Tales of Everyday Life

osubuckeye4

osubuckeye4

Well-known member
This is the perfect way to kick off this thread.

So, last night I took my daughter to cheerleading practice (as I do many nights).

Well, a dad at the facility decided to go on a phone stealing spree... broke into the team room and took a bunch of phones (including my daughters)

Life 360 and Find My Phone pinpointed every phone to the same address, located 1.9 miles from the gym. The owner of the gym was able to look it up in the database and sure enough it's the residence of an 8 year old girl who does introductory tumbling classes at the facility and who was at classes that evening.

At this point we're all thinking, "well, maybe the kid was being an a-hole and grabbed a bunch of phones and the dad has no idea" so we all start calling the phones... everything goes to voicemail and then we notice that phones start getting shut off.

At this point we call the local PD and they say, "we'll send an officer over right away!"

45 minutes later, facility is about to close so I call the non-emergency PD number and am like, "what gives here?". Oh, there is an emergency and all units are occupied, as soon as one is freed up they'll be right over though, hang tight!

I explain, "look, I don't want to have to go vigilante and show up at this persons house with a group of other pissed off dads... could you please speed it up?"

'Yes, of course. We understand, and please don't go over there, we'll handle it.'

Great.... 30 minutes later the PD calls the facility back (props to the owner, who stayed well past closing to try to help us resolve this) and the PD says, "yea, we won't be able to get anywhere there at all tonight. We'll send a unit over in the morning though to take a report"

At this point I'm ripshit pissed... but then I realize that while the phones are pinging 1.9 miles away, it's technically the next town over.

We call the PD for THAT department and they are like, "well, we can't really send a unit to your business because we don't cover that municipality... but, if you want to drive over we will take a report and if the phones are at a resident in this municipality we'll do what we can"

My hopes of getting any phones back are astronomically low at this point.. but, I figure I'm 3+ hours into this ordeal so I might as well see it through.

We go to the other PD, talk to the officer (super nice guy) and he takes all the info and says he and his partner will do everything they can within the law to retrieve the phones.

My hopes are even lower at this point... I decide that I'll drive my daughter home (it's 10:30 on a school night).

Literally as I'm pulling into my parking lot I get the call from the officer, "we were able to retrieve all of the phones, if you want to come pick your daughters phone up I'm here till 11:30". (again, super nice officer)

I drop my kid off, tell her to go to bed and drive 30 minutes back in the other direction to pick the phone up.

The officer confirms that all the phones were at the residence we thought, it was the 8 year old and her single parent father that lived there. The officer says, "the dad was very sketchy and if I was a betting man I'd wager he took the phones, not the kid"

I asked what made him think that.

He says, "well, when we confronted him, he said that he heard a phone ring from the backseat and panicked and took the phone and put it in a plastic bag and hid it in his garage". That was the first phone they retrieved. "When we mentioned other phones were pinging to his address he said he'd wake his daughter up and ask her... within a minute he came back with the other phones, which were all inside the residence"

I was like, "oh yea, he definitely took them".

Officer asked if I wanted to press charges... honestly, it was 11:10 PM at that point and the phone was undamaged and showed no signs of damage/misuse. I thanked the officer, told him since no one got hurt and nothing was damaged on our end, I'd save everyone the extra paperwork and hassle of pursuing anything additional legally, and went on my way.

I swear though.. what kind of scumbag tries to pin a class 3 felony (well over $500, but less than $10,000 worth of phones) on his own 8 year old kid?
 
osubuckeye4 said:
This is the perfect way to kick off this thread.

So, last night I took my daughter to cheerleading practice (as I do many nights).

Well, a dad at the facility decided to go on a phone stealing spree... broke into the team room and took a bunch of phones (including my daughters)

Life 360 and Find My Phone pinpointed every phone to the same address, located 1.9 miles from the gym. The owner of the gym was able to look it up in the database and sure enough it's the residence of an 8 year old girl who does introductory tumbling classes at the facility and who was at classes that evening.

At this point we're all thinking, "well, maybe the kid was being an a-hole and grabbed a bunch of phones and the dad has no idea" so we all start calling the phones... everything goes to voicemail and then we notice that phones start getting shut off.

