I’ll bet rubber wasn’t the ONLY thing that made skid marks when you done that 
“No reasonable person would break into a house. Yet it is illegal to set up a booby trap to intentionally hurt the criminal that enters that house. I think the law also looks at how reasonable it is to set the trap. One possible outcome is that as the fool falls off the car, he lands in the road and is immediately run over by a passing car. Then the police will be forced to investigate the incident as a murder.”
Again, wrong. It’s not concealed or camouflaged, therefore not a booby trap. It’s perfectly legal to put broken glass on top of a wall surrounding your property or to set up a barbed wire fence. You couldn’t be charged for murder in the scenario you describe… MAYBE negligent homicide. Again, “What were you DOING on the roof of the car, son?”
“I had the same problem some years back. I traced it down to a young teenager who had a Camaro, jacked up in the rear, with really loud pipes. About 10:00 p.m. one evenng I heard the Camaro start up and then caught a glimpse of the Camaro coming down our road with its lights off and traveling about 10 mph in low. I had a hunch what was going on and I got in my old 1950 Chevrolet 1 ton pickup truck and, with my lights off, followed them. Sure enough, the Camaro slowed down for a mailbox and the passenger was ready to swing a baseball bat at the box. The Camaro driver didn’t know I was right on his back bumper. At that point I hit the bright lights and nudged his back bumper. That Camaro left so much rubber in the road that there was enough to recap my tires. There was no way I could catch the Camaro in a 90 hp 1 ton pickup truck, but that was the end of our mailbox vandalism.”
jtsanders, what say you about the crime our friend describes committing here? Multiple crimes, actually. Makes greasing the roof of a parked car sound pretty benign, don’t you think?
I don’t think that anything Triedaq did was criminal, if that’s who you mean.
BTW, were you in Charm City for the big unveiling last Sunday? A bust of Frank Zappa was donated by Vilnius, Latvia to Baltimore (Zappa’s original home). It was unveiled on the steps of the Baltimore Public Library, where it will reside forever (I hope). A fitting place, dontcha think?
We had a beautiful day today where I live, so I went out and greased the roof of my car.
You seem to have some fear of DA’s. Perhaps some bad experiences in your past? Please share; sometimes people who have made mistakes give the best advice (but not in this case). My lawyer used to be a DA (and of course what you really mean is Assistant District Attorney).
Again, “Son, what were you DOING on the roof of the car?”
You don’t think driving at night with your headlights off and ramming another vehicle from behind on a public street are crimes? What a queer duck. What would your imaginary DA think of this?
Did the Camaro have license plates? Why did you commit crimes? Why not just call the police? He probably just moved on to vandalize mailboxes in another neighborhood, but you got your rocks off, I guess.
Let’s think this through. You against two guys with a baseball bat. You must be one tough guy, being willing to risk that while committing a crime.
“Officer, he rammed us with no lights on! We wuz just defending ourselves!”
Buy one of those bumper stickers “Vehicle insured by Smith and Wesson”.Or “Do you feel lucky punk, do you?”
Well, it wasn’t one of my brighter acts. I was 37 years younger than I am now and I wouldn’t have the courage to do this. We lived out in the country and the chances of the sheriff catching these guys was slim to none. I didn’t have any weapons with me–in fact, I have never owned a gun.
Several years before the mailbox incident, lived in town in a one story apartment building with about 20 units where the landlord and landlady lived on the premises as well. One evening we heard a noise behind our building and didn’t think much of it. A few minutes later, the landlord came down and said that we had a window peeper and he had called the police. We were friends with another couple that lived in the building and my friend had an arsenal of weapons. Well, the word spread through the building and almost everybody came out of their apartments. A couple of officers rolled up in a squad car with their lights off. They checked around and didn’t see anything. I looked across the street toward an alley and saw the peeper looking in a window. I pointed him out to the officers. One officer had me and my landlord get in my car while they got in their squad car and we were to enter opposites sides of the alley and trap the peeper. We both kept our lights off. Well, we met in the alley, but the peeper had disappeared. After my landlord and I returned to the apartment building, I looked for my friend. When I asked his wife where he was, she replied “He is hiding under the bed with his 12 gauge shotgun”. I didn’t have enough sense back the to be scared. If this occured today, I would probably hide under my bed, but without a shotgun.
set up a small, hidden camera inside the car, facing outward. let the camera run all night. hopefully, the camera will catch the dudes face as he jumps on and/or off of the hood.