[Noisebridge-discuss] Theft at NoiseBridge

[Jake]

I am a little surprised that was the first post about these events to the 
list, as they were so exciting.  I disagree with the way they were 
characterized though, here is my perspective:

1. Guy talked to Sasha downstairs at Mi Ranchito and came into 
noisebridge.  Stole her phone, which she did not realize.  Seemed out of 
place, and didn't realize eyes were on him.  He took Robert's wallet out 
of Roberts bag, and Robert caught him, got the wallet, and the guy tried 
to run out of the space.  I and several other people used football-level 
force to physically stop him from leaving.  We told him to show us all his 
pockets to prove he had no more, and we would let him go.  He lied and 
said he had shown all his pockets, and I asked him specifically about his 
hoody-pocket (by the belly) and he pretended nothing was in there.  I 
reached in and took out a cellphone, which turned out to be Sasha's phone. 
He had another phone, on a lanyard around his neck, which we let him leave 
with.  He also dropped a glass pipe and it broke, and he tossed it in the 
umbrella bin.  We let him go.

At the point where he was pretending nothing was in his pocket though i 
could clearly see it, might have been the right time to call the police, 
but it could have been something random and not stolen, and that's not 
what I happened.  No one seemed intent on calling the police, and some 
people think they wouldn't have done anything to him anyway.

INCIDENT #2: obviously with incident #1 fresh on everyone's mind it was a 
big deal when "Ilya" was seen shirtless and started putting on Patricks' 
clothes, and putting a laptop into Patricks' bag like he was about to take 
it.  It seemed to me that a smooth criminal was playing it off but 
actually he was apparently having a bipolar/schizophrenic episode.  Also 
he had a bag which looked reasonably similar to Patrick's bag and may have 
been confused, but the assortment of weird (but not valuable) items 
squirreled away in the bathroom (in which he had somehow bathed) proves 
that this was not the kind of behavior that could be explained except by 
mental distress.

This person was accompanied by his younger brother, Alex, who might have 
saved everyone some time by being more assertive with his claims that Ilya 
is prone to bipolar behavior, but i heard that secondhand and Patrick 
certainly wouldn't have believed it.  Patrick was so mad that he was 
almost being unreasonable himself, even if it had turned out that Ilya 
really was trying to steal his backpack.

A detail is that as far as I could tell, the laptop Ilya placed in 
Patricks' backpack really was his, and neither Ilya nor Alex seemed 
destitute.  Also they were Canadian and had passports or something.

Clearly someone is testing us.

-jake

Gavin wrote:

I've witnessed two attempts at theft of items at noisebridge
this week.

Incident 1: Man came into noisebridge tried to steal a cellphone
was confronted and returned the item.

Incident 2: two visitors came to noisebridge from abroad. Long story
short one person attempted to take a laptop, was confronted no
serious altercation. Things were returned as far as I know. Appears
the one fellow will be 5150'd as he appeared to have been manic
or something like that.

Two thoughts from me.

1. For the time being I would recommend always keeping your laptop
and phone within sight and enabling a screensaver lock.

2. Maybe create a procedure for how to handle such situations. Police?
Photos? etc...

I'm new to the space, but I thought an email was due on the topic.

Thanks,
Happy Hacking
Gavin