A CF caught in the act

[Kinelll]

I have a plant pot outside my front door and a couple of little garden ornaments sitting next to it, a zebra and a gnome. My children picked them and consider them to be theirs.

I spotted somebody loitering so opened the blinds and caught an elderly lady red handed putting the zebra in her bag.

To be honest I'm surprised they've lasted as long as they have around here but I didn't expect the culprit to be an elderly woman😂

I can’t believe the audacity of some people (well actually I can). There’s a Facebook post doing the rounds on my local neighbourhood groups this week. A delivery driver delivered a takeaway then picked up the neighbour’s cat, put it in the car and drove off with it! Fortunately it was caught in cctv, including the car ref, so hopefully they get it back.

That’s not CF that’s downright theft!

Eventually I superglued them onto the paving stones, which I didn't really expect would work, but it did.

If you had put superglue ON the pots their thieving hands would have stuck to the pot as they stole them. Now that would have been funny.

I saw a man steal my neighbours kids’ new toy from their front garden on Christmas Day so I drove after him and asked for it back. He angrily accused me of assuming he stole the brand new toy when he really believed it was out in the garden because it was unwanted. Riiight. He did hand it over though.

The woman caught her walking past the day after.
The thief claimed she was drunk🤣.
So she obviously brought back her I'll gotten rug.

I once worked in a health clinic reception where, one December day, two bare faced thieves just walked in, unplugged the Xmas tree, and walked out with it, complete with lights and decorations. They were so fast!

I lived in an area that was rife with poverty and only one street had families with money. The council erected a small area with the towns name and planted beautiful flowers in, it was lovely and cheered the place up a treat. I was walking home from work one night and saw a fella from Money Street digging flowers and bulbs out of the brand new flower arrangement, I said oi what are you playing at? He told me to fuck off because his taxes paid for the flowers so he's taking "his" flowers.

I didn't expect the culprit to be an elderly woman

I'm sorry to say seniors can sometimes be among the worst

I used to run a community facility where every group had their own storage cupboard, and when stuff constantly went missing had to do a surprise visit to each to open them up
This particular group gave me a tearful "Oooo noooo Puzzled, not the old people!!", except when unlocked it was like Aladdin's cave in there

I agree that we do ourselves a massive disservice by describing these thieves as CFs.

Why do the police and security guards ignore older people who steal, even when they have them on CCTV? It's kind of pointless them being there at all, really, as in that case, any thief can just send their gran or grandad out to steal on their behalf - a reversal of the way that criminal families train up their kids in crime and then keep moving on to the younger ones once the older ones reach the age of criminal responsibility.

PP is right that many of them are younger thieves who just got old; similar in principle to when we meet deeply unpleasant middle-aged people who will answer the question 'what eventually happens to school bullies?'.

I agree that, the more they can get away with, the more they will try; so by stopping and frightening them early on in their criminal career, who knows how much worse crime could be prevented?

I definitely don't see why we should show any clemency to old thieves when they are quite clearly happy to steal from children. "I thought it was there to take" is just caught-red-handed-thief-speak for "I thought I could get away with taking it". As a general rule, people will usually put out a sign inviting you to take things, if that's the intention; if there is no sign, they probably don't want people to steal their own garden property.

We have several scrap men who go door to door. They can be very handy if you have an old washing machine, whatever, actual scrap to get rid of, but some of them are quite brazen in what they will take - hoping you won't notice, but coming out with the rubbish "But we thought it was put out for us to take" excuse. Supermarkets lose a good number of trolleys to them, too, when customers take them home with them and abandon them outside their houses - those go straight up into their truck too.

I'm sorry to say seniors can sometimes be among the worst

Can we not make this about age please.

I'm sorry to say seniors can sometimes be among the worst

Can we not make this about age please.

But it is relevant here, because a lot of older thieves exploit the fact that society naturally expects more mature people to be more honourable and honest.

