My views

In a previous post I mentioned that I have been posting signs on the North East corner of Mission Gate Dr and Via Rancho Rd. These signs, approximately 15, have been disappearing twice daily since Saturday October 18th.

I decided to create honeypot of sorts to try to catch someone stealing the signs. One of my scouts caught wind of this on Wednesday night and eagerly asked if he could come with me. He was excited about hiding out in the bushes to catch a thief.

On Thursday October 23rd we posted 4 signs, one at each corner of the intersection and concealed ourselves on the hillside behind some very big bushes. After 2 hours of being out there a car pulled up. A guy got out and proceeded to rip apart the sign and put it in the back seat of his car. At this time I snuck down the hill and started snapping pictures of him as he drove across the street to remove the next sign.  He pulled the plastic off this second sign, ripped it up, and quickly got back to his car. I kept snapping pictures. I decided it best to not confront him as I have a tendency to fly off the handle when someone does something that gets me upset. I didn’t want to set a bad example for my scout. As the guy jumped into his car he yelled “Hater”, punched the gas a drove away. He went around the block, came back and yelled “hater” and drove away.

I felt good that I had snapped so many pictures. I originally wanted to get it on video using my camera’s night vision setting. Unfortunately, when this thief arrived, my adrenaline kicked in and all I could do was hit the ‘take picture’ button and completely missed the ‘start recording video’ button.  As we reviewed the pictures, everything was black. All the pictures we completely black. As we scrolled through the pictures we found 1 picture that very clearly caught the license plate on this guys car. I hoped that would be enough.

I took my scout to his home and headed towards home. On my way home, I got the impression to drive through some of the neighborhoods in the area. As I pulled into the first neighborhood, I started with a prayer in my heart asking God, if it be his will, that I would find this car so I could get the make and model of the car. I knew that it was an older red Toyota 4-door, but wasn’t sure if it was a Camry or Corolla. As I drove down this first street I came up to a vehicle that matched this description. I thought, no way I found it already. I drove up the street a bit, pulled out my camera and noted the license plate number. I drove around the block back to this car. Sure enough, it was the car in question. I verified that it was a Camry and now I had this guys address too. I snapped another picture of the car, noted the address and headed home. As I headed home I offered a prayer of thanks to God for his help and asked for forgiveness for thinking that I had found the car. I thanked Him for directing me to this vehicle.

When I got home, I sat and gathered my thoughts. I recorded the time of the theft and noted a description of the thief. By this time it was about 9PM. I decided to wait until morning to file the police report.

In the morning I called Oceanside PD (+1 760 435 4900) and filed the report. I was asked to email the picture of the License Plate and the car to the officer on the phone. She stated that I had provided enough detailed information for the department to follow up. I still need to call back and follow up on the report to see what happened.

Also, I filed the information at the official “Prop 8 Vandalism / Theft” site reporting site.

I’m glad that we caught this person. I’m not a big fan of people trying to take away my freedom of speech or freedom of expression. I didn’t serve 4 years in the Marine Corps to have people take these rights away from me.