Uncle John’s True Crime (43 page)

Losing face: In ancient China, criminals caught robbing travelers had their noses cut off
.

We have a lot of respect for 911 call-takers—not only must they remain calm for people in life-and-death situations, they have to try to make sense of callers like these folks
.

Dispatcher:
“Nine-one-one, what’s the nature of your emergency, please?”

Caller:
“I’m trying to reach nine-eleven, but my phone doesn’t have an eleven on it.”

Dispatcher:
“This is nine-eleven.”

Caller:
“I thought you just said it was nine-one-one.”

Dispatcher:
“Yes, ma’am. Nine-one-one and nine-eleven are the same thing.”

Caller:
“Honey, I may be old, but I’m not stupid.”

Dispatcher:
“Nine-one-one. Please state your emergency.”

Caller:
“Yeah, okay. Bill got hurt.”

Dispatcher:
“Who is Bill?”

Caller:
“Just some dude I know. We were tossing the Nerf around, and the TV fell and cut up his leg.”

Dispatcher:
“We’ll send someone right over.”

Caller (to someone in the room):
“Get the keg outta here, dude!”

Dispatcher:
“Nine-one-one. What’s the nature of your emergency?”

Caller:
“My wife is pregnant, and her contractions are only two minutes apart!”

Dispatcher:
“Is this her first child?”

Caller:
“No, you idiot! This is her husband!”

Dispatcher:
“Nine-one-one.”

Caller:
“Yeah, I’m having trouble breathing. I’m all out of breath. Damn...I think I’m going to pass out.”

Dispatcher:
“Sir, where are you calling from?”

Caller:
“I’m at a pay phone. North and Foster. Damn...”

Dispatcher:
“Sir, an ambulance is on the way. Are you an asthmatic?”

Caller:
“No...”

Dispatcher:
“What were you doing before you started having trouble breathing?”

Caller:
“Running from the police.”

Crime slang: “Getting a Valentine” in convict lingo means to receive a one-year jail sentence
.

If you’re a fan of YouTube, but you’re tired of sorting through millions of uploaded videos for something fresh, interesting, and (of course) odd, here’s a suggestion: Type “bait car” in the search window, press return, and enjoy the ride
.

C
AR TROUBLE

In the winter of 2001, police in Vancouver, British Columbia, were battling a ring of thieves who were stealing as many as five Japanese sports cars per week from the parking lots of local golf courses, then stripping the cars to sell the parts. Auto theft is a difficult crime to fight: Stolen cars change hands so quickly that even if you catch someone driving one, it’s difficult to prove that they know it’s stolen, let alone prove they’re the one who stole it. You have to catch car thieves in the act, and that’s not easy because they tend to break into cars when there are no witnesses around. And because car theft is a property crime, not a violent crime like kidnapping, assault, or murder, there’s a limit to how much time and money police agencies can spend fighting it, especially when the odds of winning a conviction are so low. How low? Fewer than 15% of all car thefts end with the thief being jailed.

CANDID CAMERA

The Vancouver police department couldn’t spare enough officers to stake out every golf course in the city. If they were going to catch the crooks they’d have to find another way. Phil Ens, a Vancouver police officer assigned to auto-theft detail, had heard about a program in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where police were using “bait cars”—cars wired with hidden audio and video equipment and GPS tracking devices, then left where thieves were likely to steal them. Police could track a car using its GPS signal, then shut off the car’s engine by remote control as they moved in to make the arrest. The video evidence was then used to convict the thieves and send them to prison. The approach was effective: Auto thefts were down in Minneapolis, and prosecutors were winning convictions against
longtime car thieves, thanks to the video evidence recorded by the bait cars. Even passengers in stolen cars were going to jail as participants in the crimes. Ens approached the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC), which sells auto insurance in the province, and Boomerang Tracking Solutions, which makes auto tracking devices, and talked them into helping fund a test of the bait-car concept in British Columbia.

Leavenworth Prison’s walls are 40 feet high and go 40 feet below the ground
.

