It appears that the sweaty star of last year’s garage invasion drama finally copped a plea. Staff from the Maricopa County Attorney’s probation department had to prepare pre-sentence reports on our perp and his pals, which they kindly sent to me. And now we have the full story.
On May 4, 2012, the three creeps knocked over a Cash America Super Pawn store located in the historic but blighted district to the north of my neighborhood. After threatening employees with a gun, they made off with $89,568 worth of jewelry and caused about $500 worth of damage to the display cases they busted apart to get at the loot.
Interesting, isn’t it, that an area hosting several homeless shelters and largely home to the very poor could supply a pawn shop with 90 grand worth of jewelry, isn’t it? Once again: I picked the wrong business…
But moving on: Our boy, one Matthew Jason Avery, 25, was hopped up on meth, heroin, and Percocet at the time he jumped the wall into my backyard and hid in the garage. Clearly, it was lucky that the commotion in the streets caused me to get up and lock the door between the kitchen in the garage. If he’d entered the house before I managed to get my pistol, I would’ve been in deep trouble. That would have been true even if I did have a gun in hand, because I would have shot him the instant I laid eyes on him, and that would have created a whole different tangle of trouble for me.
The “presumptive” sentence for armed robbery is 10½ to 15 years, followed by a period of probation. Matthew is arguing that the court should reduce this term, since this is supposedly his first criminal exploit. (Yeah, right!) He claims he didn’t have a gun during the robbery — that his colleague Tyshawn Simmons was the one who waved a weapon around — and so the county probation officer is recommending that he receive a shortened sentence on the count of sticking up the pawn shop, plus the presumptive sentence of 3½ years for burglarizing my garage. They also want him to make restitution to Cash America, whenever the value of the stolen property that is not in police custody can be determined. So presumably this guy will get out in three years or so, what with credit for the 239 days he’s already spent in jail waiting for court action.
On the gun issue: the cops sure as hell thought he was armed. After they dragged him off, one of the officers and I searched the garage and the backyard looking for the pistol they were pretty sure he had. We didn’t find it, but…
A few days after Matthew was arrested, the sheriff’s office informed me that he was bailed out of the slam. That evening someone entered my backyard during the night. They left the side gate hanging open, signaling that they’d come a-visiting. Obviously, Matthew came back looking for what he left in the shrubbery, and presumably what he left was a weapon.
Possibly the most disturbing element in all this is that Matthew, the poor little sh!t, was born into this world without one single, forlorn hope. This was a kid who was doomed from the outset.
Raised by his biological mother and abused as a child, he was “home-schooled” until the seventh grade, when he and his parent ended all pretense of educating him. The poor schmuck reads below the sixth-grade level and is incapable of supporting himself.
Not surprisingly, he started using meth at 16 and got into weed and coke at 17. He didn’t develop the heroin habit (so it says here) until he reached the age of 24.
Think of that. A grown man who, thanks to “home-schooling,” does not even have a grade-school education. When something like that happens to a kid, the most likely outcome will be drugs, crime, and violence. An escape from such a fate would be mighty near miraculous.
Oh well.
One last word on the matter, a piece of advice:
If you are ever the “victim” of a crime in which you lose little or nothing and from which you emerge unharmed, the police will ask you if you want to prefer charges against the perp. Tell them “NO.”
The hassle factor involved in being a so-called “victim” of a clown like this is just astonishing. The County’s action against Matthew has gone on for fourteen months. During that time, I’ve been the target of a steady blitz of paper, much of it subpoenas to appear at ever-changing trial dates.
One such subpoena is more threatening than Matthew in the garage, because each of them contains a peremptory order to appear in court at 8:00 a.m. on X, Y, or Z date (never mind whether you have a job, whether your pay will be docked if you don’t show up at work, whether you have small kids or a sick relative to care for, whether you’ve paid for airline or hotel tickets, whether anything else). And each of them informs you, in boldface type, that if you do not show up you will be arrested and jailed.
Every time I turned around, I found another of these aggressively worded subpoenas in the mailbox, each one demanding a reply. Once the sheriff’s office even sent a deputy, who parked his vehicle conspicuously in front of my house and marched up to the door to deliver yet another subpoena — even though I had faithfully replied to every one of the things that yes, yes I would be there.
Every piece of correspondence regarding the case had return addresses from the sheriff’s office, the probation department, the county attorney, and various other agencies that made it look, to anyone who didn’t know what was inside the envelopes, like I was the target of criminal prosecution. And as we know, much of my mail is misdirected to my neighbor Mannie, who lives at the same house number on a road whose street name is almost identical to mine. Can you imagine what Mannie and his wife must think? What the postal carrier must think?
If your perp is unlikely to return and you sustained no substantial harm, the best thing to do is to let it drop.
That’s crazy that you’ve been hassled so much by the subpeonas and such. Too bad, I bet a lot of people do say ‘No’ for that exact reason and justice ends up getting thrown out the window.
There has to be a better way.
It’s hard to see what it would be.
First, America probably does have the world’s best justice system in terms of the philosophy behind it and the overall effort (successful or not) to attain fairness for its citizens. At least we’re trying, which many (if not most) polities in the world do not. The impulse to jail everyone is relatively new and is unfortunately reinforced by the privatization of prison, which adds a profit motive to a misguided strategy.
Second, our crime rates are so high, because of various social issues (the very social issues exemplified by Mr. Avery), that our system is simply overwhelmed. Trial dates are put off repeatedly because public prosecutors’ offices are understaffed, and there’s only so much a group of human beings can do.
And third, because of those social issues, for every Matthew Avery, Tyshawn Simmons, or Mark Anthony Mejia (the third perp in our little gang) who goes to jail, ten more are out there on the streets.
We’re not addressing the causes of crime, because we imagine a poor dumb little cretin like Matthew Avery should be able to overcome poverty, abuse, complete absence of education, and an unregulated market for readily available addictive drugs. We imagine such people should pull themselves by the bootlaces into the middle class, with no help from us because, after all, America is a place that rewards initiative and punishes sloth…which is another way of saying our focus is utterly awry. Instead of throwing the incompetent in jail and criminalizing sickness, we need to focus on the causes of social incompetence and the illness that is addiction.
Think the perp has a chance when he gets out?
Miracles happen. I suppose.