Unaverage Joe

Smile - you're on (blurry) candid camera!

This happened a week ago, but I’m going to vent now.

We were invited to a wedding near Princeton, NJ during Memorial Day weekend. We decided to make it a mini-vacation and spend more time out there. Xixi toured Princeton University with her friend, and I hung out in nearby Philadelphia. Later, we all got together, and we met my friend and his fiancé. I haven’t seen Mark in years, and he is a fellow auto-enthusiast. He complimented my car. (Stay tuned, it’s a valid part of the story.)

My car was put to good use that weekend. It’s May, the weather is very warm, and several hundred miles later, my car was caked in bugs. So I hand-washed my car on Memorial Day when we returned. It’s been years since my car looked this good, and I didn’t even wax it. I was even starting to think about adding a front spoiler under the front of car to give it a better look, maybe some HID headlights to see better at night, a better sound system to crank up my music when the windows are down and the moon roof is open while driving fast, and all of these other things that would make my car more enjoyable. I have been neglecting my car. My car still looks darn good!

But then I woke up and just Armor-All’ed the tires, so they look clean along with the rest of the car.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006 - The next day, it was business as usual: we drove to the subway station (parked the car at 8:55AM), took the subway into work, came back, and… there’s a large scrape on the rear-driver’s side. It’s white, and my paint is black. Damnit! I took a couple pictures from my camera phone and called 911.





Cheesy low quality pictures from my phone

The 911 operator tells me it’s a hit & run and that I can call from home; I may be sitting there for a long time waiting for an officer to arrive. Officers respond in order of priority, and it’s already busy. Fine. Before leaving the parking garage, I speak to the person who is running that place at the moment. He was a good guy and tried to help me. He called his boss and told him “This car is very well kept. You have to see this thing. Almost 10 years old and not a speck of dust. But there’s a large scrape on the side, so let’s help Mr. Alvarez.” Very cool of him. I told him where I was parked and stated that I saw a video camera located a few parking spots from my car. He gave me all his information and told me someone should contact me the next day after reviewing the film. Outstanding.

Wednesday, May 31, 2006 – I received a call from his boss telling me he saw what happened and asked me if I would like to look at the video. Hell yeah! We caught him!! I’m going to have my car fixed, this guy’s going to get a ticket for hit & run, and I am going to be happy. He tells me to meet him tomorrow, Thursday, at 6PM. Excellent. In the meantime, I go home. On the way home, I called 911 again, because I never did the day before. I tell them what happened (again), and they tell me it’s not their responsibility and that I need to speak to the Metro Police. I told her that the 911 operator yesterday told me to call 911 to have an officer come out, but okay, if that’s the procedure. So she transfers me to Metro Police. I tell the story (again) to Metro Police, and they give me the e-x-a-c-t s-a-m-e l-i-n-e. “We’re not responsible, and you need to call 911. I’ll transfer you.” Okay, this is annoying. But who cares? We have the person on video hitting my car! Transfer away, baby!! I tell my story (AGAIN!) to the 911 operator, and she sends an officer. She also says this is not Metro Police’s responsibility and that they will take care of it.

I’m home, and I hear the doorbell. Hooray! I tell the story to the officer (a-g-a-i-n), and she tells me that she can’t create a hit & run report, because I have no description of the vehicle that hit me. I told her it’s white and showed her my car. She said she needed a better description; is it a white car? Truck? What? For now, she can give me a case number that I can provide to my insurance. Repair costs would come out of my pocket, because it’s property damage and not a hit & run report. Whatever, the video will reveal all! I thanked her, and she gave me her card with the case number written on it. Oh, the joy I will have when I see the culprit hitting my car tomorrow! On video!!

