Someone broke into my truck the other night, or "Why I love living next door to a cop."

Got back from a conference in Chicago Thursday night and pretty much crashed. Our garage is a mess right now, so both vehicles are in the driveway. And, typically, we don't lock them.

Jen yelled upstairs as she left on Friday morning that my truck (which was parked behind her car, so she was taking it to work) was a mess, and that since I left my door open she wasn't sure what state the battery was in (the dome light turns itself off, so there was no real worry). I figured I must have knocked some stuff around getting my bags out the night before, so I didn't worry about it.

When Jen got home that afternoon, our neighbor Tom (the afformentioned cop) called. He was curious if our vehicles were OK, and if anything was missing. Turns out we had some punks wandering the neighborhood the night before...and that's where it gets interesting.

Tom said that around 1:30 am he heard someone in our driveway. Our motion sensor light snapped on, and being trained to be inquisitive and protective, he threw on some clothes (over an arm in a sling--he's off work for a couple weeks because of arm surgery), snuck outside, and saw two kids heading down the street. He hopped in his son's car and followed them. When he saw them head towards another car, he called 911.

When the lights and sirens showed up, they were about a block away. The kids took off in different directions. Tom let the cops in uniform (and with two good arms each) deal with it, and he caught up with them a couple minutes later. They had caught one, but not the other.

Tom, again not able to betray his nature, set off to find the other kid. He spotted him one block west of our street. He pulled up nearby, got out of his car, and yelled (I might not have the right words, but you get the idea): "Police! Down on the ground now!" And then he apparently remembered that he wasn't carrying his gun and only had one good arm. (Which one of those best fits the definition of "unarmed"?)

Thankfully, the kid dropped and didn't realize he was being detained by a guy that couldn't fight back. Tom stumbled to get his cell and start to call 911, but then one of the uniformed cops came up. Apparently he was walking the sidewalk a few houses down and heard Tom yelling, and figured he'd help out.

So both punks are in jail, nobody was hurt, and the only thing that the kids got from us were our two bluetooth headsets. The forensics guys (who drive minivans here--Grand Rapids doesn't have the SUV budget that Vegas, Miami, and New York have) spent some time at our house Friday night taking pictures of footprints (freshly plowed snow leaves some pretty good evidence). They mentioned that, if the find the headsets were checked in as the kids property, we'd get them back. I'm not worried about it--bluetooth headsets are pretty cheap these days, and I was thinking about upgrading mine anyway.

We lock the car doors now...but I still contend that the best home security system out there is having an insomniac policeman neighbor.