Friday, July 25, 2008

Whoooooooooooooooooooo are you? Who? Who?

Yesterday, after the bag was stolen, the police sent out their Crime Scene Investigators, referred to as "Policiers Scientifiques". The team drove up in their little blue car and each had a little case of forensic gear. We weren't quite sure what they were planning to do at first.
During the search the local police learned about Josh's background and followed his lead to search the dumpsters in the area, based on the common criminal patterns. Josh and one of the security guards found the bag in a dumpster a few blocks from our house.
So when the little CSI group arrived, the regular police explained Josh's assumption that the thief busted the window and took the bag out without opening the door. Baffled, the police asked why he thought that. Josh politely replied "Well, the door is still locked." This was only important because it meant that it was very unlikely the thieves left fingerprints on the door.
Now, please understand these were the friendliest men and they truly do the best they can. The police here do not get the same training as American police. That all being said, they spent 3 hours dusting for prints on the car, etc. I snapped a few pictures:
The first one shows the CSI team's little blue car on the left, our Volvo in the background, about half of the police that came out and the little CSI cases along the wall on the right. The guy on the left near the white police car was one of the many onlookers, he eventually asked Josh to let him clean up the broken glass so we paid him. He was very nice, but I wasn't overly thrilled about his need to hang out all afternoon and watch.


Next is a little closer to the car, onlooker guy is in front of the car to the left and everyone else is police.

This next one onlooker guy is gone but the guy in the glove is dusting for prints.

And this one you can see the little cases, one of the guys taking a smoke break, Andrew looking on and Josh (in the tie) in the back. I wanted to take a pic of the some of the crime scene tape (written in French) but Josh told me to leave their stuff alone! :) Basically they brought out the tape, but then realized that the police, the onlookers and everyone else had trampled all over the area and that the tape would be pointless. :)
One final addendum to this is that tonight, a friend from the embassy told us that the Moroccan police are sure that they caught the thieves. Apparently, shortly after breaking into our car, they broke into another one a few blocks away. They were caught in the act and were later apprehended. Josh asked if they had confessed to breaking into our car. The response was, "No, but they will." Moroccan police are not known for gentle treatment of criminals. I'm not sure what the punishment will be and I think I may want to be "out of the loop" with that part. We don't really care if they recover the palm or the keyboard. We doubt that we'll get money to pay for the window so whether the theives were caught or not wasn't really on our mind.
--Rachel

1 comments:

Traveling Deckers said...

Wow! I can not believe all you have been through. We spent the week at my parent's house who still have dial up internet:( so I have not been online in forever. I am so glad all worked out a you found the bag.