Thursday, June 1, 2006 – I’ve been antsy all day. This is so cool. It’s like CSI Bowie, MD. Fingerprints, semen samples, DNA, pie charts, caught on video… we have the person! I leave work early to be sure I’m on time. 6PM, and I meet the person at the garage. He asks me if I was wearing a blue shirt. Yes, I was! Yep, he has the right car. He tells me I parked at 8:55AM, I was hit at 4:17PM, and I arrive to my car at 6:33PM. This is great! He gives me a chair. I refused it. I’m too excited. He gives it to me anyway and tells me to be comfortable. The guy operating the “camera 12” video is putting me on the edge of my seat. He keeps clicking the mouse, and Clicking, and CLICKING. The anticipation is killing me! He clicked too much. He skipped the whole part of the video by hours. He goes back by clicking, and clicking, and cli… Okay, he finds the spot. I notice the video is not a smooth video but snap shots every few seconds. Like if you were walking, you would only see a picture of yourself every several feet. Anyway, he has my car in view. I can see myself driving, and then the next shot is my car in the parking space. This is great! The next shot is Xixi & I walking. Awesome! He clicks fast forward to around 9:30AM, and you can see a black Mercedes pull into that spot. There he is!!!!! Wait… black? Paint on my is white. The guy says he may have some white in that area of the car. Um, yeah, cool! Keep fast forwarding, my man! He keeps clicking, and clicking, and clicking until 7PM. Aah! He over clicked. Okay, he backs up. Man, this is getting annoying. Now I’m glad I have the chair. Okay, here we go. We see the person. It’s a black guy. That’s all you can really say. He is in the black Mercedes. Next shot is him actually hitting my car. Incredible! Next shot is a ¾ view of his car pulling out. And finally, the money shot…. the front end of his car! Yee haw!! I wanted to hi-5 everyone in that room. Okay - pause. It’s very blurry. Let’s zoom in on the tag. Worse. It gets pixilated. No worries, the operator tells me it will clear itself up in a moment. 20 seconds later and nothing is happening. He pans out, and he tries to clarify the picture. Yuck, it gets worse. He zooms. Horrible picture. He tries to undo what he did, but there’s no “undo.” He backs out and goes to beginning of the tape. Geez! Now he’s clicking & clicking & clicking… we eventually get back to the scene of the person’s car. He tries it again. He just keeps making it worse. I asked him if I can try. I’m manipulating it much more fluently than him. The boss asks me if I know anything about computers, because it looks like I learned this fast. 1.) Uuh, yeah – I know a liiiittle something about computers. And 2.) A CHILD COULD HAVE PICKED UP ON HOW TO USE THIS! Can you tell I’m annoyed at this juncture? I easily get to that spot of the video, and I try to clarify the image. I have better luck, but it’s still not good enough. I can only tell that it’s a male, black, in a black Mercedes w/Maryland tags and 6 characters on it. After a while, I gave up. Sucks! The person there tells me he’ll be more than happy to give the video to me &/or a detective. They may have better equipment. Wonderful idea! My hopes are up again. I go home. As I pull up to my house, I notice a black Mercedes across the street. It looks a little different from the one on the video, but the tag looks very similar to the blurry, pixilated tag I saw. And it’s Maryland. (Keep in mind, we’re in MD. I got a little excited.) I creep over to the car and check the front end. Some chrome there. Yeah, that could have caused the white on my car! I look around the corner where it would have rubbed my car, and… nothing. Perfect. Nothing to see here, folks. Everyone go home.

Well, I call 911, and this time two officers come out. I explain the story (yes, again) with the extra details. They tell me first of all, I should have called from the scene a couple days ago and that the operator was wrong on the phone by telling me to go home. Next, they tell me they can not write a hit & run report, because they need a tag number. A “black Mercedes” is not good enough, because there are so many (said in a smart-ass tone). I restated what the officer told me the day before. They asked me who it was assuming I wouldn’t remember (I think), but when I pulled out her card (and saw the surprised expressions on their faces when I did), they told me she’s wrong and has bad information and will tell her the next time they see her. I told them the video should show the license plate number and that a detective could help out with their sophisticated technology. They told me they may review it if it involves a homicide or something a lot more serious than this. I thank them; they leave. I’m left standing on the driveway with a scraped up car and a business card from an officer that gave me bad information.

You’re probably thinking: “Dude, just call your insurance company, and have them take care of it.” Yes, I can do that. But it’s the simple fact that I’m THIS close. Plus, in the almost two decades that I’ve been driving, I’ve never reported a single case to my insurance company. In fact, I have a great discount for being accident-free. I don’t think I will lose that discount from this, but I am doing this on principle. I’ve sat on this for a week. I’ll try calling a detective tomorrow and see what they say. I’m sure he’ll laugh in my face, but I need to try it. If all else fails, maybe I’ll just live with the scrape in the back. But I will keep my eye open for this vehicle that matches the description until my car dies.

Whoa, that was dramatic.

So now I wonder, why aren’t security cameras better? I was watching the news today as I was getting my haircut, and two would-be burglars broke into a jewelry store but found no jewelry. It was funny watching these two guys roaming the store to find nothing on two security cameras at two different angles. But it is grainy, like something out of a terrorist kidnap video. I take it back, those are clearer! They can’t identify these two fools, because, you guessed it, the video is low quality. Even the Pentagon video of the airplane crashing into it is bad quality. And this is the Pentagon, people! The funny thing is that if I left the parking garage without paying the $4, I have a feeling the security camera would bring my license plate into readable view.

Psst – you can wake up now.

posted by Unaverage Joe @ 12:02 AM