Trespasser...

[Rich Z]

Had an interesting situation the past several days.

Connie and I took a trip out of town last week, and when we got back, the next day we just took a walk around the property. Well, we discovered that someone had trespassed onto our property through a barbed wire "fence" we had put up and chopped down and stolen several of the bamboo that we have been growing. Coincidentally, I had set out a game camera close by to the house as a security measure and when I checked out the images it had captured, this is one that REALLY caught my eye....



Kind of gave me the willies thinking that someone had walked up to the house brandishing a machete. Probably a good thing for him that we WEREN'T home at the time. There were other pics showing a frontal view as well, of course, clearly showing the guy's face. He actually came up to the house two days in a row, which is kind of unnerving. Now since the bamboo had obviously been cut with a machete, I felt pretty strongly that this was the guy who had trespassed and stolen our property. So I printed out the images from the camera, and Connie and I went to the Wakulla County Sheriff's Office to file a report. Spoke to a Capt. Savory there on Monday and he took all the info and arranged for an officer to come by and take images of the damages done here. We then got a call from another deputy on Tuesday telling us he was assigned to the case and he would let us know what he found.

Seriously, after the fiasco we had with the Calhoun County Sheriff's Office not that long ago, we really weren't expecting much, if anything, to be done about this. But surprisingly enough, today a pickup truck pulled up into our driveway driven by two WCSO deputies and they had a load of bamboo in the back of the truck. They told me that they had recovered it from the perpetrator and were returning it to us. I asked what was going to be done about the guy who stole it, and they told me it was completely up to us, and we could send him to jail if that is what we wanted to happen. We queried the officers about the guy and apparently he had no prior record, was gainfully employed and has a family. The officers were completely neutral in this, but we felt that the guy had just made a very bad judgment call and couldn't see sending him off to jail for this. But the officers did say they could give the guy a "trespass warrant" and if he stepped foot on this property again they would arrest him immediately. They also said they would REALLY impress the point about how close he came to going to jail over this. We felt that would be sufficient, under the circumstances. They had me sign some sort of waiver of prosecution, I guess to keep everything on record.

All in all I have to say we were pretty darned impressed with how the WCSO handled this incident. And I have to admit that I am extremely puzzled how a person trespassing and stealing some measly bamboo could go to jail for such actions, yet the Calhoun County Sheriff's Office can have such a cavalier attitude towards a person with multiple parties filing claims of fraud and theft against him, and do virtually NOTHING about it. Kind of makes you wonder just what the heck is going on over there in Calhoun County, doesn't it? I certainly haven't signed any sort of waiver of prosecution with them.....