The south end was getting hit hard. Thieves were checking vehicles in neighborhoods, and if the doors were unlocked, they took everything they could get their hands on. Half a dozen pistols were stolen, and there were at least forty victims in several neighborhoods, and it went on for weeks. The deputies got close a couple of times, but the burglars always got away.
Most people don’t realize how many cases are solved when citizens get involved, and that’s what happened on this case. Someone saw a Facebook post of neighborhood kids holding pistols and long guns, and they reported it to a patrolman. The guns looked familiar because they had been stolen in the burglaries. The Sheriff’s Office tracked the suspects to a house in Keithville, but when they arrived, the teens ran out the back door. Detectives searched the house and found some loot from the burglaries but not all the firearms. Detectives knew the names of the four suspects, all of whom were under 18, and they wrote arrest warrants.
A night later, deputies patrolled neighborhoods looking for anything suspicious, but it was quiet until 2 am when Deputy Rick Porter called in a traffic stop. Rick was a retired state trooper who held the record for DWI arrests. Now he was in his sixties, but age did not deter his abilities. He could find drunks on the quietest of nights, and it usually happened right after the bars closed. Rick was pursuing a pickup truck south on Louisiana Highway 171, and the truck would not stop. His voice on the radio went up an octave when the driver reached 80 mph. There was little to no traffic, and Rick was no stranger to pursuits, so he stayed with the truck while other patrolmen scrambled to help. Most drunks on the south end are headed into to town, but this one was headed out. In minutes, he reached Desoto Parish.
Since the truck was not going outrageously fast and traffic was light at that time of morning, the pursuit was not called off. I was the on-duty Lieutenant, and my sergeant was James Houston. Houston assigned his personnel the way a conductor directs a symphony, with confidence and precision. We didn’t want our deputies too deep in Desoto Parish, so I was glad when the truck turned west on Stonewall-Preston Road which dead ends in Caddo Parish at Keithville-Keatchie Road. At the intersection, the truck turned back north directly in front of Deputy Trey Keene who had a knack for being at the right place at the right time. Whereas Porter gave only pertinent information on speed and location, Keene called the pursuit play by play. The speeds were not excessive, averaging only 70 mph, which leant to the belief that the driver was intoxicated or elderly. The road ran parallel with the railroad tracks which at that time of night could be a factor if a train was coming. After the pickup passed Booker Road, Trey announced it was was turning left on Williams at the railroad crossing. Thankfully, there was no train, but the truck was going too fast over the tracks and overturned in the ditch.
When I arrived, the truck was upside down on the right side of the road. It looked like the driver accelerated in the middle of the turn causing the truck to go left, so he turned his wheels hard to the right and over corrected causing the truck to trip over itself and roll on its top. Inside of it, deputies found two pistols taken in the car burglaries. The driver and passenger were two of the four burglary suspects we were looking for. Keene and Porter took Jimmy and Rashaun (not their real names) in custody. When Keene ran the plate on the pickup, he found out it had been stolen. Jimmy and Rashaun were burglarizing vehicles in Shreveport when they came to the unlocked pickup truck with a key in the ignition, and they went for a drive. Jimmy had only gone a mile when he caught Porter’s attention by running the red light at the intersection of Williamson Way and LA 171.
We took them to the substation, separated them, and waited on a detective. When he arrived, he and I interviewed the two thieves.
Rashaun was up first. In less than a minute, he demanded a lawyer.
Jimmy was next, and I expected him to do the same as Rashaun, but he didn’t. Instead, he was intent on showing us the rules did not apply to him. I was fine with it as long as he was talking because I wanted his alibi. He had spend the last few weeks treating other people’s stuff as his own and going where he pleased, when he pleased. Now he was caught, and he was angry. He knew nothing about the string of burglaries on the south end, yet he had been caught in a stolen truck, and inside the truck were two pistols taken from those burglaries. There was no way to escape the connection, but he refused to admit it. Instead of an alibi, he impressed us with his vocabulary and told us his intentions. “If I could have found the pistol after the truck rolled over, I would have shot you in the face.” Nice kid.
Every detective knows interviews are for gathering information, getting an alibi, setting a base line of behavior, and identifying deception. If you don’t get an alibi and the suspect provides little or no information, deception is a sure thing. Jimmy was already under arrest for traffic offenses and stealing a vehicle, and he had a warrant for the burglaries, but we wanted his cooperation to eliminate all assumptions. Getting offended and angry at a teenager’s flippant remarks would not help solve the case, so I ignored his threats.
The detective and I left Jimmy alone in the interview room. I prepared for an interrogation by reviewing my notes and making a chronological list of all the burglaries. The detective got started on his paperwork. He felt like it was a waste of time to talk to Jimmy any further, so I returned to the interview room without him.
Jimmy was not happy to see me again. He demanded to be taken to jail, but I sat down beside him. I told him I knew he was involved in the car burglaries, and instead of protesting, he listened. It was a good sign of guilt. I started with his arrest an hour earlier and went backwards, asking about each burglary. Jimmy saw the futility of denying his involvement, and he explained who stole what and when. There were three other burglars involved, including his brother and Rashaun.
Two years later, I was listening to a news report about a fatality crash in south Shreveport. It was Jimmy. He had served less than 2 years in jail for his burglary spree, and he hadn’t been out long when he went for a drive with his brother. Jimmy crashed the car, and he and his brother were killed. Both were under 20 years old. Perhaps he would still be alive if he had not been released from jail so soon.
Sometimes justice is carried out quickly, and it surprises us. In a pragmatic world, the car wreck solved a problem, but in God’s world, it is a tragedy when people created in his image self destruct. It didn’t have to be that way. God gave Jimmy plenty of warnings, and he does the same for us. He resists the proud but gives grace to the humble, and that’s Important to remember when the voice inside us tells us we deserve to do things our own way.
What is most surprising about life is that any of us make it to adulthood. The fact that many do is a testimony of God’s grace because all of us have a little bit of Jimmy in us. We want to please ourselves instead of the God who created us. We believe the lie that tells us we will be happy if we get what we desire, but it never works that way, and yet we don’t give up. The proud rush on and embrace the lie forever, but there’s the humble. The humble come to the end of their rope. The humble declare moral bankruptcy. The humble calculate the debt they could never repay in a thousand life times. The humble have nowhere to go except to Christ alone for righteousness they did not inherit, earn, or deserve, and that’s what you call justification by Christ, and it is a verdict that says: not guilty by the grace of God through Jesus Christ.
Which one are you?
