‘There are some decent crooks’

HOW can one be a victim of crime and still consider oneself fortunate? How can one be a victim of crime and still say, “There are still some decent crooks”? Well that’s what Roebie Steenkamp said after being a victim of theft from her motor car on Saturday. She had parked outside Foschinis, and her car is one in which, for the convenience of its driver, all the doors and locked and unlocked simultaneously. To get out the driver’s side, she unlocked her door and all the doors were at the same time unlocked. She’d removed her purse from her handbag, and put the handbag on the floor on the passenger side and covered it from view. She admits she is slow, and it must have been between the time she was getting out the car (and was facing the other way) and the time she locked it, that the opportunistic thief struck. He (it may have been a she, but that seems unlikely) opened the passenger-side door and stole her handbag. The first that Mrs Steenkamp knew about it was when she returned to her car, and fortunately noticed her handbag on the road, between the pavement and her car. Possibly, the thief had sat on the pavement with his feet in the gutter, going through her handbag – a more discrete modus operandi that fleeing down the street with a woman’s handbag. He removed Mrs Steenkamp’s cellphone and camera. That’s all. And that is why she says he was a decent crook. He did not take her ID book, driving licence or any other document with a replacement hassle-factor. He didn’t even take her cheque book, just her phone and camera. But Mrs Steenkamp wants to warn other drivers whose vehicles unlock all the doors at once. Beware and be aware. Someone might be watching you, and he might not be a decent crook this time.