At this point we call the local PD and they say, "we'll send an officer over right away!"

45 minutes later, facility is about to close so I call the non-emergency PD number and am like, "what gives here?". Oh, there is an emergency and all units are occupied, as soon as one is freed up they'll be right over though, hang tight!

I explain, "look, I don't want to have to go vigilante and show up at this persons house with a group of other pissed off dads... could you please speed it up?"

'Yes, of course. We understand, and please don't go over there, we'll handle it.'

Great.... 30 minutes later the PD calls the facility back (props to the owner, who stayed well past closing to try to help us resolve this) and the PD says, "yea, we won't be able to get anywhere there at all tonight. We'll send a unit over in the morning though to take a report"

At this point I'm ripshit pissed... but then I realize that while the phones are pinging 1.9 miles away, it's technically the next town over.

We call the PD for THAT department and they are like, "well, we can't really send a unit to your business because we don't cover that municipality... but, if you want to drive over we will take a report and if the phones are at a resident in this municipality we'll do what we can"

My hopes of getting any phones back are astronomically low at this point.. but, I figure I'm 3+ hours into this ordeal so I might as well see it through.

We go to the other PD, talk to the officer (super nice guy) and he takes all the info and says he and his partner will do everything they can within the law to retrieve the phones.

My hopes are even lower at this point... I decide that I'll drive my daughter home (it's 10:30 on a school night).

Literally as I'm pulling into my parking lot I get the call from the officer, "we were able to retrieve all of the phones, if you want to come pick your daughters phone up I'm here till 11:30". (again, super nice officer)

I drop my kid off, tell her to go to bed and drive 30 minutes back in the other direction to pick the phone up.

The officer confirms that all the phones were at the residence we thought, it was the 8 year old and her single parent father that lived there. The officer says, "the dad was very sketchy and if I was a betting man I'd wager he took the phones, not the kid"

I asked what made him think that.

He says, "well, when we confronted him, he said that he heard a phone ring from the backseat and panicked and took the phone and put it in a plastic bag and hid it in his garage". That was the first phone they retrieved. "When we mentioned other phones were pinging to his address he said he'd wake his daughter up and ask her... within a minute he came back with the other phones, which were all inside the residence"

I was like, "oh yea, he definitely took them".

Officer asked if I wanted to press charges... honestly, it was 11:10 PM at that point and the phone was undamaged and showed no signs of damage/misuse. I thanked the officer, told him since no one got hurt and nothing was damaged on our end, I'd save everyone the extra paperwork and hassle of pursuing anything additional legally, and went on my way.

I swear though.. what kind of scumbag tries to pin a class 3 felony (well over $500, but less than $10,000 worth of phones) on his own 8 year old kid?
Click to expand...
you didn't press charges???????????/
what
the
fuck???

This is why the cops don't do shit, they spend hours of time and then no one is gonna press charges, why should they care?
You want this scumbag to pay a price within the system (well maybe, that's the next thing to be pissed about) you have to do your part.

one phone i could see, but a whole collection of phones? no way, it was on purpose.

If you aren't gonna press charges, then why even call the popo in the first place?
 
LoneCowboy said:
you didn't press charges???????????/
what
the
fuck???

This is why the cops don't do shit, they spend hours of time and then no one is gonna press charges, why should they care?
You want this scumbag to pay a price within the system (well maybe, that's the next thing to be pissed about) you have to do your part.

one phone i could see, but a whole collection of phones? no way, it was on purpose.

If you aren't gonna press charges, then why even call the popo in the first place?
Click to expand...
Yeah, pressing charges is a civic duty at this point.
 
LoneCowboy said:
you didn't press charges???????????/
what
the
fuck???

This is why the cops don't do shit, they spend hours of time and then no one is gonna press charges, why should they care?
You want this scumbag to pay a price within the system (well maybe, that's the next thing to be pissed about) you have to do your part.

one phone i could see, but a whole collection of phones? no way, it was on purpose.

If you aren't gonna press charges, then why even call the popo in the first place?
Click to expand...

It was actually the cops call.

Interaction went like this (this was before he went to the home):

Cop: "Do you want to press charges?"

