the cold hearts of crime

Years ago, while attending a state championship basketball game, I couldn’t help but notice there was a group of young men wearing matching “letterman-type” jackets—the type made of a fuzzy material with leather sleeves. Usually these are worn by members of the sports teams, with their letters sewn on to the front. I’m sure there is a name for the fuzzy material, but I can’t think of it and Jimbo’s girlfriend is, unfortunately, no help this morning.

Anyway, this group of young men were probably not sports lettermen, but they were likely all fellow members of some sort of a youth group. On the back of all of their jackets, in identical lettering, was the phrase “Cold hearts of crime.” I’m certain that was the name of their youth group. I’m guessing they probably celebrated their comradeship by doing helpful work around the community and supported civic causes.

I am reminded of that long ago spring evening today in reading two separate stories about cold-hearted bank robbers and their modus operandi. First, there is a woman in the suburbs of Washington D.C. who is robbing banks while talking on a cell phone. The story I read describes her opening her purse and showing the teller a gun and a note demanding money, all the while jabbering on a cell phone. Police may have connected her to several other bank robberies, where the robber was also chatting on a cell phone during the holdups. A police spokesman suggests she may be using the cell phone to look like everyone else.

I think this speaks unfavorably for our society as a whole. It is criminal how many people you see in malls and supermarkets and on the street with a phone pressed up against the sides of their heads. Doing it while knocking over a bank adds even more criminality to the act.

The other bank robber is operating in Canada and uses recipe cards to communicate his demands to the bank tellers whom he encounters during his caterwauling. One can assume his recipe cards call for a cup of flour, a pinch of salt and a wad of bills. Police say that they have connected him to thirty bank holdups, but they are closing the net on him.

One hopes that when the law catches up with these two desperados and they are put in the slam that their tools are taken away from them. Otherwise what prison is going to hold a woman talking on a cell phone? The guards will watch her walk by talking on the phone and it won’t occur to them to stop her from walking out the front gate. After all, who will suspect a woman talking on a cell phone of being up to anything. And once she is out, she’ll blend in with the surroundings.

And somewhere in a Canadian prison the bank robber will pass a recipe card to the guards with the following written on it:

“Guards,
Let this man go.
-the Warden”

I’m afraid it going to take an effort to keep these two behind bars and keep us safe from their cold hearts of crime.