RedneckWithPaychecks
454/350 x (4x4)²
Remove the muffler and you immediately earn a high school kid exhaust
Porch pirate problems
- Thread starter Tommy1234
- Start date
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Someone broke into the property owned by my buddy's widow a few weeks ago and stole the cats off 8 cars. We live in a small town, everyone knows who that stuff belonged to, and the situation.
Anyone who would steal from a widow and her two young sons (5 and 1) is a worthless POS in my book.
Anyone who would steal from a widow and her two young sons (5 and 1) is a worthless POS in my book.
HotWheelsBurban
Gotta have 4 doors..... Rawhide, TOTY 2023!
Damn shame what things are getting to. These thieves are getting more brazen, and it's not going to stop until people get killed. Sometimes that doesn't even stop them. We just had a veteran deputy sheriff get shot in north Houston. He and his wife were grocery shopping; she took the groceries to the car and called him because someone was messing with their pickup. There was a shootout,and he died at the hospital. Three suspects have been apprehended. Ironically he was in the auto theft division....
Tommy1234
I'm Awesome
Agreed
In Houston:
www.houstonchronicle.com
As part of a series of videos spotlighting employees at the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, Deputy Darren Almendarez drove around the county earlier this year, talking about catalytic converter thefts. On the rise nationally and locally, the thefts are driven largely by skyrocketing prices for the rare metals located in the part that can be sawed out from under some cars or trucks in minutes.
It’s a difficult crime to trace, he tells the camera, because “we can’t usually match that catalytic converter with an actual car, so we don’t have a victim.”
“How do you protect your catalytic converter?” the HCSO videographer asks him in footage shared with the editorial board.
“I don’t have an after-market shield,” says Almendarez, “But I just try to park closer to an entry. If I’m going to the grocery store, I try to do it during daytime hours.”
Weeks later, Almendarez, 51, would be killed in the parking lot of a Joe V’s Smart Shop on FM 1960 in the evening hours. There, after shopping for his sister’s birthday gathering, Almendarez came out to find two individuals under his truck, according to deputies. He told his wife to hang back, then run. He approached. A gunfight followed. Almendarez was struck and so were two of the three individuals involved.
In an interview, his wife, Flor Zarzoza, told us that she rushed to her husband and held him in her arms as he uttered his last words to her: “I love you” and “I can’t breathe.”
“It could be any one of us,” Sheriff Ed Gonzalez told reporters shortly after he was killed.
“Everything we tell everybody to do — park as close as you can to the store, park under the light — he did all that,” says Sgt. Eduardo Rivera, Almendarez’s supervisor.
Almendarez is remembered by coworkers and friends as the one who would lighten the mood with a joke, show newcomers the ropes and check in on colleagues under stress. His wife says she’d sometimes get annoyed with all the after-work phone calls he took, always helping colleagues, but she knew it was his way.
Zarzoza says her husband’s death came just days after they’d gone to Galveston to celebrate the 12th anniversary of their wedding, which had been a simple courthouse affair that they’d always hoped to commemorate with a real ceremony. She described a loving, attentive husband who would sometimes lie down with her on a weeknight after they both got home from work and before she started dinner: “He would just hold me and whisper, ‘you know you’re the love of my life.’” Their connection, she says, was deep: “We would always end up holding hands, even when we slept.”
“I miss him,” she says, drifting between grief and pangs of anger that the man who promised never to leave her is gone. “But he didn’t leave me. He got taken away.”
His death, one of too many line-of-duty deaths this year, particularly resonates because it reflects the volatile nature, and potentially tragic consequences, of a crime that law enforcement, prosecutors and politicians have raised concerns about in recent years but have failed to curb.
“I’m not going to stop everything,” Almendarez says in the video, “but I’m gonna do what I can do while I’m here.”
By all accounts, he did. Peers say his dedication never wavered throughout his 23-year career. “He was a protector,” says Detective Julio Banda with the sheriff’s multi-agency gang task force who first met Almendarez in 2015, “not only of the community but of his family.”
Officers insist that the best way to combat catalytic converter thefts is to catch the thief in the moment; it’s difficult to make an arrest otherwise. Others urge a more systematic approach targeting the profitable industry of reselling and recycling the ill-gotten metals palladium, platinum and the rhodium.