Me: "Without knowing what happened outside of the phone ending up at their residence? I'll trust and back your judgement. If there's no damage and it's willingly handed over, I'm not gonna demand charges. Your call at that point. If there is any damage to the phone I do want to press charges regardless of whatever story is given, because I'll have to go after the family in small claims court for the damages."

Cop: "Okay, that makes sense. I'll do what I can and fill you in on the outcome"



When we were talking after the phone was retrieved he said charges would have been pointless without video evidence that showed him taking the phone (while there are cameras in the facility, there's no cameras in the team room as cheerleaders/gymnasts will change in there) as he was throwing his daughter under the bus and she's 8 years old... no DA is going to charge an 8 year old.





As far as why I involved the cops? I initially didn't. The owner of the cheer gym called and filed the report when multiple parents/kids approached her and told her their phones were taken. I actually called the PD back after 45 minutes of the 1st PD not showing up and told them I would just go over myself and handle it, and they explicitly told me NOT to do that, and it was recorded... I'm not gonna disobey a direct order like that
 
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osubuckeye4 said:
It was actually the cops call.

Interaction went like this (this was before he went to the home):

Cop: "Do you want to press charges?"

Me: "Without knowing what happened outside of the phone ending up at their residence? I'll trust and back your judgement. If there's no damage and it's willingly handed over, I'm not gonna demand charges. Your call at that point. If there is any damage to the phone I do want to press charges regardless of whatever story is given, because I'll have to go after the family in small claims court for the damages."

Cop: "Okay, that makes sense. I'll do what I can and fill you in on the outcome"



When we were talking after the phone was retrieved he said charges would have been pointless without video evidence that showed him taking the phone (while there are cameras in the facility, there's no cameras in the team room as cheerleaders/gymnasts will change in there) as he was throwing his daughter under the bus and she's 8 years old... no DA is going to charge an 8 year old.





As far as why I involved the cops? I initially didn't. The owner of the cheer gym called and filed the report when multiple parents/kids approached her and told her their phones were taken. I actually called the PD back after 45 minutes of the 1st PD not showing up and told them I would just go over myself and handle it, and they explicitly told me NOT to do that, and it was recorded... I'm not gonna disobey a direct order like that
Click to expand...
Hopefully this whole thing scares the shit out of the clown so he doesn't do this again.
 
osubuckeye4 said:
It was actually the cops call.

Interaction went like this (this was before he went to the home):

Cop: "Do you want to press charges?"

Me: "Without knowing what happened outside of the phone ending up at their residence? I'll trust and back your judgement. If there's no damage and it's willingly handed over, I'm not gonna demand charges. Your call at that point. If there is any damage to the phone I do want to press charges regardless of whatever story is given, because I'll have to go after the family in small claims court for the damages."

Cop: "Okay, that makes sense. I'll do what I can and fill you in on the outcome"



When we were talking after the phone was retrieved he said charges would have been pointless without video evidence that showed him taking the phone (while there are cameras in the facility, there's no cameras in the team room as cheerleaders/gymnasts will change in there) as he was throwing his daughter under the bus and she's 8 years old... no DA is going to charge an 8 year old.





As far as why I involved the cops? I initially didn't. The owner of the cheer gym called and filed the report when multiple parents/kids approached her and told her their phones were taken. I actually called the PD back after 45 minutes of the 1st PD not showing up and told them I would just go over myself and handle it, and they explicitly told me NOT to do that, and it was recorded... I'm not gonna disobey a direct order like that
Click to expand...
fair enough and you didn't put that in your original story
but they charge adults for the actions of their kids all the time and/or child neglect type stuff.
the process is the punishment (you of all people doing audits should know this)
 
LoneCowboy said:
have you met druggies?
pffft the lesson he just learned is he can do it again and if he gets caught, well nothing happens cuz the police ain't gonna do shit.
and if he doesn't get caught then he makes money
there's literally no downside, that's what he learned.
Click to expand...
I am a glass of whiskey half full kind of guy.
 
osubuckeye4 said:
This is the perfect way to kick off this thread.

So, last night I took my daughter to cheerleading practice (as I do many nights).

Well, a dad at the facility decided to go on a phone stealing spree... broke into the team room and took a bunch of phones (including my daughters)

Life 360 and Find My Phone pinpointed every phone to the same address, located 1.9 miles from the gym. The owner of the gym was able to look it up in the database and sure enough it's the residence of an 8 year old girl who does introductory tumbling classes at the facility and who was at classes that evening.

