By Dan Randazzo
Last week, I surprised a burglar who had come into my house.
My spouse had just left the house. I was still home, as I
was going to be working from home today. My spouse hadn’t locked the back door.
I was sitting in my bedroom, when I heard footsteps on the stairs. I looked up,
and then suddenly saw this large face peer into my room. I yelled, jumped out
of the bed, and started to run after him. The burglar ran out of the house
while I chased after him, yelling with some rather incoherent anger. At that
moment, I didn't feel violated. Instead, I felt ANGRY; my thoughts followed the
general theme that this is MY house, MY sanctuary, and how DARE you invite
yourself in!
There's been a rash of burglaries in the neighborhood. It
seems as if my area of Baltimore is being targeted by a group of people who are
looking for houses where people are likely to have good “stuff,” and where
people aren't likely to be home during the day.
I called my spouse immediately after I ensured that the
person had left (as he admittedly had, and in a hurry), and she asked me if I
was going to call the police. At this point, between the shock and adrenaline,
I also felt an unusual constellation of ethical conundrums emerge.
For one, the man that I saw was definitely African-American.
I questioned whether I should call the police with a very vague description of
what was effectively a random African-American male. I truly didn't know
anything else besides that. I definitely saw an African-American male who was
wearing a grey t-shirt, dark boots, and dark gloves; that was the entirety of
my memory of the person. I thought that if I told this description to the
police, they might do exactly what they would up doing: canvassing the
neighborhood, stopping anyone walking along who might fit this very vague
description.
