NYPD Blues

Our evening started with a lovely night at Central Park where we listened to the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Afterwards there were surprise fireworks.

We came home to see things where they hadn't been left and the bedroom had been rifled through. Right away I felt so weird because someone had been in the only place that belonged to us and took our things. We found out that the lady in the apartment below had been robbed as well. We looked around and found all the nice electronics had been taken and then called the police. "Oh great! Welcome to Harlem," was exactly what I was thinking.

Our apartment has 2 locked doors and then the apartment door to get through and we still don't know how they got through the outer doors. I didn't know what these were but we live between 2 Halfway Houses. They are housing for people who need reintegration into society after getting out of prison, or suffering from mental disorders or substance abuse. Not the safest area. There are no security cameras on this street and our door handle was already loose and hadn't gotten fixed. We've got a deadbolt now so we feel safer.

                                              The Police came and took our statement.

  

As you recall we are subletting Jeff and Aurora's apartment so her Macbook Pro and computer charger were stolen as well as Andrew's computer charger and our phone charger. Our Canon Rebel T2i photo and video camera was taken. It was in a leather bag which happen to hold our passports and checkbook. I can't find my drivers license but my credit card was still in my wallet. I had to cancel all the bank stuff and our passports, plus I don't have any ID now. Very inconvenient.

Next the forensics guys came and dusted for prints. They also took our finger prints for comparison. A lot of the things that the robber might have touched were not good surfaces for lifting prints. This is the part where my love of crime scene investigation shows comes in. I grew up watching Perry Mason, Agatha Christie, Alfred Hitchcock, Murder She Wrote, and Matlock with my Mama so you could say I kind of wanted to be a detective growing up. Within the past year I gave up a lot of the big recent crime shows because of violence and dark themes.

                                                                Getting finger printed

Andrew got the Muppet Show on DVD for his birthday and I noticed it was on the floor when we got home. I told the police that info and they focused a lot on trying to get prints off of that surface. This is Kermit after being violated. Never knew that this dust was so hard to get off.

That night I was really scared that maybe they would come back because it is hard to not make a crime personal. I woke up the next morning to lots of messages telling me my Facebook got hacked. I left it logged in to Aurora's computer and knowing it wasn't me I was interested to see what the robber decided to write. After reading the very inappropriate status update I had supposedly written I became so angry I was shaking. I don't remember the last time I felt this angry. The fact that he broke into our private space and stole from us and then tried to add insult to injury, just enraged me. Some people have such evil intentions and live their lives in such darkness. I took some time to calm down and forgive this person. I then realized I could hide the status instead of delete it so that the detectives could maybe find an IP address from the geotagged update.

After contacting the Dickamores and delivering the sad news about their computer, they realized the robber tried to buy about $5,000 worth of stuff on an online account. I understand buying an iPad but the funny thing is that they tried to buy some tiaras (random) and then didn't change the shipping address. Yeah, we are working with some respectable professionals. The purchases were stopped and the detectives may also be able to figure out where those purchases were made from.

The tough NYPD detectives came by wearing matching lavender dress shirts and sporting their thick New York accents. We had a fun time joking around with the lead detective and giving him all the helpful information we had.

Interestingly enough Andrew had his debit card stolen a month ago and then put back in his bag at work. We know this because a purchase was made 20 minutes before Andrew tried to buy something during work. The bank took care of everything but we don't like not being able to give people the benefit of the doubt and not being able to trust people. New York has a ton of weirdos.

Crazy story, right? I wish it hadn't happened but we are glad that we were not home when they came. The things we lost are replaceable and we are so glad that we still have each other.