At this point we're all thinking, "well, maybe the kid was being an a-hole and grabbed a bunch of phones and the dad has no idea" so we all start calling the phones... everything goes to voicemail and then we notice that phones start getting shut off.

At this point we call the local PD and they say, "we'll send an officer over right away!"

45 minutes later, facility is about to close so I call the non-emergency PD number and am like, "what gives here?". Oh, there is an emergency and all units are occupied, as soon as one is freed up they'll be right over though, hang tight!

I explain, "look, I don't want to have to go vigilante and show up at this persons house with a group of other pissed off dads... could you please speed it up?"

'Yes, of course. We understand, and please don't go over there, we'll handle it.'

Great.... 30 minutes later the PD calls the facility back (props to the owner, who stayed well past closing to try to help us resolve this) and the PD says, "yea, we won't be able to get anywhere there at all tonight. We'll send a unit over in the morning though to take a report"

At this point I'm ripshit pissed... but then I realize that while the phones are pinging 1.9 miles away, it's technically the next town over.

We call the PD for THAT department and they are like, "well, we can't really send a unit to your business because we don't cover that municipality... but, if you want to drive over we will take a report and if the phones are at a resident in this municipality we'll do what we can"

My hopes of getting any phones back are astronomically low at this point.. but, I figure I'm 3+ hours into this ordeal so I might as well see it through.

We go to the other PD, talk to the officer (super nice guy) and he takes all the info and says he and his partner will do everything they can within the law to retrieve the phones.

My hopes are even lower at this point... I decide that I'll drive my daughter home (it's 10:30 on a school night).

Literally as I'm pulling into my parking lot I get the call from the officer, "we were able to retrieve all of the phones, if you want to come pick your daughters phone up I'm here till 11:30". (again, super nice officer)

I drop my kid off, tell her to go to bed and drive 30 minutes back in the other direction to pick the phone up.

The officer confirms that all the phones were at the residence we thought, it was the 8 year old and her single parent father that lived there. The officer says, "the dad was very sketchy and if I was a betting man I'd wager he took the phones, not the kid"

I asked what made him think that.

He says, "well, when we confronted him, he said that he heard a phone ring from the backseat and panicked and took the phone and put it in a plastic bag and hid it in his garage". That was the first phone they retrieved. "When we mentioned other phones were pinging to his address he said he'd wake his daughter up and ask her... within a minute he came back with the other phones, which were all inside the residence"

I was like, "oh yea, he definitely took them".

Officer asked if I wanted to press charges... honestly, it was 11:10 PM at that point and the phone was undamaged and showed no signs of damage/misuse. I thanked the officer, told him since no one got hurt and nothing was damaged on our end, I'd save everyone the extra paperwork and hassle of pursuing anything additional legally, and went on my way.

I swear though.. what kind of scumbag tries to pin a class 3 felony (well over $500, but less than $10,000 worth of phones) on his own 8 year old kid?
Click to expand...
We are completely different people. If I saw the phone pinging 1.9 miles away the last thing I would do is call the cops. I don't call the cops for shit. Take care of that shit yourself and make sure they never fuck around again......Think of the time you would have saved and the fun you could have had. It would also be a great life lesson for your daughter. How better to show her the consequences of stealing than for her to watch her dad beat the hell out of some pansy ass thief on their own front lawn.
 
Trig said:
We are completely different people. If I saw the phone pinging 1.9 miles away the last thing I would do is call the cops. I don't call the cops for shit.
Click to expand...

The gym owner called the cops as soon as multiple girls in the program approached her and said their phones were stolen.

I actually said, "hold up... let me check and make sure they aren't at the facility" and did the FindMyPhone and that's when we figured out they were 2 miles away.

I offered to drive over and the gym owners (and then PD) told me to absolutely not do that. As soon as it hit the system, I wasn't going to go vigilante.
Trig said:
Take care of that shit yourself and make sure they never fuck around again......Think of the time you would have saved and the fun you could have had. It would also be a great life lesson for your daughter. How better to show her the consequences of stealing than for her to watch her dad beat the hell out of some pansy ass thief on their own front lawn.
Click to expand...

