A few years ago, I wrote a story about the capture of a man who robbed a pharmacy for OxyContin.
You may yawn if you’d like. Pharmacy robberies are a dime a dozen, whether you live in the hood or in a one-feed-store town.
But I tell you this story had a little pizzazz. This story had gadgetry.
To catch the stick-up man, police had only to gaze at a screen and read street names on a map. When he grabbed six bottles of Oxy from the harried pharmacist, our bad guy (described by his girlfriend as “a metrosexual who loves clothes and his looks”) unknowingly grabbed the latest in technology, too.
Police call it the “tactical narcotic tracker,” because police just can’t resist giving long, bland names to everything. It resides inside a pill bottle and works through simple global positioning. Wherever the dope goes (I mean the drugs in this case, not the suspect) a satellite tracks its position. All information about the travels of that tiny bottle is transmitted to the cops. They leave the tracking dogs in their cages. The composite sketch guy can take the day off.
In this particular stick-up, it took police roughly 10 minutes to track the nicely dressed drug addict to his home. From there, it was a matter of paperwork. Hippity-hop to the coffee shop.
Here, there’s a temptation to think: “Well, that’s it, then. The good guys win. Who’s going to hit a pharmacy with this kind of future technology in place?”
This is why you’re a proctologist instead of a criminal.
Exploding dye packs should have marked the end of bank robberies, but they didn’t.
Security cameras should have brought an end to convenience store robberies, but we see so many of those, stores are considering just putting bags of cash out on the sidewalk.
You’ve got fancy alarms and on-board computer systems in cars, but those get swiped every day. Go look in your driveway right now. I’ll bet yours is missing.
Made you look.
Criminals are the cleverest people on the planet, whether they’re on the street or in the hoosegow. The righteous build prisons and declare them “escape-proof” and then seasoned cons go crawling out of there like ants leaving a picnic.
You see prisoners fashioning deadly weapons out of dental floss, booze out of deodorant, “special friends” out of urinal cakes.
I assume.
Accidentally let your shoe size slip and an enterprising crook will somehow use it to steal your identity, trash your reputation and go on a cross-country shopping spree. How do they do it? We don’t know! We’re honest people and don’t possess the criminal brain.
There are some d— dumb criminals out there, we all know that. But a lot of geniuses wear prison numbers or ski masks. They double over and pee themselves when they see those “this home protected by Acme Security” stickers on your door. Because they know how to override that alarm system with an old shoelace and a Tootsie Roll wrapper.
GPS? It’s a great weapon in the war on crime and also a great way to catch a cheating spouse. But if you believe thieves will stop thieving and cheaters will stop cheating because of it, man, you’re a dope.
Come to think of it, do you know where your wife is right now?
Made you look.
Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. He wrote this column using a pointy bone and bear droppings. Email him at mlaflamme@sunjournal.com.
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