It's been on my mind a lot lately.

B

briandg

New member
I went through the joplin tornado. Looting was rampant, before the storm was even out of town, the buzzards hit the ground running. We had paid rescue workers caught looting. There was a case where a woman got to her mother's home, found her mother laying dead in her front yard, and people walking past her body into and out of the home, carrying out her property. (seen on CNN, even.) We had guns looted from stores. narcotics from pharmacies. people went from car to car stealing wallets and purses from dead people. Even with a curfew in place, gangs wandered in the blacked out areas picking through houses with flashlights. With personal property and every sort of item strewn all over the countryside for miles, from houses that simply evaporated where they stood, people just put on backpacks and went hiking through the damaged neighborhoods and through the greenspaces between developments.

With all of this vile theft going on, it makes me completely sick that NOBODY took a faceful of buckshot. Not a single looter was shot.

Am I out of line, to wish that these scumbags went in and out of homes with absolute impunity for weeks, some of them even occupied as the gangs went in, and NOBODY was shot?

One of my best friends is a doctor. His office was in the destroyed hospital. his home destroyed. Another friend, the doctor I work for lived a few houses away, and her house, honest to god, was completely sheared off at ground level. Nothing left of it but the floor and the basement. Nothing there at all.

My friends visa was used that very night in tulsa. it was found somehow down wind of his home, and whoever found it, hit the road to splurge with his card. Am I wrong to wish that at least one of these slimebags paid the price for doing the foulest non violent crime possible?
 
wow I didn't know it was that rampant. I would not hesitate to say that some were lucky they didn't end up with a faceful of buckshot. I don't know the circumstances, but it is surprising to me there weren't at least some very heated stand-offs.
 
That side of the tragedy was certainly not publicized. All the news was about how helpful everyone was and the ethic of the rural folks. I was doubtful but wasn't there so didn't know for sure.
I'm sure it would have made for sensational reporting if some of those thieves had been found shot. They would have been depicted as pathetic, displaced persons lost and looking for food/water killed by a viscious vigilante type redneck. I have no doubt some very disreputable folks simply disappeared form the radar so to speak during the confusion. I haven't discussed the aftermath with my relative who's a corrections officer to find out how many probation/parolees went missing never to be heard from again. There was definitely a lower end of society in the Joplin area IIRC.
 
We had 3 probationers/parolees dead, and several wounded. Many lost their residences. We have none missing. None. We accounted for every single one within one week. We supervise something over 1,300 at any given time in the area (3 counties). Some of course ended up in another jurisdiction because of the disruption.

Edit: Within one week would be within one week after we had the ability to communicate, 2 or 3 days after the hit.
 
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It is entirely possible that I have a skewed perception of what went on. But the facts remain that a great deal of looting occurred, and I'm not sure how to feel about the fact that the media kept it quiet, either. Does the outside world need to see that?

My neighbor, I forget the entire chain of events, wound up in a conversation with a FOAF of some sort. coworker of a relative, I believe. this person went on and on about going car to car looting vehicles in the beaten zone. He excused it with "why not? should it go to waste? Someone else will do it anyway." The man referred to his trip as "work" and he "earned" over $1,000 doing it. My friend said that he couldn't even think of what to say. A coworker was in her home at night in a lightly damaged blackout zone, and her husband chased looters off. The high school was destroyed, but still accessable. Laptops were stolen that very night, and a computer specialist in KC recovered a number of them from a thief who brought them in to have the passwords reset.

OMG, I forgot the absolute worst. How in heck did I do that?

My daughter has psychological problems. she was living in a supervised apartment setting. Much of the building remained intact, but the residents were not allowed to re-enter. The company that managed the building hired

SERVICE MASTER

to pack up and transfer the property. The first people to retrieve their goods noticed problems, and from that time, everyone was required to sort their remaining possessions in the presence of a member of the prgraims management.

Just in my daughters apartment, her litter box contents was bagged, then boxed up and property went on top of it. Her trash can was emptied into a box that contained her property. She is an artist, and a drenched newsprint pad one inch thick and the size of posterboard was wadded up and put in with clothes. (imaginea weeks worth of average newspapers left in an inch deep puddle) Her jewelry box was looted, there was no silver or gold left. It had been dumped loose into a packing boxbox and her box was broken.

The ceiling had collapsed. As we went through her property, we found insulation and drywall fragments in every drawer of her files cabinets and other storage containers, left in there as people had searched them. Her dishes had been dumped loose into a box. Much of her furniture was missing. It needs to be noted that her apartment was on the south side of the building, at the absolute edge of the zone of destruction. North side of the buidlingwas destroyed. south side survived. We have pictures of the rooms from going in before the building management had secured it, and we managed to recover some items before it wsa looted. They had some pictures, and had a solid idea of what sort of damage had occurred (very little.)

The worst thing that happened, one of her neighbors had a small collection of gold and diamond rings. She was there while my daughter was there, when she found out that my daughter's jewelry was looted, she looked for hers. every one of the ring boxes was there, packed away, but empty. Whoever packed her room went through her drawers, opened every box, stole the contents, and tossed the empty box into the box she was packing. I presume that the thief slipped them into a pocket, or maybes onto her hands, under her gloves.

No, the packing labels had no names or initials. the packers covered their activities.

This was done to the people who lived in a psychological facility. Some of the people there were there for PTSD. One of them was an afghan vet with ptsd. Can you guys imagine my anger?

Jhenry, you are from the area? what are your thoughts?

A manhattan 9/11 survivor was in town for it, and he said that the two events were very similar in his expereince.

and yes, mobuck, there is a lot of plain trash living here. Do you remember that at one time, missouri was listed in the FBI UCR as having the biggest problem with meth of all the states, and that McDonald county was the worst county in the state?

