From the Sun-Times:
"What would happen is the victims would email or call Craigslist, and at that point, a prearranged location was decided upon. The person would say meet me at ‘X' location and bring $500 bucks with you," the sergeant said. "They would go to that location and the person robbed them."
The items advertised were often electronics, including televisions, the sergeant said.
There was apparently something of a Craigslist crimewave going on in Chicago. Two of the three men were allegedly working together, while the third was operating on his own in a different neighborhood.
The officers posing as customers arrived at the meeting location and the suspect, who fit the description of the lone suspect who robbed the other victims, was arrested. Police also recovered a .32 caliber revolver used during the robberies, the sergeant said.
Whoopsies!
Cops posing as 'customers' nab three in Craigslist crime wave [Sun-Times] (Thanks, Kent!)
]]>You like banning guns and putting your country on the road to financial ruin? (Reagan was all about gun control and is the reason you can not buy a new automatic rifle due to an executive order signed in 1986. He campaigned for the Brady Bills and he was governor of California when that state banned public carry of weapons, in 1967.)
]]>@treimel:
I'll authenticate it, lets meet at the PO where your bought it, and if i go in and can cash it, heres ur stuff.
]]>Whitey Sale! Get your white T-ees
]]>Yea +1 for the McNulty refrence. C'mon HBO dont kill The Wire yet!
]]>I can't tell if the 'wonder of wonders' is sarcastic or some other type of exclamation, but I'm not surprised at all. Most people literally can't hit the broad side of a barn with a handgun, standing still. Add in adrenaline, moving targets, being shot at yourselves, and most people's innate aversion to actually hurting other people; and you've got a recipe for a lot of bullets flying into the background.
]]>I never meet anyone at any place....
Always buy or sell from the front door of a home !
Weeds out business / commercial scams and a landline number and address is a must!
1. If someone with a gun wants your money, property, or wants to harm you, and you have no means of defending yourself, you are at your mercy.
2. The police are never there instantly. Nationwide, 4 minutes is considered an OUTSTANDING response time, and is unlikely.
3. When you outlaw firearms, only outlaws will have firearms.
The government simply cannot protect everyone. The vast majority of police work is reactive, meaning after the fact. They will take a report, maybe collect some evidence, and then (hopefully) attempt to catch the perpetrator(s) so they can't do it again. But that doesn't change the fact that they did it at least once, to you.
Will a gun provide magical faery protection? No, of course not, but it does provide some protection, and the option of using it is better than not having the option.
And if you just want alarmist sensational Glenn Beck tripe, here you go: "Why are you so unwilling to defend your family? Don't you love your family?"
]]>1. I would have been carrying. I feel better that I would have some means of defense, rather than no means of defense.
2. If one of the victims of these scams had been carrying, that situation may have gone much differently.
Side note: For me, if I was walking around with enough cash to buy a TV or something, I would most definitely be carrying.
]]>Maybe both of you should cite some sources. Right now you're both making claims, but neither has bothered to back it up with any research.
]]>@Tremblor: It is NOT true that states with looser gun laws tend to have higher gun violence. The opposite is true.
See how easy it is just write things on the internet without citing a source to back them up?
]]>States with looser gun laws tend to have higher gun violence, but it's debatable if one caused the other. I come from a state with fairly liberal gun laws (RI), but when I've bought stuff from Craigslist I never showed up expecting to get robbed, and thus never packing.
It's a heckuva stretch to say this wouldn't have happened in your state, or that you could never fall victim to a scam.
]]>Whoopsies!
Damn right, whoopsies.
]]>My hinky-meter immediately went off, especially because something was just "off" in the tone of his emails. I'm a woman with a reasonably valuable cell phone up for grabs. Even if I carry my gun and/or my husband with me I don't want to take the chance of being robbed, molested, etc.
Personal safety should always, always, always be your #1 priority.
]]>Links for the rest of you:
]]>Plus, they'd already have your money after that anyway.
]]>The only recent thing I could remember him from was a small part in Little Miss Sunshine.
]]>It's not that I want to run around cowboy style (though it would be fun), it's that if it does become exposed, and one of the more spineless of our society screech and call the police, I can possibly be charged with brandishment.
]]>The road thing works great; in a couple of hours, it's usually gone. I did that with two prefab video stands that were in good shape but kinda ugly.
]]>I sell on Craigslist sometimes and I wouldn't trust money orders. Cash only, and I bring a counterfeit (pH) pen. I try to meet with buyers only in public places, preferably near security cameras.