Nobody is saying that there aren't also a lot of younger thieves, but this isn't being spotlighted, because nobody is surprised by them.

This is going back years, but a friend told me this about her workplace. It had undergone a big refurbishment and they had a grand reopening with free refreshments for customers.

Some customers were witnessed trying to leave with bottles of wine under their coats. Interestingly they were the ones who could well afford to buy as much wine (or anything else) as they wished.

The blue carrier bag probably had the other items she had pinched that day.

Can we not make this about age please

I wasn't trying to, AdobeWanKenobi; I'm a senior myself and if trying to damn everyone I'd have said "they're the worst" instead of they can "sometimes be among the worst"

But as sausageroll correctly said, just as other groups sometimes try to exploit the situation, so do some seniors

I have a lot more sympathy for desperately poor people stealing essentials; but I wonder how comfortably-off people actually feel about themselves when they make life choices to steal luxury or frivolous items that they could very easily afford to buy.

You would think that a very big part of having 'made it' in life (or at least becoming established) would be that you'd take pride in being able to provide well for yourself and your family, without depending on anybody else; but apparently this is by no means a universally-held outlook.

I could give a long list of the somewhat sharp practices the "harmless little old lady" who lived in my house before me engaged in.

It's always the ones you least expect ...

I see your Christmas wreath and raise you a door knob - we had our front door knob stolen twice!

I see your Christmas wreath and raise you a door knob - we had our front door knob stolen twice!

What?! Shame you couldn't wire it up to the electricity (with a switch to disconnect it every time you need to use it yourself or have guests coming) - then just look out for the neighbour with one scorched hand

I think thats a really interesting point. I have relatives like this, who have retired with good final salary pensions, mortgage free, great quality of life. Yet they are the ones leaving the Weatherspoons with a handbag full of sauces, sweeping the free samples up at the local market or trying to nick cuttings off the neighbors plants.

I have relatives like this, who have retired with good final salary pensions, mortgage free, great quality of life. Yet they are the ones leaving the Weatherspoons with a handbag full of sauces, sweeping the free samples up at the local market or trying to nick cuttings off the neighbors plants.

Yes, and do they also wang on about 'people on benefits being subsidised by the rest of us' ?!

Oh my in laws are the same 🤦🏼‍♀️ MIL found out we were taking DD to an event a couple of weekends ago - we didn’t exclude her we just didn’t plan it as anything more than a trip for the 3 of us. When she found out she went very sullen and asked why we ‘didn’t think to buy her a ticket as we were buying them for ourselves’. What she really meant was us paying and her pretending to believe it was a ‘treat’ so she didn’t have to pay us back. DH said she was welcome to book her own ticket and come with us but funnily enough she didn’t take him up on that offer.

Absolutely. I think each generation or age group comes with a set of annoying propensities but some of the most spiteful, tight or entitled behaviour I have seen has come from elderly women!

Did you confront her?

That's awful. Literal daylight robbery. You can't just take something from the front of someone's house unless it's clearly free to a good home at the end of your path/drive/pavement.

I've had similar experiences OP. It might 'just' be a inexpensive ornament but it's your possession and it's stealing.

I have two stories.

Next door neighbour had a little bistro set in her back garden, one of those with a small round table and two chairs. She kept a pot of lavender on it. One day she got up and it had vanished. The lavender was sitting forlornly on the patio. She just shrugged it off as one of those things, until a few days later it reappeared, in the exact same spot, complete with lavender plant carefully placed on the table. Can only assume the thief was just borrowing it for a few days.

The second one was when I was married to first DH, who had a reputation locally as a bit of a hard man. He bought the rusty old frame work of a trailer, intending to do it up and use it for his frequent tip runs. Overnight it was stolen, but a few discreet inquiries and he found the culprit. Went round and frog marched him to his garage where sure enough, the trailer was hidden. Not only did exh get it back, but he made the thief do all the work to board it out and paint it. 😁