okay i think the crime in Dallas is horrendous
compared compared to what
compared now to when i first came here twenty years ago when i came here twenty years ago it was not near as bad as it is now it's terrible now my house has already been broken into once and there was an attempt
a second another time i mean i can't it's horrible i'm afraid
do you live in do you live near downtown
no i live well i live in Oak Cliff but uh
uh we never had any problem here before we we really did not in my neighborhood we're not wealthy at all know you know we don't have a rich neighborhood and when they break into our houses they don't get anything
much they get a little jewelry and maybe you know a VCR's and it just irritates me to no end that somebody has broken into my house and stolen my things you know just
well
hum well i live i i live in in north
west Garland actually west about a mile south of one ninety so we're really quite far north and the house we just moved into a house that has lots of windows and i course i have a friend Dallas policeman that lives right behind me so i don't know if that'll do any good but
uh it it's interesting though that you've been broken into uh you must you must look at this whole mess a lot different did you see today that they the the police commanders got a pay raise and the the regular folks didn't
no i hadn't i hadn't heard that
it just on the news i was just watching a little of it just
before you called it uh and they cutback and they cutback on overtime and they have to take electric clocks home and you wonder what that does to the fighting crime if if they had an electric clock on their desk they were supposed to take it home to save energy
are you serious that is the city
i'm serious uh Doug Clark's on channel eight
that sounds like the city i worked for the city of Dallas for a while and i do know that they're they can be really strange
what what what do you think why why people breaking into your house
drugs they want to see they take what they do they break in and they take your jewelry and they take it and they sell it they hock it and then they buy drugs i really think it's drugs they want the money for the drugs
hum
so i think drugs is the root of it
what time of day are they breaking in
well okay i used to work second shift and when they broke in i was working at night i i work in payroll now and i work days but uh they broke in
they knew my hours the police told me evidently they were watching me and they know your hours see that's what so spooky about it
uh
yeah
and they broke in at night and uh since then i've put in a security light and i've marked everything i you know that i have i
put my driver's license number on it ugly too i mean where it could be seen because i don't care don't i just don't want them to get it and hock it again
well are you uh you said you're not in a in a rich neighborhood but are there are there obviously um
drug people in the area
no not right here i i have never even seen like uh what they call a crack house or anything i wouldn't
no there's nothing like that here that i know of now i'm sure there are somewhere in Oak Cliff but i've never seen it we're not in a bad area you know i
do you think they just kind of hit your house at random or but they were going down the street
they've hit they've hit my next door neighbor they hit uh the guy about two or three houses down so they've hit several houses in the neighborhood one of them twice
so they
okay so they're really just looking for
they're just looking
a nice enough house to find something to steal
just something they kicked my door in they literally i had a solid wooden door with a dead bolt on it and they backed up and put their foot to it and kicked it in molding and all
oh that's scary because everybody feels you're supposed to have dead bolts
that's real scary
i have a and i my insurance paid to have the contractor come out and i we put in a another solid door and another dead bolt but it doesn't hold it
well my the front door on the house i have has uh glass in it
so does mine now this one does have glass in it
well i i wonder you know you know it i don't know this is tough but i guess the issue is is if it's drug people what's the solution
uh i don't think there is a solution i i really
i really don't know i really don't and you know the police told me to get a gun and if they if you're here and they try breaking in shoot them now i have never heard policemen telling people to get a gun and shoot people before
well that
but that tells you how bad the situation is that tells you how bad it is and there aren't enough police and they they didn't get here till six the next morning i got home at eleven called the police immediately
um-hum
several times my neighbors came over immediately we didn't even know if they were still in the house my neighbor went through looking
yeah
um-hum
yeah
they advised on the phone that we'll have somebody go through and look now that's terrible and the police did not get here until seven hours later
yeah
well that that's real scary
that's darn scary
but is the is the solution uh cutting off drug supply
if it's possible i guess i well or is it is it or is the solution legalizing
or
or is it
yeah or yeah uh do you see that these people you know are they going to if if you cut supply it's going to raise the price
somethings
or if you uh