GONE IN 2,700 SECONDS

Boomerang sent Ens an Acura Integra loaded with GPS tracking equipment and the remote-control device that allows police to shut off the engine. Ens added a hidden camera, a microphone, and a VCR. Then the police department placed the car in the parking lot of a local golf course...and made their first bait-car arrest just 45 minutes later.

ICBC was sold on the program—they decided to back it in a big way, donating recovered stolen cars to be wired up as bait cars and spending more than $500,000 a year to make them bait-car-ready. The provincial government of British Columbia agreed to pick up the rest of the tab, with the program to be administered by an interagency task force called the Integrated Municipal Provincial Auto Crime Team (IMPACT).

The program is still going strong today, and IMPACT continues to develop new and creative ways to put this powerful new crime-fighting tool to use. They have studied which cars are likely to be stolen in which parts of town, and plant the bait cars accordingly. They make the cars even more attractive targets by baiting them with a wallet, a purse, a cell phone, or even an open bag of potato chips left in plain view. Because car thieves commonly abandon stolen cars in the neighborhoods where they live (it’s easier than walking home), if police can figure out where a particular car thief lives, they’ll plant his favorite model of bait car right down the street from his house. Why stop at committed car theives? Sometimes IMPACT even leaves bait cars unlocked with the keys in the ignition and the engine running to tempt opportunists who might not otherwise bother to break into a vehicle.

NOW SHOWING

Most of the time, police agencies keep their crime-fighting method secret to prevent criminals from figuring out ways around them. But IMPACT takes the opposite approach: They hope that by publicizing the bait-car
program as much as possible, they can convince criminals (and wannabes) that auto theft is not an easy, low-risk crime—that it’s actually a crime in which arrest is almost inevitable, the charges will stick, and the penalty will be months or even years in jail. They want the crooks to believe that bait cars are
everywhere
.

The TV show
CSI
caused a surge of college applications for courses in forensic science
.

What makes this interesting for the rest of us is that IMPACT has set up a Web site (
www.baitcar.com
) where they post actual bait-car video clips for you to watch and enjoy. The clips are making their way to other popular sites like Google Video and YouTube, too. They’re worth a look: When you watch the grainy hidden-camera footage, it almost feels as like you’re there in person to witness the thrill of victory as punks break into cars and speed off on a joyride, followed by the agony of defeat as they are arrested by police a short time later.

CAT AND MOUSE

Vancouver’s program is working: Since it was instituted in 2002, car thefts have dropped more than 15%, with 6,000 fewer cars being stolen each year. ICBC is saving nearly $15 million a year through reduced payments to auto-theft victims. The publicity campaign and especially the bait car footage are credited with much of the success: As the bait cars themselves pull incorrigible car thieves off the streets, the footage of them being caught and taken to jail is causing less-committed thieves to lose heart and prompting at-risk, “entry-level” youth to reconsider whether they really want to begin stealing cars in the first place. “Auto theft went down right away because of word-of-mouth among the thieves,” Ens told the
Vancouver Province
in 2005. “It created a level of paranoia and the advertising kept it in their conscience.”

WATCH, LAUGH...AND LEARN

Are you ready to have a few laughs at the expense of ethically challenged Canadian punks? Here are the titles of some classic bait-car footage to look for. (
Warning!
Bait-car footage contains coarse language and is
not
suitable for children.)

• I Was Caught By a Bait Car!
A mini-documentary featuring bait-car footage and a later interview with the 22-year-old car thief, who describes what it is like to be caught red-handed stealing a bait car (“I knew it was a #*&$ bait car! They bait-carred my @*&!” he says as the
police shut off his engine by remote control), and what it’s like for a reformed car thief to view his own bait-car footage for the very first time (“I look like a retard!”).

Half of all crimes are committed by people under the age of 18
.

• The Prayer
. Watch as a 19-year-old car thief and his 21-year-old accomplice steal a car, do donuts in an open field and then, with the driver’s hands folded into a steeple on the steering wheel, pray aloud that the car coming up behind them is not a police car. “Please don’t be a cop! Pray it’s not a cop! Pray, pray, pray, just pray!” (Their prayers went unanswered.)

