Swan Tower

No, I don't have my bike back. I don't expect I ever will; if it shows up one day, it will be by a coincidence of police work and sheer random chance, and I'll probably donate the thing to some charity. But I have a new bike now, which means that I've had a fresh reminder of how some asshole came in and stole the old one, but at least I don't have to be pissed off every time I think of an errand to run and then remember I have no way to run it.

I want to talk about what I learned from this. But it's not going to be a list of "I should have done X, Y, or Z," because you know what? Fuck that noise. It smacks of "it's my fault my bike got stolen," because all the precautions I took were not enough precautions, or the right precautions. Or maybe I shouldn't have owned a piece of easily stealable transport in the first place. Frankly, that kind of logic can bite me.

What I want to talk about is the stuff others may not know, the stuff that made my investigating officer call me "the perfect victim." Not in the sense of being somebody crime was bound to happen to, but rather the kind of person a cop hopes to deal with, and rarely does.

In other words, if crime happens to you, then here are some things you might want to bear in mind.

( Cut for length. )

When my parents' house was burgled several years ago, my father was able to produce receipts for pretty much everything they took -- even items that had been bought in 1977. Me, I'm not that good. But what I learned is this: keep receipts for the expensive things, at least. Make sure you can find them on short notice. Try to pay attention to the world around you, inasmuch as it's possible to teach yourself to be that kind of person, so that you can answer questions when they come. TOUCH NOTHING. Document everything.

And let yourself swear.