if you legalize it it uh well you couldn't legalize everything okay i just don't see that you could but if you legalized marijuana
and then uh taxed it and everything then everybody'd come out okay i think on that deal
well how how expensive is um how expensive is marijuana it's not very expensive is it
i don't even know i really don't know
but i mean the people that are i'd be curious to if the people that are wouldn't you think the people that are breaking in are probably
hard drug users
are probably crack that have got a pretty high because i would think a hundred dollars worth of marijuana i don't know what it costs but
yeah
i should think that'd be more than a lot more than just ordinary recreation it would be interesting to see if to the problem is is is what do you lock them up for you know
and then the thing is keeping them locked up
yeah
you know they pick them up they lock them up and then they they let them go
but they don't have enough proof them
they don't have anything to keep and you never get your stuff back you never get your stuff back
and then we got to raise
well we had interesting enough we had a in in Garland before we moved we had some neighborhood kids came by and stole uh uh drill and our saw and and i had them marked and uh
we called the police about a week la ter the guy caught these kids riding a motor um
a motor scooter or a a go it was a go-cart in the in the alley
and he got to talking to the kids and and we recovered the drill and the saw it was but uh it it's one of those you know it was uh not a not a real expensive neighborhood
uh but it's it's interesting that the the motivation and the question is what's the motivation not to steal and i i guess that's what bothers it's like the criminal you know if somebody says well let's lock him up for life well
how should he you know what bothers me is the incentive that he's if you if you know you're going to be in there for life why should you just be good
but if you if you say i'm not going to let you out till you have a skill and we think you're reformed well that's not how they do it they let them out when they time is served i
that's right
i i guess the problem is is is what it would take to do that would be more money than we it's like the school issue and which i guess we're not supposed to talk to but anyway the idea of how much money would it take to reform these criminals and lock them all up
and they think these are kids kids are probably teenagers older teenagers that have been doing this around here
hum
they uh they weren't real professional well we don't know for sure but they hit they took they knew right where to go that's what scares me
in your
they went they went right to my jewelry they did not ransack my house they went right to my jewelry box and i had a ring that had my diamonds in it and my grandmother's diamonds in it that i had made and it was worth close to two thousand dollars
oh my
they got and they i mean they had pay dirt when they saw that i mean and i couldn't i worked in the shop then at TI you you know with machinery and i couldn't wear my jewelry i can wear it now i wear everything
yeah
yeah
i don't leave anything home i wear everything you bet but uh
everything of value
they got that and the diamond necklace and stuff so they really hit pay dirt and then they grabbed my VCR also but they didn't just tear it out they very carefully unhooked everything laid everything out you know i mean it was just unbelievable
well did they did you take your TV
no they left two TV's and one was small they could have easily carried it but the police said they must have been on foot it looked like they were on foot they left my silver my silver was sitting here in a chest
yeah but who buys silver anymore
well i did
well yeah but have you bought a place setting lately i have a niece that's getting married
and uh she's not even um selecting a silver pattern because it's i've forgotten my wife was telling me what the cost is just incredible to you know a place setting is is
yeah yeah
i don't know two or three hundred dollars or something i mean your silver probably is worth a lot but uh what are they going to do walk down the street and tell everybody what would you like to buy uh a
well they could they could
no well they can hock it see they take everything to the pawn shops and just hock everything but um
yeah
i don't know they just hit the jewelry well i guess if they knew their jewelry they knew their but they did take some cubic zirconiums too i had a ring that they looked awfully real
yeah
and i did have a ring that that wasn't real and they took that you know and i said
well how would they know i mean they they'd have to be pretty sophisticated
they just grabbed
they just grabbed but boy they sure hit pay dirt with that one ring luckily my insurance you know reimbursed me but i can't replace those diamonds
no and and and yeah how to put a value on a ring that you'd made
you know
to have and that had my grandmother's stones in it you know so oh i was sick
yeah
that is scary
but i still haven't bought a gun
well see that's the thing scares me about it is um who gets shot with the guns they say that a large number of the homicides are people that know each other
that uh i've forgot what the percentage forty or fifty percent it's surprisingly high that people that shoot each other know them i mean it's not like you know a
