One morning this weekend I pulled up to my apartment lookin' fierce on my lovingly dubbed, 'schWINNER.' Expecting to be greeted by the celestial rays of light reflecting off James' recently purchased - and spankin' new - Bianchi (not dissimilar to the one pictured above). I had seen it locked to the stop sign before I left, but now I found... nothing.
Oh wait - no... that's not true. The stop sign was still there, it was just clanging in the wind, loose in its hole. Hmm... think. Think HARD. After several minutes of intense confusion had passed, and an acknowledged lack of Columbo-worthy critical thinking skills were employed, I finally concluded the following: Someone stole James' bike by pulling the stop sign out of the ground and replacing it. To make a long story short, James sent out an email to friends lamenting his lost beauty, and immediately received an email back from someone, saying that his bike was on Craigslist!
MK - Theft 101: if you're going to steal a bike, it would be a good idea to...
a) post it the same day on Craigslist.
b) wait a while until the coast is clear, then post it on Craigslist.
c) hock it to a pedestrian as soon as possible, drop a smoke bomb, and quickly disappearing into an alley or gangway to count the cash
Obviously C, but whatevs... some people...
SOOOOooo, this friend arranged a time to "check out the bike and take it for a test ride." Meanwhile, the culprit's facebook page is found... turns out it's some 17 year old kid on a full-ride hockey scholarship to _____ university. Why is he flirting with a life of crime? James called the Police and has them meet him near the location of the "transaction." The police are - with a few exceptions - really helpful and even funny about the whole thing. They ask James what he wants to do. Should they arrest the kid? This is, after all, a felony.
It is agreed that they will just scare the **** out of him, and as long as he apologizes, no harm, no foal. Wait - that's not all. James realizes that since the crime is a felony, he has 5 years to press charges. Instead of letting the thief off the hook so easily, he devises an amazing plan: he gives the thief 4 years to finish his degree and graduate, during which James will keep a watchful eye on him through said facebook page. If he does not pull it off, James will press charges. Malevolence has no place in this sort of James Dunn Adapted Scandinavian Justice System. Maybe we should elect James Dunn to restructure our pointless, destructive prison system.
17 comments:
of course everyone would have to be in the university system for four years first....not a bad idea either :)
yea - did someone just say, education is empowerment? but surely, we have to keep some sort of casting system intact, right? what would happen if we didn't? (sadly - we'll probably never get to know)
So what happened next? Did you get him?
Wow....this is reminding me of Fight Club except with a tarnished criminal record being the threat instead of death.
One of the best stories I've heard in recent times! That James Dunn is incredible!
where i used to work, at the public safety office of a college, we got a call one day from an employee whose personal guitar was stolen from a storage closet in his office. after filing a report, he did his own investigating and found his guitar listed on Ebay. through this, they were able to track down the thief, who was consequently arrested and fired from his job.
good times, eh?
Haha, nice story. I especially love the sluething aspect of it all. It must be nice having a real Nancy Drew as a friend :-p
Jaaaames...
DUNN DUNN DUUUUUUNNNNN.
amazing.
wow... that is amazing. I was going to bring up the fight club thing but since someone already beat me to that, I will simple say, AWESOME! You should get the address of that punk kid so you can randomly drop in on him from time to time... riding the bike of coarse.
daniel.
You should have James post his cast list for the movie version of this ordeal (which I think should be titled THE BICYCLE THIEF 2: WHERE MY BIANCHI AT?!)
I will tell you that he suggested Haley Joel Osment as the young thief and Michael Douglas (in a voiceover role) as the thief after he's older and wiser. The whole movie starts with M. Douglas saying something to the effect of, "I'll never forget that hot July night. I remember it like it was yesterday..."
M. Douglas would be perfect for that... but after narrating the brief intro (which def. needs to be followed by a set of those weird church chimes, which the bongo player usually wistfully runs a hand across during the "talking-section-in-strained/struggle-voice" portion of the song, give or take a flip of the rain-stick or two) he should completely disappear from the movie for greatest impact.
haha this is an amazing story.
im glad you got your bike back.
we should figure out more creative ways to manipulate the justice system to make it... better.
seriously. seriously. this is fantastic. when am i going to see you pals again?
that's insanely awesome. yay for getting his bike back + some justice to the whole thing.
PS.
I'll be in Chicago by Friday woot!
sadly i still will not get to meet the awesome miss kristin b :(
fantastic. absolutely fantastic!
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