• I Hope This Isn’t Another %$&* Bait Car, Man!
(a.k.a. The Nose Picker). Who says car thieves have to be men? View footage of British Columbia’s first-ever arrest of a
female
car thief. Watch as she and her accomplice pick up a male associate, then tag along as he picks a winner and disposes of the “evidence” in disgusting fashion moments before the police arrive on the scene.

• If My Mom Calls
. Three punk kids steal a bait car just one day after one of them has been released from custody (perhaps for stealing another car?). Listen as their fear increases with the dawning realization that they are indeed driving a bait car, that arrest is only moments away...and that Mom is going to be really, really mad when she finds out.

• High-Speed Escape
. Rare footage of crooks stealing
two
bait vehicles at the same time. After the bait
car
program became successful, the Vancouver police department expanded to bait motorcycles, bait ATVs, bait snowmobiles, and even bait Jet Skis. These dopes stole a bait ATV and threw it onto the back of a stolen pickup truck...which turned out to be a bait car, too.

• So Much for Going Home
. The only thing funnier than watching these four kids count the patrol cars as they close in behind them—“Oh yeah, there’s one, two, there’s three! Yeah, it’s a bait car, dude!”—is listening to them being arrested by a cop with a Scottish accent thicker than
The Simpsons’
Groundskeeper Willie.

*
*
*

“All I wanted was to be what I became to be.”—
John Gotti

First female police chief in America: Dolly Spencer of Milford, Ohio, in 1914
.

On
page 197
we introduced you to Dashiell Hammett, the man who invented private detective Sam Spade. Here’s a sordid tale of fame, drinking, and politics
.

M
EAN STREETS

After Hammett’s highly successful run with
Black Mask
, he published his first full novel,
Red Harvest
, in 1929. Drawing on his strike-breaking experience with Pinkertons, Hammett used his Continental Op character to narrate the tale of a corrupt and lawless Montana mining town in the aftermath of a violent labor clash. Just a few months later, Hammett and the Continental Op were back with
The Dain Curse
. Without stopping for a rest, he then banged out
The Maltese Falcon
in time for a spring 1930 release.

Considered his finest novel,
The Maltese Falcon
introduced Sam Spade, who became one of America’s best-known fictional heroes during the tough times of the Great Depression. In a decade that saw a high rise in crime—especially in the nation’s cities—readers looked up to Spade. He was tough but full of integrity and got results from playing by his own rules. Spade’s world was violent, unsympathetic, and full of irony and black humor. Readers ate it up. Sam Spade went on to star in radio dramas, comic books, and on film. Three different movies were made of
The Maltese Falcon
; the classic 1941 Humphrey Bogart version was the third.

EASY STREET

The 1930s was a good decade for Hammett. He was rich and famous (and single), hopping back and forth between Manhattan and Los Angeles to attend star-studded parties with the likes of Harpo Marx, Jean Harlow, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and William Faulkner. Hammett drank and partied for days at a time. But he was also writing. He would work on movie scripts, first at Paramount and later at MGM—where he was paid $2,000 per week. In 1934 he published his fifth and final novel,
The Thin Man
, which spawned a series of films starring William Powell and Myrna
Loy. He wrote script stories for three
The Thin Man
sequels but found writing for Hollywood less rewarding than writing novels. So he worked as little as he could get away with and drank heavily. Result: Hammett garnered an “unreliable” reputation among the film studios. His earlier impressive productivity soon fizzled into nothing. He wanted to get away from detective fiction and write more serious novels, but could never bring himself to do it. “I quit writing because I was repeating myself,” he later explained. “It is the beginning of the end when you notice that you have style.”

Wyatt Earp was an outlaw before becoming a lawman The Dalton brothers were lawmen before becoming outlaws
.

Perhaps Hammett could have written the Great American Novel had he not become such a raging alcoholic. His daughter Jo Hammett recounts in her biography,
A Daughter Remembers
, that the drinking “turned my father maudlin, sarcastic, and mean.” He lost focus, starting many projects and finishing none of them.