Never leave an angry man standing next to your car
By adamg - Mon, 06/01/2009 - 7:24pm.
You might come back to find one of your tires has been sliced open.
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Tip for next time
As someone who's way too concerned about The Principle Of The Thing, and thus gets into way too many arguments about parking:
The best thing you can do in such a confrontation is to walk to the back of their car and read their license plate number to them.
People act one way if they think they're anonymous, and another if they don't.
In this case
It would have been more difficult, as his girlfriend was around the block.
The again, this is exactly what the cell phone camera is for.
Cell phone cameras can antagonize
Taking photo of an angry person can easily lead to that person attempting to take camera away from you, which escalates the situation.
You really don't want to escalate a sociopath or hothead to physical assault, since that can turn tragic in an instant.
A sociopath will hurt you
A sociopath will hurt you anyway, but they're pretty rare. Hotheads are more common.
The best defense with a hothead is verbal self-defense. It's unlikely they'll physically attack you, mostly they'll try to goad you into accelerating it. Informing them you're perfectly happy to call the police usually does it.
How to de-escalate
The nice thing about a good cellphone plan is that you can email photos. That turns it into an ad hoc surveillance device. In my experience, punks are disturbed by surveillance, and rightly so. It severely limits their ability to get away with things. This can make a cellphone a good tool to prevent violence to person or property.
Here's what you do: take photo, email to flickr or your blog, and say "Look, fella, you seem to be determined to give me some trouble in a way that would be illegal. Your picture is now on my blog, and so if you do choose to do something illegal, you will not get away with it. If you choose to walk away, I will delete that photo and forget about you. So here's your choice: do you want that photo to be deleted or do you want it to go to the police?"
I salute your applied game theory
When I had pro camera gear and servers at home, I had a security video setup that transmitted immediately off-site, and a sign beside a camera, telling would-be robbers that video of them was already off-site, so maybe they should leave my stuff alone. (Once they look at the sign, camera has a great shot of their face.)
Hopefully nobody has to find out how these things work in practice. :)
That's the hard way
[but very cool nonetheless. You are my surveillance hero.]
The easy way: According to my server logs, 100% of all hotheads do not know enough about technology to know what "according to my server logs" would mean.
A few weeks ago, an angry guy who could very clearly kick my ass looked ready to clearly kick my ass. I pointed to a few random spots on the surrounding buildings and said, "You do realize that you're on five surveillance cameras right now, three of which have high-res 1024 video, two with audio feeds?"
He did not kick my ass.
I'm pretty sure the same trick would work with a cell-phone cam. "You realize that the picture's already been sent to the Internet, right? That the only way it doesn't get sent straight to the police is if you decide NOT to hurt me?"
And, of course, the nice thing about a cell-phone cam is that you can surreptitiously take the pic anyway. "What the hell are you doing to my ca--
[look annoyed at phone]
[answer phone]
"I'll call you back later."
[take pic]
"No, LATER."
[put away phone]
"What the hell are you doing to my car?"
Dont forget though Jay...
that many of the a-holes who would beat someone else up over a parking spot, are also the kind of a-holes who don't care about cameras and also wouldn't care about stealing your cell phone in the process of beating you up in front of those cameras....
Sigh
Damn you, Pete, with your "reality" and your "actual LEO experience" and your "not getting killed" approach to things...
And this, my friends
is why everybody should carry a firearm.
Que?
What part of carrying a firearm would have solved this problem, exactly?
Well now...
...y'see, then ya could shoot tha tire slasher dead. 'Cause ya reckon he needed killin'. Then, tha fellow who said he didn' see nothin', ya challenge him to a draw. Betcha folks'd clear Elm St. fer tha shoot-out, givin' plenty room ta tie up yer horse. Yessiree.
The witness
We certainly can't have a person with a knife threatening an unarmed person. Arm him, or at the least, let him carry a knife with a large blade.
I'd say that the solution...
...is not to arm everyone as if we exist in an lawless post-apocalyptic wasteland of tribal warlords and roving packs of psychotic mutant man-dogs. I pay way too much rent for that.
Instead, I suggest we remember that we live in a civilized society, and that we have to keep paying into that system:
* Don't try to turn a disagreement violent.
* Don't slash someone's tire.
* If you're a witness to a crime, notify the victim or police.
* If someone slashed your tire, report it to the police.
* Don't lie to the police when making statements or being questioned.
Didn't happen
A person with a knife didn't threaten an unarmed person. He attacked an unarmed car, after the unarmed person had left the scene.
The solution is obviously to equip the car with a gun.
Fire, Kitt!
Someone has already found
Someone has already found the solution:
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/africa/9812/11/flame.thrower.car/
and it won the Ig Noble Peace Prize in 1999.
More game theory
When those kids were stealing Audi headlights a few years ago, I put blinking LEDs in my headlights, along with a Dymo label:
WARNING: AUTOMATIC DEFENSIVE SPRAY MAY BE HARMFUL OR FATAL.
My headlights were not stolen.
No, actually, they
No, actually, they shouldn't. A gun would not have helped in this situation and probably would have accelerated it.
The basic problem with the "guns prevent/cause crime" debate is that it focuses on one factor. I've seen nothing that indicates to me guns cause or prevent crime; it seems a lot more likely that poverty plus low education plus easy availability of weapons equals more crime.
Better Solution*
Get tires inflated with that red dye they slip into money sacks when someone robs a bank. Then, when someone slashes your tire, they'll be easily identifiable.
*Joke
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
You jest, but honestly, I'd
You jest, but honestly, I'd be surprised if such a product doesn't exist. And if it doesn't, invent it, there's GOT to be a market.
Problem With Application?
As much as I appreciate the compliment, and as much (even more!) as I'd like to get rich quick, I think there are immediately obvious problems.
A blowout would splatter everybody's adjacent vehicle with dye. A simple flat would leave a red trail all over the street (or, worse, on your garage floor.) Also, I suspect there might be some mechanics who would object to being continually misidentified as punk tire slashers :-)
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Hrm. Well, something for
Hrm. Well, something for the idea file, I guess.
parking
I can't speak for Somerville, but when I used to live in Chicago, it wasn't uncommon for people to save a spot that way. To the best of my knowledge, the practice was respected.
Personally, I wouldn't have taken that spot. That being said, any form of retaliation over a parking space is moronic. Hopefully whoever slashed the tires is forced to pay up.
Something I learned from dear old Mom
When somebody cut her off to get to a parking spot once, she drove on to take another. She then sidled by the offending car on her way into the mall and slipped a remnant of a tuna sandwich into an inaccessible place likely to feed air into the main cabin.
In a week or so, I bet it smelled pretty ripe.
Ah! Vandalism Via Seafood!
Much subtler than keying or slashing, probably leaves no permanent damage other than psychological, fairly cost-effective... The only problem is you have to keep a tuna sandwich available in YOUR car at all times :-)
(And, if you want to make it really, really cost effective, you could make your revenge sandwiches with FTM Tuna Salad...)
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com