Sweet! 
Business Owner Chases, Runs Over Robbery Suspects In Hummer
although,it sucks to be robbed,i voted yes on that poll.wreckless endangerment is also a crime,and the chances of killing innocent bistandards while doing what Peter did isnt worth the it.
Peter should have been glad the crimminals left him alive and called the law for God sake.
dont take the law into your own hands there are to many people at risk!
Agreed. I found the results amusing (a Hummer driving over a car), but the cause of the situation is not amusing. Heâs going to be in serious legal trouble, and he deserves to be. What he did was very dangerous to the public and to the low life criminals in the car. You canât be going around chasing criminals like that, thatâs what the police are for. He should have tailed them at a safe speed and called in their location to the police. He has a Hummer, so Iâm sure he has a cell phone.
Thereâs only 11% whoâd like to get Peter off the streets. 
Itâd been cool if Peter was chasing terrorists in an action movie.
But he wasnât.
Morten
iâll give you that,in a perfect world it is amusing.
i just want to know when the TV movie comes out
for some reason this thread seems like somthing GILD would comment on.
At least we know that it was not a high speed chase. A Hummer isnât a fast car and if he was able to catch up to them and drive over them well, the speeds could not have been that high. The Hummer has a top speed of about 80 mph and does not have good acceleration.
i donât even think the matter warrants a response from GILD. The matter is simple. He broke the law. He mightâve had a reason to, but he still did. America has become obsessed with the break-the-law-but-for-a-good-reason ideology so glamourized in the moviesâŚ
which reminds meâŚ
in psychology i learned about a childâs developing sense of morals. we are given this scenario:
A manâs wife has fallen ill, and he has spent much money paying for doctorâs to cure her. None of them produce results. A local pharmacist creates a drug that can cure her, but he charges $2000. The man can only get $1000, and he tries to persuade the pharmacist for leniency, but the pharmacist refuses. In desperation, the man breaks into the pharmacy to give the medicine to his wife and it makes her well.
The dilemma is obvious. The solution and the rationale? What do you think? the question is open to any opinion you have. Should the man have stolen the medicine?
and just exactly would that reason be?
have i in some unknown way cultivated the image of some kind of vigilante?
and yes, let it be said, we all secretly think that vigilanteeism isnât so bad
after all, the bad guys got their due
this is the main reason why our âurban legendsâ flourish
they are our modern faery tales and almost allways shows the âbad guysâ getting their come-uppance
how this reflects on me and my standing in this online community, i dont even want to think about
ps. the FORD company had a tag line to their advertising,âHave u driven a FORD today?â
some commically minded bumper-sticker artist changed this slightly and came up with a sticker that proved to be very popular with the 4wheel drive brigade
"have u driven over a FORD today?
would look good on the back of that hummer!)
I personally donât have a lot of sympathy for an armed robber. One can only assume that he intends to use his weapon if he brings it with him. I.e., âGive me your money or I will kill you with this weapon.â
Steal the medicine; pay the penalty; itâs worth it.
Talking of newspaper stories, I found this.
I searched âPhil Himsworth + unicycleâ on google, and just look at what he has been doing lately!
Joe,
The mystifying thing about the poll results to me is, ⌠they robbed an insurance brokerage, for Peteâs sake!
Oceanâs Eleven was a popular flick (twice), right?
Clever bandits make off with the casinoâs money.
Just how are insurance companies and casinos different?
OK, except for the part about the government makes you buy insurance, but it doesnât force you to dump your money in a casino.
Oh, and the part about the government doesnât help the casinos not pay you when the casino loses the bet .
All right⌠and the insurance companies donât have showgirls⌠but other that thatâŚ
âPeterâsâ retaliation was mere vehicular barbarianism, but not really all that unusual or surprising.
That boils down to $2000 vs. the life of his wife. Stealing the drug is illegal, but it doesnât kill anyone. Steal the drug, do the time. Everybodyâs happy. Thatâs an easy one.
By no means should the man go unpunished. He took what is not his. But I find stealing to be an acceptable moral choice in his situation, of course much more so if he then turns himself in.
The news article John originally posted looks a little fishy. Is the photo supposed to be from that incident? How did the Hummer get on top of the robbersâ car? That looks like a (bad) picture from some unrelated event. The car underneath looks totally smashed, not just run over. I did a quick search on Google to see if I could find any other accounts of this story, and didnât find any.
I was surprised by the results of the poll. The robbers were not reported to have hurt anybody. Presumably the money from an insurance company is âinsured,â is it not? The punishment, dolled out by a self-appointed judge and jury, was excessive, and no doubt endangered the public along the route of the chase. He went above and beyond his ârightsâ as a citizen.
If Mr. Hummer had simply caught the guys, or assisted in their capture, he would be a hero. Instead, he is a criminal, probably facing worse charges than the robbers. Possibly attempted murder.
We have a legal process in this country, and though itâs not perfect, itâs better than Mr. Hummer, or any other system Iâve heard of. I hope Mr. Hummer is not a typical example of Hummer owners.
