message that people won't allow themselves to be victimized? Perhaps. But only if we all start fighting back, directly and personally.
That's what folks in Portsmouth were doing when they started video-taping their streets in hunt of a burglar. That's what Peninsula residents are doing when they rally community support to encourage people to testify against hoodlums who otherwise have neighborhoods living in fear of retribution.
No, we don't need to become armed vigilantes. That would make matters worse. But we need to be willing to report, to testify and, sometimes, to chase down a crook. We need to face the reality as well that building more prisons will not solve the bigger problem. Yes, jail today's lawbreakers. But let's find ways to stop the creation of tomorrow's villains.
Nothing I did should be considered heroic; it certainly wasn't. It once was known as doing the right thing. And the fact that it is so out of the ordinary today that people might think it something special is testament to how comfortable we've become in our roles as victims.
Well, I'm not comfortable. I hope you aren't. MEMO: Mr. Stone is a staff writer for The Virginian-Pilot and The
Ledger-Star.
by CNB