I'm going to be a long while getting through this thing.
 
Briandg, the urge to do harm to people who have harmed us or those close to us is a very normal reaction to your situation. Yet what separates us from animals and much lessor societies is we generally act under the rule of law and accepted social behavior. I will always defend myself and family with whatever force in necessary, but I refuse to lower myself to the level of the people who have forced me into the use of violence.

I’m sorry for your loss and hope that you will be able to put this ugly incident behind you and move on with your life.
 
The one thing I can say with certainty is that if I and my family had a damaged but still standing home, and I had possessions in that home, I would have sent my family to safety, and slept on the floors in my home. What would have happened had looters come by is an open question. I feel that it is a duty of all people to prevent crime, and in this case, the only way to prevent the looting was with neighborhood watch.

We had thousands of LE officers in town. If someone had come into my home, there would have been a cop on hand within minutes, so killing an intruder without definite threat of death or bodily harm, just because of illegal entry would have been totally uncalled for under most circumstances. I recognize that.
 
Occasionally there comes an event which would allow the dross of society to be skimmed and tossed away. This opportunity seems to have been wasted.
 
To the OP and all who endured this event:
I am truly sorry for your losses. It is unfortunate that bad times bring out the worst in bad people.

I am far more angry at the fact that (yet again) the mainstream media has abdicated it's responsibility, abandoned any semblance of journalistic integrity (which apparently no longer exists) and fallen back upon a politically correct, agenda-driven version of "the story".
 
It is amazing how people an 'justify' their actions in situations like this one, katrina, the galveston 1900 hurricane, etc, etc.

I did think that was rare how in japan's tsunami people were returning people's cash and safes
 
Well, as I have said in the past - Many of us are no better than monkeys - aka clever apes. When the crap hits the fan, some will rise above base instincts while others will embrace the reptilian brain.

Moving this back to S&T, a lesson that everyone should take away is that one should have have all of their eggs in one basket. Have multiple geographical locations where you store your firearms, emergency cash, supplies...etc...etc. I personally have 2 other locations for my "stuff" should an emergency arises. I think everyone should have at least one other location.
 
I did think that was rare how in japan's tsunami people were returning people's cash and safes
Click to expand...

Homogeneous society versus a melting pot like ours.

Two completely different societies. Here - the guy next door is not my neighbor 'cause he's - black, white, brown...etc and an atheist, Christian, Muslim...etc - and I'm not. There - the guy next door is Japanese or some other kind of Asian and likely has Ancestor Worship as their "religion".

Yeah, I'm generalizing, but thems are the facts...
 
I'm surprised about the media here in one way. you guys saw all the reporting, right? Every bit of media coverage we got, for the most part, showed toothless old meth heads, rednecks, and idiots. Good old salt of the earth. a friend was waiting in a line. CNN came by with cameras, and started interviewing people in the line. the camera passed by anyone who had teeth, a suit, or a recent shower. They only talked to the lowest level of people available.

I've been on television a number of times, because I looked like a male model. Local television, mind you, likes it if you have teeth.

I was at a seminar at the college several years ago. I was set up there with my notebooks, coffee cup, and papers, and the local news took film of me. my inlaws saw it, and were all so proud.:rolleyes:

There's no way that CNN would want my face on television. they want to perpetuate the myth that we all still poop in our back yards.
 
Doesn't excuse the looters. And the Japanese treat us "gaijin" with as much courtesy and respect as they do one another. (Writing this from Tokyo.) You can walk the streets here anytime without concern. On the other hand, the cops can stop and question anyone just because they feel like it, and you can be jailed for carrying a Swiss Army knife. Nice place, but I'll take the States. Also, although the people up there in Fukushima Prefecture are helping each other, the government has been foot dragging. Some things are the same everywhere. Oh, most of them are Buddhists.
 
Onward Allusion said:
Ancestor Worship as their "religion"
Click to expand...

I don't see why religion was in quotation marks. While many are Shinto, they don't really consider it religious, while still participating in it. Buddhism is prominent, and as the key to Happiness in Buddhism is helping those around you, making them happy and removing anger, desire for something, and greed. So yes, their reasons for not looting may be religious, but I don't think kinship applies here. Many other countries are more than okay with looting from people their own religion and/or race.

What it comes down to is ones own moral code. Any justification is simply for their own sake, not ours.
 
I offended the daylights out of some people once by trying to defend "salvage" while condemning looting.

"salvage" was the people walking around downwind picking up merchandise from dozens of demolished stores that was scattered for miles. I can accept people collecting what is essentially ownerless flotsam. a piece of personal property that has value, however, is not free game just because you find a rolex laying on your roof a week later. Someone still owns that, and the owner should be found. Looting is a very different thing; it is deliberately stealing.

We had a sex toy business that was just vaporized. not a brick left. East of town, you had toys dropping all over the country side.

Picking up this stuff was salvage. going into academy and stealing the firearms was looting. Entering any building and taking anything takes you past the line and into theft.
 
It is only property. WE give away more than that each day to foreign governments that hate us. If you are uninsured, don't blame the looters. Looting sucks and looters are the scum, but I suspect it is the 2nd oldest profession.
 
Insurance won't fix the fact that all of her photos and negatives were put in a box with soaking wet sweaters. No, she blew it with insurance. she had just moved into the apartment, we paid the first year, and she let it lapse because she was never billed to renew. :confused:

About a half hour ago, we had a minor earth tremor. One of them in OKC just shook the hole town. I can already see the people waiting for the power to go out. :rolleyes:
 
Thanks for keeping us informed on the reality of it. News and government aren't reliable anymore. We may need (hope not) these forums and the internet to get the real dope should things really go awry. Sorry state of affairs.

Hope some things are getting somewhat normal in Joplin.
 
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