Unfortunately, there are just as many scammer-buyers as sellers. I can't count the number of times would-be buyers try to coerce me to meet them "somewhere quieter" (i.e. isolated street in rough neighborhood) or get all Nigerian-scam in their emails.
]]>@Mike8813: Watch The Wire. You'll love it. I have yet to find someone who doesn't love it. It's on DVD.
]]>@gjones77: Same here. I'm not saying necessarily that if the victim was armed then they'd have killed the robbers. I'm simply saying at least they'd have had a means to defend themselves and their property.
@halcyondays: Ditto.
]]>Since we're on the topic of great TV, I feel obligated to recommend Breaking Bad on AMC to anyone who hasn't seen it. It's the only TV show I've ever turned the lights down to watch. It's fantastic.
]]>@RecordStoreToughGuy_IsBeing(pur)SuedByAMonster: Really, You would rather have a potential criminal come to your home? Sure, at my house I would have all my guns available, but I don't think someone would come in if I was holding one. I also would not want to test my quick draw capability either.
Personally, the only time I sold anything on Craigslist, I did it inside of a well populated and busy fast food restaurant and I brought a friend too.
]]>@Caged Wisdom: You can call it a love letter, but I call it "Reasons why I stay out of Baltimore."
]]>@Toof_75_75: This very thing happened a couple nights ago here in Nashville. Two thugs followed a guy parking his car in an apartment complex and attempted to rob him- one with a gun. Funny that he had just purchased a handgun. He shoots at them, they shoot back then run. Somehow no one is hit.
Cops get the thugs and, wonder of wonders, the gun toating thug is 17 and just out on parol for being convicted at age 16 as an adult for the very same offense and has a rap sheet back to age 12. The other thug was on parol also for theft. If the parolee gun toating thug had gotten shot and killed, I imagine his family would have wailed that he was a good church going boy studying to be a doctor versus the street hoodlum that he actually is. Unforetunately for society, that thug was not killed and we will have to keep supporting his tail in jail...
]]>@Saboth: It's probably because most people aren't that stupid. I say most...I'm surprised there aren't more stories of people who make CL deals and give their address, only to find themselves burglarized later, or worse - that someone shows up and just points a gun at them.
I bought a coffee table off CL, and when I went to pick it up, it was a single woman who was moving out of her home and she had her door wide open. She was inside, cleaning and packing. And I just thought, "if I were her, I'd have my doors locked" and knowing the size of the coffee table, I would have wanted to meet in a shopping center parking lot or something. This woman was probably 5'3 and no more than 120 pounds. I'm about that size, and I would never leave my doors open like that.
]]>@Saboth:
Excellent observation especially since 7-11 has all those pesky cameras...
The ability to have a concealed handgun permit in some areas tends to put a damper on your plans somewhat though...
]]>@Brain.wav: Meet inside a bank or inside a business for big cash transactions. I like Kinkos err FedexOffice for these things- video plus copy machines to make copies of bills of sale etc
]]>@lannister80: haha +1
]]>@Brain.wav: That's pretty much how you know that at the very least, you won't get held up at gunpoint by the person claiming to have the product you want to buy. I never, ever, ever meet at my home unless it's a piece of furniture I can't transport. And even then, both of us would be home and we would hide all the valuables.
]]>@octoSink: Just curious, what percentage of the time do people try to lowball her when they show up, regardless of what was said on the phone / by email? People always seem to show up and say "Well...I've got 80% of what we agreed to right here...." to which my response is always "Well, there's a bank machine right across the street, I'll still be here when you get back". Extremely frustrating.
]]>@endless:
That's a load of Bunk!
Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit!
]]>@treimel: I'm betting the majority of people wouldn't know that, or be able to authenticate it from a clever counterfeit.
]]>@cmdrsass:
Not this ordinary seller--what's hard about authenticating a US postal money order? The fakes don't hacve the security thread or the watermark.
]]>Plus, to be honest, I'd rather have the option than not.
]]>@Caged Wisdom: Watch for it in December. We got ours in December/January last year. Amazon and Best Buy were selling it for the same price.
]]>@endless: @octoSink: Why is the tag for this post not "The Wire Was A Badass Show" cause ...it was.
]]>Also because my wife loves to sell on Craigslist and it disturbs me how trusting people are over the phone.
1. All business should take place in the garage.
2. We try to sell to polite sounding people, mostly women.
Exactly. I prefer the middle of a shopping mall.
]]>