Flower thieves on Phinney Ridge

“Cma319″ just posted an item in the forum that says someone stole roses out of their Phinney Ridge garden, hacking up the bushes in the process. And it’s not the first time. “Last year a woman cut quite a few roses from gardens on our block,” Cma319 writes. “One of our neighbors finally caught her with her car full of roses, got the license #, but never heard anything from the cops after he called it in.” Anyone else having any trouble with flower thieves?

Adds Milo in comments: “Yes, last summer we watched a woman pull up in a Mercedes and help herself to a few of our roses in the front yard. She even waved back at us when she saw us watching from the window… but she knew she was busted. All we ask in return for swiping our roses is that you give an hour or so of weeding in return (per rose that is.)”

silver

An idea that might be both

a) legal

and

b) constructive

...would be to let the thief see you photographing them and their car's license plate.

Then BLOG it! Public humiliation to the rescue!

Peg L.

This is not that new, about 3 years ago, all of the pears from my tree and all of the tomatoes from my next door neighbor's enclosed backyard were stolen!

pioggia

I hope Lock's Fan is wrong about this becoming more common, but if not you can bet the police won't be doing a lot of follow up on it, because with budget cutbacks they're going to have to pick & choose what they spend time on, so low $$$ crimes where no one is physically injured aren't likely to get much attention.

oh and smashing in their windows was me toning back my initial response to merely match property damage with property damage. This wasn't just stealing one pretty flower, but a large scale "harvest" with significant damage to the plants in the process!

silver

Bashing their car windows in might be a tad over the top, but I would be tempted to let the air out of a tire or two...

srcsmgrl

I just got a p-patch and the participants there have assured me that there is very little pilfering. Even when the tent city was right next door.

Locks Fan

You can bet there's going to be more of this kind of thing happening. I'm glad I didn't get a P-patch this year, I suspect there will be a lot of people too tempted by high grocery prices not to partake. What a shame.

Milo Dakkat

Hey, why bother using a ladder? Just have yer children climb the trees to pick the fruit and toss it down to the waiting adults. That's what they used to do back in El Salvador so it must be ok here.

MG

We had a fully-fenced vegetable garden in our parking strip at our old house. Our neighbors watched a woman walk up and start to load a plastic grocery bag with our beautiful tomatoes!

She got about five tomatoes in when my neighbor said something to her. She told her that if she asked us, we'd probably give her some of our bounty. But she just walked off.

We would of given her some, if she just had the courtesy to ask first. I was just having a conversation about this subject yesterday w/ a friend. Her friend has a problem with people coming on to her property (with even ladders in hand) to pick ripe plums off of her trees! Crazy!

Milo Dakkat

Yes, last summer we watched a woman pull up in a Mercedes and help herself to a few of our roses in the front yard. She even waved back at us when she saw us watching from the window...but she knew she was busted.

All we ask in return for swiping our roses is that you give an hour or so of weeding in return (per rose that is.)

pioggia

That's a crime where you don't bother to call the cops, you just take a shovel & beat the persons car windows in, mabe take a hoe to their tires...

Knock on wood the only gardeing thieves around here are the crows eating my cherries...

Larsen

Can't say I've heard of any flower thieves around where I live, but I'd sure like to cut a few of my neighbor's roses. They are BEEAAAUUUTTIIFFFUULLL!