For the last year and a half–ever since I moved into my Albany Park apartment–someone’s been snatching my Sun-Times. It happens at least once a week, but sometimes as many as four days running. And though I subscribe to both dailies, it’s almost always the Sun-Times. The thief discriminates.
The notice invoked chapter 38, section 399, of the Illinois criminal code. There’s no trace of this provision in the current code, so I asked the Tribune’s law department if anyone had ever been imprisoned for molesting papers. After some research, summer intern Basil Cherian told me that “larceny of newspapers or periodicals” probably had been dropped from the books in 1961, when the code was rewritten. His boss, in-house counsel Paulette Dodson, confirmed that no one’s been prosecuted for stealing Tribunes for at least 12 years. Nevertheless, the paper now has plans to update its warnings, basing them on 21st-century laws that prohibit stealing from your neighbors.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
I borrowed the camera again in July and varied the hours of my stakeout, trying to avoid patterns in my behavior. But for days the paper sat baking in the sun untouched. Meanwhile, on my unguarded back deck, the squirrels were gnawing my tomatoes off the vines.
“Oh, this is yours?” he said, and handed it over.
“You keep following me and I’m going to knock your head off,” he said.
I’m not much of a photographer, but Julio studied my shots and said he’d seen my thief around the neighborhood. He definitely wasn’t the old guy he’d seen stealing in the past. I took the photos up to the pool hall and the liquor store. I showed ice cream vendors and the fellows at the fire station. My mailman, Mike, told me to be careful: someone who’d steal a newspaper “might not be right in the head.” Nobody else recognized the guy.