Again... this occurred at my daughters cheerleading facility and I had no idea initially what was going on outside of a bunch of girls saying, "where did my phone go? This isn't funny, is someone playing a prank?".

By the time I could react, the police had already been called and the adventure had begun.
 
LoneCowboy said:
fair enough and you didn't put that in your original story
Click to expand...

I already get enough shit for word count.

There are quite few more details I could pop in regarding the initial 1:45 wait for the first PD that refused to resopnd.
LoneCowboy said:
but they charge adults for the actions of their kids all the time and/or child neglect type stuff.
the process is the punishment (you of all people doing audits should know this)
Click to expand...

When the cop asked if I wanted to press charges I had no way at that time of knowing if it was a misunderstanding (it wasn't), or a legitimate theft (it was, regardless of if the guy panicked or it was planned, they clearly had no intention of returning it.. which makes it theft)


What was going thru my mind is, I tell the cop, "yes, press charges if they have the phone" and then it turns out that the kid is on the spectrum and everyone at the cheer gym is looking at my sideways every time I show up because I had a retarded 8 year old put thru the system over a complete misunderstanding where she grabbed shiny phones and threw them in her backpack and they were sitting in the garage the entire time

(we did try to call the phones multiple times and no one answered... which wasn't definitve proof they were stolen... could have been sitting in a backpack in a garage)
 
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LoneCowboy said:
have you met druggies?
pffft the lesson he just learned is he can do it again and if he gets caught, well nothing happens cuz the police ain't gonna do shit.
and if he doesn't get caught then he makes money
there's literally no downside, that's what he learned.
Click to expand...

If he was smart, he would learn that if you're going to steal phones the first thing you do is power the phone down and pull the SIM card... not leave the gym that has your address on file, drive to a gas station, drive to a weed store, and then drive home and sit there for 3 hours on a bunch of stolen phones.

Which is why neither the cop or I were 100% sure the dad did it.

For what it's worth, I guess he doesn't speak English very well (habla Espanol). I was going to ask if they pulled his immigration status, but of course I can't do that because Illinois is a sanctuary state. :cautious:
 
Trig said:
Word count?

No with you we complain about paragraph count.

In all seriousness man that sucks man and I hope the gym owner bans that dad and daughter from coming back
Click to expand...

Oh yea, message blast went out first thing after they opened notifying everyone in the program that phones were stolen, recovered by PD, and that the family responsible was formerly a part of the program... and they have been banned/no longer allowed on the premises or in any program that they are affiliated with.

The business owner said that she is going to follow up with the PD in the town her business is in and make sure that case notes from the neighboring PD were recorded on their end (it's in the neighboring towns database) just in case they have issues with the person trying to show up at the facility in the future.

They are also implementing a new policy where phones can be checked in with the front desk after the kid shows up, and put in a locked drawer/kept safe for the duration of the practice.

Unfortunately not much more that they can do than that on their end... they can't put cameras in the changing room for obvious reasons (95% of the people allowed in the room are underage... the other 5% are coaches/staff), and there is already a sign saying that no entry by non-cheerleaders/gymnasts is allowed.


It was... definitely not how I had expected my Wednesday night to go].

Oh, I did actually fill out one of the 'community survey' things for the PD that recovered the phone and gave a shout out to the officer (he gave me his name and badge number). Hopefully it gets reflected positively on his record because he was awesome and really went above and beyond.
 
LoneCowboy said:
you already know the answer
Click to expand...

I've never met the dude or his daughter. They are in the gymnastics side, my daughters in the cheer side.. though, they are going to have her my daughter start coaching some of the entry level gymnastics/tumbling classes, which was another factor for me...

Knowing the area that the house is at and the cop telling me after the fact that the guy could barely speak English (could have been pretending)... I'd put it 30/70 (legal immigrant vs. illegal)

I dunno, I am kind of second guessing if I should have told him to press charges no matter what. I kind of wish I had been able to ride along with the cop and get all the information he gave to me after the fact available at the time.