A number of regulations and penalties are in place, including a 2021 bill that made buying or selling a stolen catalytic converter a felony. Scrap dealers, meanwhile, are expected to collect fingerprints, driver licenses and other information from sellers. But the number of thefts has climbed steadily.
“We can raise the penalties,” says state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, who chairs the Senate criminal justice committee, “but I don’t think those criminals plan on getting caught. I think we just have to stop the resale of stolen catalytic converters.” Whitmire is planning a hearing to help identify recommendations for new legislation next session. Jurisdictions across the country have tried different approaches, including engraving catalytic converters to make them more traceable. The best approach will both make it harder to profit off stolen converters, and also reduce volatile, sometimes violent confrontations by helping insure replacement converters are covered by insurance.
Whatever legislation does result, it will likely bear the name of an individual who was known professionally as a dedicated officer and personally for his welcoming nature and love of family, including his 14-year-old daughter Andrea. Friends say Almendarez dreamed of a retirement full of deep sea fishing.
He spent time as a patrolman, field training officer and investigator in the anti-gang unit, including time with the FBI’s task force before eventually moving to the auto theft unit. He was a quick study and a generous teacher, a good deputy and a better investigator, says friend and Deputy Basilio Reyes, also with the gang task force.
Almendarez’s friendships went well beyond work. Banda remembers Thanksgivings together, family visits and phone calls full of valuable life advice.
“When my brother passed away,” remembers Banda, “Darren was the first one to reach out to me and he was the one who stood by me the entire time, not only through the rosary but he also went to the funeral and stood by my side.”
Now, Banda is there for his friend. He’ll serve as one of his pallbearers at the Friday funeral service at Humble First Assembly God, which includes public visitation at 11 a.m. following the private visitation in the morning. The service begins at noon.
In the footage from earlier this year, Almendarez says the job follows him even on days off — and that’s just fine. “You have a family of five who loses their one and only vehicle, I can’t rest at night unless I help those people out.”
Lawmakers and local officials shouldn't rest until they find a way to combat this crime, a way to spare another family the grief and loss Almendarez’s his loved ones are feeling today.
Editorial: Deputy Almendarez fought catalytic converter theft — until it killed him
Lawmakers and local officials shouldn't rest until they find a way to combat this crime,...
www.houstonchronicle.com
As part of a series of videos spotlighting employees at the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, Deputy Darren Almendarez drove around the county earlier this year, talking about catalytic converter thefts. On the rise nationally and locally, the thefts are driven largely by skyrocketing prices for the rare metals located in the part that can be sawed out from under some cars or trucks in minutes.
It’s a difficult crime to trace, he tells the camera, because “we can’t usually match that catalytic converter with an actual car, so we don’t have a victim.”
“How do you protect your catalytic converter?” the HCSO videographer asks him in footage shared with the editorial board.
“I don’t have an after-market shield,” says Almendarez, “But I just try to park closer to an entry. If I’m going to the grocery store, I try to do it during daytime hours.”
Weeks later, Almendarez, 51, would be killed in the parking lot of a Joe V’s Smart Shop on FM 1960 in the evening hours. There, after shopping for his sister’s birthday gathering, Almendarez came out to find two individuals under his truck, according to deputies. He told his wife to hang back, then run. He approached. A gunfight followed. Almendarez was struck and so were two of the three individuals involved.
In an interview, his wife, Flor Zarzoza, told us that she rushed to her husband and held him in her arms as he uttered his last words to her: “I love you” and “I can’t breathe.”
“It could be any one of us,” Sheriff Ed Gonzalez told reporters shortly after he was killed.
“Everything we tell everybody to do — park as close as you can to the store, park under the light — he did all that,” says Sgt. Eduardo Rivera, Almendarez’s supervisor.
Almendarez is remembered by coworkers and friends as the one who would lighten the mood with a joke, show newcomers the ropes and check in on colleagues under stress. His wife says she’d sometimes get annoyed with all the after-work phone calls he took, always helping colleagues, but she knew it was his way.