The robbers were armed. But what does this mean? Thereâs a difference between armed robbery and regular robbery. There is also a middle ground. Consider the case on which my wife just finished being a member of the jury. A man robbed three gas station mini-marts. With a gun. His lawyerâs entire defense was an extensive explanation of how the gun he used was a BB gun, and not a real one. Because the difference in the penalty is a big one.
Unfortunately, that was the whole defense. Nothing about where he was when the robberies occurred, no supporting witnesses for his (non) alibi, nothing. With video and other evidence, he was found guilty, after over a day of deliberations My wife was the jury foreperson, and very stressed out by the process, and her time away from her company. Everybody agreed, based on witness testimony, that the gun fit the description of a real-looking BB gun (red tip). But the three robberies amounted to three felonies. In California, the three strikes law means he goes to jail for a long, long time. He didnât physically harm anybody, but he was guilty. Thatâs what should have happened to the insurance robbers. It still will, I guess, but there will also be criminal proceedings against Mr. Hummer.
I saw the story on the local Seattle TV news last night. Then I did a search on news.google.com to find the online version of the story. Search news.google.com for âPhoenix Hummerâ and youâll find the story.
I do find it interesting how my initial reaction was âcool, the bad guys got what they deservedâ. The story has the qualities that would make for a good urban legend. Itâs also going to be interesting to see if the driver of the Hummer is charged with a crime or faces any civil charges, but weâre not likely to hear about that side of the story.
Well after some thought on this, and after reading all the responses I have to say I think what this Hummer driver did was the only logical option. Since the police are only there to right the report after the crime takes place, and not really there to protect as they so boldly state on the side of their cars, the only logical option is to protect ourselves.
Now I am sure there are those who would say he was no longer in danger since they had already left the scene. I would say he and everyone else was in more danger than before they entered the building. Who knows how this robbery would have emboldened the criminal(armed) and what the outcome of the next crime he perpetrated would be? He did society a favor, pressing charges against him, and clogging the court system with a case against him is not justice.
The police get upset when someone tries doing what they are suposed to be doing, but have no intention of doing.
Unfortunately justice can only deal with the crimes which are committed and not with the ones which will committed.
(btw. maybe I should rent âMinority Reportâ itâs supposed to be good)
I donât think the question here is âIs Peter legally guilty of a crime?â because the answer is obviously yes.
The interesting question (IMHO) is âWas it OK to run over that car in that situation?â
Since weâre in an imperfect society, to a certain extend I see bugmanâs (sorry, I donât know your real name) point, but I think the self-protection argument is streached too thin in this case.
If thereâs no justice system to protect you I can see the logic in âyou hit me so I hit you backâ, but not âyou steal my money and might hurt someone later so I run you over with my carâ. Thatâs taking it too far.
Morten
Why unfortunately?
This story is odd, only because it is so sensational yet seems not to have been picked up anywhere besides this local6.com source. I did a search on this story in Factiva which has in excess of 7500 local, national and international sources and it was not there. Also, it is weird that the business owner is identified only as Peter; on the Internet such lack of specificity is a classic sign of a hoax and this man is clearly an adult who privacy need not be protected in a case like this (this last part is a statement of fact regarding police and media behavior, not an opinion, by the way). On the side of this case being real, a search on Switchboard.com does turn up a Mr Insurance in Phoenix, Arizona.
Raphael Lasar
Matawan, NJ
I havenât thought deeply about the philosophy of this. What I mean is that it would be convenient for police to be able to act before a crime and the damage is done. I know there are questions of free will and determinism etc to complicate matters
Iâve found the story in 3 places, but they donât agree on the number of robbers.
Even if the story is a hoax, this debate is still interesting.
The story made it to CNN Headline News too.
You can shoot at an intruder or robber if they are in your home. But you cannot grab your gun and chase the robber down the street after they have left your home. That same principle would apply here with the Hummer. He could have run them over with his Hummer while they were on his business property and in the process of burgling him. But once they left and he was no longer in danger he canât start chasing them down the street in his Hummer.
The police and for that matter society at large, including our leaders are perfectly capable of acting before (much) crime and its subsequent damage occur. It is well known what some of the leading causes of crime are: poverty, drug addiction, and lack of education. If preventing crime is really a priority those are some places to start. Build schools instead of prisons. Offer drug treatment instead of prison time. Provide safe, affordable housing, jobs and job training, and health insurance rather than giving massive tax breaks to the wealthiest.
Iâm not sure how one prevents Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, etc type crime. Those people really boggle the mind.
Of course, Iâm a left wing nut, so what do I know?
And, of course, I know almost nothing about Denmark except that Copenhagen is the capital, EJC is there this year and I canât go, and that place Legoland, so Iâm not in any way commenting about your country or you, Borges. Just following through on this thought. 
Raphael Lasar
Matawan, NJ
I think left wing nuts have some good points.
Somebody once called me a âmoderate anti extremistâ, I donât know if that disqualifies me in discussions
Comment all you like! After all Iâm not holding back on comments on the US. Commenting is what forums are for. Right?
Morten