My train of thought, not knowing wtf was going on other than multiple phones had been taken, was... my daughters been with this program for years now, I've personally sunk thousands of dollars into it... she's already an unpaid coach (solely due to state law... they want to pay her, and to be fair they kind of do via reduced tuition/gym fees costs, they just can't directly pay her because she's only 13) there and they've set her up to be a paid coach as soon as she turns 14.

Point being, we're in deep there. I gotta show my face at that facility probably 75 days out of the year? Then my wife is probably there another 100-140 days. Legit, we're there 2/3 of the year in a given year.

Soon as we realize it was more than just my daughters phone it threw the, "oh, maybe his daughter grabbed the wrong phone and it's sitting in her backpack and that's why no one is picking up" theory out the window and that's when the gym owner told me not to make a house call and that law enforcement was being involved... but, when the cop asked before knowing anything if I wanted to press charges.. I didn't know what kind of sob story they were going to give.

Last thing I needed was for the dad and his kid to get cuffed and charged and then come into the facility tomorrow saying, "my daughter is special needs, we handed the phones over immediately but the officers said the families demanded charges so we got cuffed and dragged into the station on a school night" and then I gotta show up every day and have some of the other families that knew that family side eying me.

For what it's worth, the other parents (we all went to the station together) took a similar posture to me... it was an uncomfortable, "Shit... If he admits he stole them, yes, cuff him and charges please. If you recover the phones undamaged and get a sob story and drags the 8 year old into it? Ugh, we'll defer to your judgement"

I was the one who threw in the, "If the phones are damaged/broken, I don't really care what the story is... charge him. I'll have to fight it out in small claims and charges backing it up will help" wrinkle into it.

I dunno, I'm second guessing myself now...
 
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osubuckeye4 said:
I've never met the dude or his daughter. They are in the gymnastics side, my daughters in the cheer side.. though, they are going to have her my daughter start coaching some of the entry level gymnastics/tumbling classes, which was another factor for me...

Knowing the area that the house is at and the cop telling me after the fact that the guy could barely speak English (could have been pretending)... I'd put it 30/70 (legal immigrant vs. illegal)

I dunno, I am kind of second guessing if I should have told him to press charges no matter what. I kind of wish I had been able to ride along with the cop and get all the information he gave to me after the fact available at the time.

My train of thought, not knowing wtf was going on other than multiple phones had been taken, was... my daughters been with this program for years now, I've personally sunk thousands of dollars into it... she's already an unpaid coach (solely due to state law... they want to pay her, and to be fair they kind of do via reduced tuition/gym fees costs, they just can't directly pay her because she's only 13) there and they've set her up to be a paid coach as soon as she turns 14.

Point being, we're in deep there. I gotta show my face at that facility probably 75 days out of the year? Then my wife is probably there another 100-140 days. Legit, we're there 2/3 of the year in a given year.

Soon as we realize it was more than just my daughters phone it threw the, "oh, maybe his daughter grabbed the wrong phone and it's sitting in her backpack and that's why no one is picking up" theory out the window and that's when the gym owner told me not to make a house call and that law enforcement was being involved... but, when the cop asked before knowing anything if I wanted to press charges.. I didn't know what kind of sob story they were going to give.

Last thing I needed was for the dad and his kid to get cuffed and charged and then come into the facility tomorrow saying, "my daughter is special needs, we handed the phones over immediately but the officers said the families demanded charges so we got cuffed and dragged into the station on a school night" and then I gotta show up every day and have some of the other families that knew that family side eying me.

For what it's worth, the other parents (we all went to the station together) took a similar posture to me... it was an comfortable, "Shit... If he admits he stole them, yes, cuff him and charges please. If you recover the phones undamaged and get a sob story and drags the 8 year old into it? Ugh, we'll defer to your judgement"

I was the one who threw in the, "If the phones are damaged/broken, I don't really care what the story is... charge him. I'll have to fight it out in small claims and charges backing it up will help" wrinkle into it.

I dunno, I'm second guessing myself now...
Click to expand...
eh
you make the best call you can with the information you have at the time.

That's all you can do
assholes like me, come back with 20/20 hindsight.......................errr I mean, yeah, well that is what i mean
meh, sounds like you made the right call with the situation you had with the information you had.
also, now you know where he lives
and knowledge is half the battle.

Also, def illegal, you know it, you just don't wanna admit it.
 
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