Ran across some potentially bad guys
Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2010 5:02 pm
I thought I'd share this little story about what happened to me yesterday:
I was walking up to Target in Pasadena after I got off work yesterday (so at about 3:35 pm), and as I'm crossing the parking lot to the building, I see this pickup truck drive diagonally across the handicap parking spots and stops in my path. The windows were down and 3 young white guys were inside, and the driver starts talking to me. I put my hands on my hips so that it wouldn't be too much of a reach to get to my Kimber PepperBlaster that is on my belt.
The driver says, "Hey, we work in a warehouse and we got a shipment of speakers, and they gave us too many of them. Our boss said to go sell them to get rid of them." He told me how much they were selling them for, but I wasn't paying attention, because as I looked at the bed full of speaker boxes, it was dawning on me that they were obviously criminals trying to unload some stolen speakers. The exact same thing happened in the Barnes & Noble parking lot before, in fact. That time there were a bunch of guys in an SUV, but they were also trying to sell me some speakers, and in fact had the same story.
So I say, "No thanks," and start walking off.
The driver says, "They're worth $2000 each."
Again, I said "No thanks," and walked away. The guy in the back seat of the truck (it was a crew cab), said, "Come on, it's a good deal! You can walk away from a deal like this? I wish I had your job!"
By that time, my "job" was memorizing everything I could about these guys, including their license plate number, as they were driving off.
I went inside Target, and as I have seen parking lot security driving around before, my first thought was to go to the customer service desk and ask to speak to their security. Then I thought, "Wait, they won't be able to do anything. I'm calling the police."
So I call the Pasadena Police non-emergency number, which is programmed into my phone. The dispatcher connected me to an officer who took the description of the vehicle and the passengers from me, and the plate number.
About 15 minutes later, as I was leaving Target, I hesitated in the foyer on the way out, and looked around for the pickup (I was beyond paranoid at that point). I didn't see the truck, so I walked outside. There were two police cars cruising around through the parking lot, but the truck was (of course) long gone. I think those guys probably didn't stick around long after they saw me looking at their license plate.
I thought about waving one of the patrol cars down to talk to the police, but didn't. They would either find them or they wouldn't. At that point I got in my car and went home. Whew! Aside from getting pretty pushy about pushing the speakers on me, they didn't get aggressive. I'm glad I'm taking my CHL course next weekend - I think I would have been a little more comfortable if I knew I had a handgun on me.
I was walking up to Target in Pasadena after I got off work yesterday (so at about 3:35 pm), and as I'm crossing the parking lot to the building, I see this pickup truck drive diagonally across the handicap parking spots and stops in my path. The windows were down and 3 young white guys were inside, and the driver starts talking to me. I put my hands on my hips so that it wouldn't be too much of a reach to get to my Kimber PepperBlaster that is on my belt.
The driver says, "Hey, we work in a warehouse and we got a shipment of speakers, and they gave us too many of them. Our boss said to go sell them to get rid of them." He told me how much they were selling them for, but I wasn't paying attention, because as I looked at the bed full of speaker boxes, it was dawning on me that they were obviously criminals trying to unload some stolen speakers. The exact same thing happened in the Barnes & Noble parking lot before, in fact. That time there were a bunch of guys in an SUV, but they were also trying to sell me some speakers, and in fact had the same story.
So I say, "No thanks," and start walking off.
The driver says, "They're worth $2000 each."
Again, I said "No thanks," and walked away. The guy in the back seat of the truck (it was a crew cab), said, "Come on, it's a good deal! You can walk away from a deal like this? I wish I had your job!"
By that time, my "job" was memorizing everything I could about these guys, including their license plate number, as they were driving off.
I went inside Target, and as I have seen parking lot security driving around before, my first thought was to go to the customer service desk and ask to speak to their security. Then I thought, "Wait, they won't be able to do anything. I'm calling the police."
So I call the Pasadena Police non-emergency number, which is programmed into my phone. The dispatcher connected me to an officer who took the description of the vehicle and the passengers from me, and the plate number.
About 15 minutes later, as I was leaving Target, I hesitated in the foyer on the way out, and looked around for the pickup (I was beyond paranoid at that point). I didn't see the truck, so I walked outside. There were two police cars cruising around through the parking lot, but the truck was (of course) long gone. I think those guys probably didn't stick around long after they saw me looking at their license plate.
I thought about waving one of the patrol cars down to talk to the police, but didn't. They would either find them or they wouldn't. At that point I got in my car and went home. Whew! Aside from getting pretty pushy about pushing the speakers on me, they didn't get aggressive. I'm glad I'm taking my CHL course next weekend - I think I would have been a little more comfortable if I knew I had a handgun on me.
I fell for this once, back in the 70s. 
At least mine were real speakers. A couple years later I sold them for more than I paid for them. 
