Editing Blog/2025-04-15/Catching A Laptop Thief (section)

== The Statements ==

The way they did it was interesting only because I haven't had one of these live before like this: they separate the perpetrator, the victim, and each of the bystanders and take independent statements. Before they did, the policeman asked if I'd cooperate and then noted down my ID, address, and phone number and then listened to my statement, wrote it down, and then repeated it to me to confirm<ref name=case_id/>.

There were 4 or more policemen and one policewoman. I didn't get the count precisely right because a couple of cruisers showed up halfway through (one of which they placed the arrested perpetrator in). The police officers were quite reasonable. They told us about some accident between a school bus and something else that had blocked traffic in the area making it hard for someone to respond but they were glad they were close by. Apparently, usually when someone tries to tell them about an incident it's too far away and too long ago for them to do anything. In this case, they were fortunately a block away!