Lunkheads, Perps Just Shouldn’t Mix

Leslie Bashaar of West Hills suggested this moral: “Don’t be afraid.”

John Corcoran of Calabasas, meanwhile, addressed his e-mail to “Mr. Scott Harris, Crime Fighter and Lunkhead.”

“By the way,” added Jim Chilton of Chatsworth, “your tale of looking for the culprit with a baseball bat reminded me of the old joke about the thug that showed up for a gunfight with a knife.”

And so begins another effort at interactive columnizing, something that would be impossible without the robust reaction to my dispatch last Tuesday about the strange night my sweetie and I arrived home just as a thief was departing with her ’86 Honda Prelude.

As readers may recall, we impetuously pursued the culprit in my car for several blocks, ultimately pulling alongside him and getting a good look at his face before he tore through a red light. When police found her car a little more than an hour later, it had been torched.

The crime rate may be going down, but fear of crime remains high. Perhaps that’s why these up-close-and-personal tales of true crime strike a nerve. Sunday’s column concerned readers who commented on gun control, Proposition 187 and the litigious nature of our society. Today’s touches on how we react when confronted by crime.

Every story is different. Corcoran was writing to commiserate, for he clearly considers me a brother lunkhead. “You are not the only impulsive crime victim attempting to sneak into Forest Lawn well under the median age,” he wrote.

“I was driving along a Hollywood street some years back,” he explained, “minding my own beeswax, when a bonehead tore out of a parallel spot and sideswiped me, despite my lightning-like reflexes. He then pedal-to-the-metaled it away without so much as an obscene gesture.

“Angrier than I was wise, I tore after him, all four pistons of my Toyota Celica growling . . . Even in my fury, I wasn’t intending to confront the perp (Yeah, I watch ‘NYPD Blue,’ you got a problem with that?) so much as get close enough for a peek at his license plate.

“As luck would have it, he was determined to get away, and racing through the side streets of Hollywood at 70 mph was not my idea of responsible citizenship . . .

“With no options left, I drove back to the scene of the crime to check if any eyewitnesses had gotten his license number. To my surprise, there were a number of people standing outside a convenience store by the accident site. When I asked if they’d gotten the license plate of the car I described, they said no, but they were pretty sure it was the getaway car used by the guy who’d just held up the store at gunpoint.

“The chill I got lasted me all day.”

For Corcoran, the chill came first, that lunky feeling about the head came later. As for me, I never thought, in the heat of the moment, that the car thief might be armed. That possibility seemed all the more real after police reminded me that cars are often stolen for use in armed robberies or other crimes.

Occasionally, there are more satisfying crime experiences. The hero of Leslie Bashaar’s Tale of True Crime is her husband, Mark, who maybe wouldn’t have had a chance for heroism if the thieves weren’t so young and stupid.

It happened a few years ago when the Bashaars were living in Van Nuys. Mark Bashaar was watching a baseball game on TV when he heard a car come around the corner with its stereo blasting. “Then the car came around the corner again. The third time he decided to go outside to see if he could catch a license plate.”

“Well. . . the car (an orange Honda) pulls up and double parks in the street next to a white Honda. The driver got out and moved toward the vehicle parked on the street. The passenger got out and moved to the driver’s side of the orange car.

“All the while my husband is walking toward the scene unnoticed. Then the scissors come out of the pocket. The kid jammed the scissors into the driver’s side door of the white Honda, jimmies the lock, opens the door and gets in. My husband yells, ‘Hey, what’re you doing?’ ”

One thief ran away on foot. But Mark--”6-foot-2, 195 lbs. (at the time)”-- dragged his accomplice from the car and wrestled him to the ground.

It couldn’t have been too tough. This culprit was 13 years old and stood 5 foot, 3 inches tall. Bashaar says she understood it was his first offense and he was released to his mother--only to be arrested a week later in another car theft.

Still, Bashaar said, “Nothing will replace the pride I have knowing that he caught someone red-handed and that person was brought to justice.”

And almost as an afterthought, she added: “He was lucky the kid didn’t have a gun.”

Yes, and maybe that’s the real moral of this tale. And lest there be any confusion about why I brought along a baseball bat, perhaps I should respond to Jim Chilton’s crack about the thug bringing a knife to a gunfight.

Let the record show that I never planned to use the bat to foul off bullets. I felt foolish even reaching for it, but this was my thinking: We were heading into unfamiliar streets, hoping we might find her car ditched somewhere. If there were no suspicious characters lurking, I’d leave my car for hers--and have the bat handy for self-defense in case trouble appeared. The smarter move, I’m sure, would have been to provide the location to the cops.

My actions reinforce my conviction that gun laws should be tighter. So did the unsigned e-mail suggesting that, with a concealed weapons permit, I’d have recovered the stolen car “in good condition except for a blood stain or two.”

That comment set off another member of my personal gun lobby.

“People like this make me sick to my stomach!” wrote Sam Brunstein of Glendale. “I dislike them just as passionately as you do . . . There is NO acceptable reason for shooting another human being except in defense of human life . . . People who make their living from carrying a gun, and who teach others how to defend themselves, are very clear on this point . . . “

And so on. The pro-gun view holds that firearms in the hands of decent, rational, law-abiding people serve to enhance public safety. It’s my experience, however, that decent, rational, law-abiding people have their irrational moments. A gun might make them feel braver. It won’t make them less of a lunkhead.

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Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com Please include a phone number.