Zarzoza says her husband’s death came just days after they’d gone to Galveston to celebrate the 12th anniversary of their wedding, which had been a simple courthouse affair that they’d always hoped to commemorate with a real ceremony. She described a loving, attentive husband who would sometimes lie down with her on a weeknight after they both got home from work and before she started dinner: “He would just hold me and whisper, ‘you know you’re the love of my life.’” Their connection, she says, was deep: “We would always end up holding hands, even when we slept.”
“I miss him,” she says, drifting between grief and pangs of anger that the man who promised never to leave her is gone. “But he didn’t leave me. He got taken away.”
His death, one of too many line-of-duty deaths this year, particularly resonates because it reflects the volatile nature, and potentially tragic consequences, of a crime that law enforcement, prosecutors and politicians have raised concerns about in recent years but have failed to curb.
“I’m not going to stop everything,” Almendarez says in the video, “but I’m gonna do what I can do while I’m here.”
By all accounts, he did. Peers say his dedication never wavered throughout his 23-year career. “He was a protector,” says Detective Julio Banda with the sheriff’s multi-agency gang task force who first met Almendarez in 2015, “not only of the community but of his family.”
Officers insist that the best way to combat catalytic converter thefts is to catch the thief in the moment; it’s difficult to make an arrest otherwise. Others urge a more systematic approach targeting the profitable industry of reselling and recycling the ill-gotten metals palladium, platinum and the rhodium.
A number of regulations and penalties are in place, including a 2021 bill that made buying or selling a stolen catalytic converter a felony. Scrap dealers, meanwhile, are expected to collect fingerprints, driver licenses and other information from sellers. But the number of thefts has climbed steadily.
“We can raise the penalties,” says state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, who chairs the Senate criminal justice committee, “but I don’t think those criminals plan on getting caught. I think we just have to stop the resale of stolen catalytic converters.” Whitmire is planning a hearing to help identify recommendations for new legislation next session. Jurisdictions across the country have tried different approaches, including engraving catalytic converters to make them more traceable. The best approach will both make it harder to profit off stolen converters, and also reduce volatile, sometimes violent confrontations by helping insure replacement converters are covered by insurance.
Whatever legislation does result, it will likely bear the name of an individual who was known professionally as a dedicated officer and personally for his welcoming nature and love of family, including his 14-year-old daughter Andrea. Friends say Almendarez dreamed of a retirement full of deep sea fishing.
He spent time as a patrolman, field training officer and investigator in the anti-gang unit, including time with the FBI’s task force before eventually moving to the auto theft unit. He was a quick study and a generous teacher, a good deputy and a better investigator, says friend and Deputy Basilio Reyes, also with the gang task force.
Almendarez’s friendships went well beyond work. Banda remembers Thanksgivings together, family visits and phone calls full of valuable life advice.
“When my brother passed away,” remembers Banda, “Darren was the first one to reach out to me and he was the one who stood by me the entire time, not only through the rosary but he also went to the funeral and stood by my side.”
Now, Banda is there for his friend. He’ll serve as one of his pallbearers at the Friday funeral service at Humble First Assembly God, which includes public visitation at 11 a.m. following the private visitation in the morning. The service begins at noon.
In the footage from earlier this year, Almendarez says the job follows him even on days off — and that’s just fine. “You have a family of five who loses their one and only vehicle, I can’t rest at night unless I help those people out.”
Lawmakers and local officials shouldn't rest until they find a way to combat this crime, a way to spare another family the grief and loss Almendarez’s his loved ones are feeling today.
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It's behind a paywall, but from what I could read before it popped up, that Deputy's job was to investigate and prevent car theft, specifically converter theft.In Houston:
Editorial: Deputy Almendarez fought catalytic converter theft — until it killed him
Lawmakers and local officials shouldn't rest until they find a way to combat this crime,...
SMH.
Tommy1234
I'm Awesome
Yeah that paywall sucks. Very sad
I copied-and-pasted the text from the article. It's weird because it's not behind a paywall for me (and I'm not subscribed to that website).
HotWheelsBurban
Gotta have 4 doors..... Rawhide, TOTY 2023!
Yup, this is the one I was talking about. Really sad.
The Houston Chronicle website is weird; sometimes I can look at something on it without being a subscriber, but most of the time it wants me to subscribe.
Tommy1234
I'm Awesome
It always seems that way with most of the newspaper websites.
