I went to the "Arizona Mills" mall today. This mall is at the juncture of US-60 and I-10, on the south corner of Phoenix and bordering Tempe, Chandler and a wonderful little fecalpit known as Guadalupe.
Guadalupe is "little Mexico." Every store name is in spanish, tortilleria, peluqueria, panaderia, and so on. Chickens roam the streets.
"The Mills" mall was supposed to be an economic boost to the area. I dunno. I almost never go there. Cruddy little overpriced outlet mall, where I watch the patrons out the corner of my eye due to excessive bling or flat-brimmed baseball caps or low ride shorts.
Why was I there, then? Why expose myself to this environment when I know it's bad?
I had a friend that wanted to go to the Sea Life Aquarium that is a store in the mall. A little micro-zoo. Neat concept. So, we went.
After seeing this little pocket-sized Sea World, we left and headed out to the parking lot.
A pair of 14? 15? 16? year old mexican kids are loitering around a white two door sedan with out of State plates (CO) and a "wounded veteran" window decal. One of them is fiddling with a key in the driver's side lock, trying to turn it but the lock isn't giving. I walk past initially (with a female friend and didn't want to expose her to any potential danger), but guilt got the better of me for not doing anything.
I stopped, turned around and glared at the kid next to the driver's door, fishing for a challenge or waiting for him to demonstrate legitimacy by opening the door by an obviously valid technique. He rises to the bait with a string of "M-ther F-cker what you looking at?" invective. I respond in kind and start walking agressively towards him, throwing the same language back at him loudly to deliberately startle people around me and get them to summon mall security or otherwise pay attention. No time to divert attention to female friend and instruct her to call police/security/start videotaping/whatever.
I stop about 30 feet away from the pair, hand on my PF-9 in my pocket just in case they aggressively came my way, and talked a bit more, challenging the kids to open the door legitimately and quickly, or else get stepping RFN. Again, very loud, with lots of confrontational language to gain as much attention from other parking lot folks as possible.
After about 15-30 seconds of debate punctuated by various 4-letter derivatives on both sides of the argument, they started walking away. When they were about 50 feet away, I fish out my cell phone and start following them, trying to figure out how to get my camera/video working while power-walking at their pace. They break into a run, so I run after them for about 100 yards.
Between the combination of:
1. It wasn't my car,
2. They didn't get anything anyways,
3. I couldn't get my videocam working while running,
4. What was I going to do if I actually caught them anyways,
I ended up stopping after about 100 yards of chase, and went back to accompany my friend. We found mall security driving around in a little jeep liberty and gave them descriptions of everything.
Errors (IMO)?
1. I should have shouted "car thieves!" while chasing the kids. One black gentleman later volunteered himself to further ID the kids to the security guard, and said he might have helped to stop the kids or give chase... but he had no idea why some big white guy was chasing a pair of mexican teenagers and chose not to get involved.
2. The chase. Mixed feelings on this. Wholeheartedly believe in scaring the mierda out of them. I didn't see any bulges or anywhere for them to conceal guns when approaching. I had no intention of getting closer than 25 feet to them... no fantasies of tackling them or anything. I was hoping to attract attention and maybe have a security guard notice it, then have them coordinate an arrest with their resources. Were it my car... I'd have kept it up.
3. Friend needs better reflexes to know to back me up while I have their attention with the initial confrontation, to at a minimum, video record the whole exchange.
4. I need to know my stoopid Android phone better, and how to start video recording ASAP while focused on other things around me.
5. I never threatened, but the language I used could have escalated things. Most thieves rely upon inattentiveness. If that doesn't work, they try to bully people into looking away... which is what these kids did once I let them know I was watching. If they were the type to escalate to my escalation, this could have gone another way. But it still seemed like the right thing to do.
APS' thoughts?