I'm sorry but words fail me at this woman's stupidity

[Bombero1956]

A 22-year-old woman, who flashed $27,000 in cash Monday night while inside an Indian Orchard bar, was held up at gunpoint around midnight after she left the bar with a male friend and walked towards her car.

the victim, while inside the bar, bragged of receiving the $27,000 from an insurance claim. One of my coworkers knows the woman and she claims the cops are going to get her money back. :eyes:

http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/10/woman_flashes_27000_in_springf.html

[Brickbat]

1. How dare she get held up!

:eyes:

[seabeyond]

4. how dare she be so stupid, too. lol. i mean. leave car unlocked, not responsible for the theft

but not the smartest thing to do.

[blondeatlast]

16. The very nerve... nt

[Realityhack]

31. Um...

Pointing out that it is incredibly dangerous and stupid to flash $27,000 in a public setting in absolutely no way absolves the criminal of the full responsibility for mugging the woman.

The inability of some people to understand this astounds me.

Would suggesting to her that she NOT flash a wad of cash in public for safety reasons be 'blaming the victim before the fact'? Maybe we should teach kids to walk into the street when the walk light comes on regardless of wither traffic has stopped because any resulting accident would be the drivers fault. After all if a kid walks out in front of a car blowing the light we clearly can't say the kid should have looked at the traffic before stepping out. That would be blaming the victim and somehow magically absolve the driver of any responsibility whatsoever.

Flashing massive wads of cash in public = stupid
robbery = illegal

Pointing out the first FACT in no way changes the second.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

2. holy crap... what was she thinking. I wouldn't even talk about it to anybody.

[snagglepuss]

3. The saying "a fool and his money are soon parted" has never been more apt.

:silly:

[BolivarianHero]

6. Then how does Limbaugh not squander his fortune?

Sorry. Had to ass. Howard Stern was just utterly owning him a few minutes ago.

[snagglepuss]

11. Limbaugh is anything but a fool. Limbaugh is a clever manipulator.

The fact that he has repugnant opinions and and is a total a**hole doesn't make him a fool. The fools are those that believe what he says.

[tonysam]

25. "Sorry. Had to ass"?

Must be a Freudian slip, especially about Boil Butt.

[The Straight Story]

5. Thankfully she was not dressed too sexy, then she would have invited rape (nt)

[BolivarianHero]

7. Bad analogy...

Women should be able to express themselves and their sexuality on their own terms without having to worry about that shit happening.

This woman did something stupid any way you spin it, and her situation ought not to be compared to that of the rape victim's.

[The Straight Story]

9. It is blaming the victim based on what we see as the perp's motives and THEIR inability

to control themselves.

"Crooks cannot control themselves, flashing money and getting robbed makes you the idiot"
"Sexual Predators cannot control themselves, so dress in a way not to provoke them"

[Angry Dragon]

12. No.......you are wrong

sexual predators do not care what you are wearing.

[petronius]

24. Is it wrong to point out that someone could have made choices to minimize their risk?

I always see these complaints about 'blaming the victim', and I generally think they miss the point - it's not her fault she was robbed, it was the crooks decision, and she didn't deserve it. However, it's perfectly logical to understand that and still recognize that she missed some very obvious and common sense opportunities to reduce her risk. She was an innocent victim and she was stupid and neither one obviates the other...

[Realityhack]

33. +1 better put than my post.

[blondeatlast]

18. So right--one is blaming the victim and the other is

blaming the victim.

Oops.

:eyes:

[Brickbat]

8. Excellent analogy.

[daedalus_dude]

14. Not good analogy because:

Rape and theft are not the same thing.

Chances are, ten years from now this woman will laugh about what a dumbass she was. If she had been raped then that would be unlikely.

[Liquorice]

10. It's really not THAT stupid. She's young and naive, yeah. But words fail you? It's not that bad. nt

[Warpy]

13. She might be naive, but SHE DID NOTHING WRONG

The piece of shit who ripped her off did something wrong.

[Incitatus]

17. Wrong, no. Stupid, yes.

[SoCalDem]

15. one word for her

imbecile

[Mist]

19. Important rule: the more money you have, the LESS you talk about it. nt

[Boojatta]

23. Very poor people who know about that important rule,

and who don't want people to be aware of the poverty, never talk about money. Thus, robbers and kidnappers think that those poor people are rich and target them. The moral: if you are very poor, then you are supposed to talk about money. If someone tries to rob you or kidnap you, then there will be nothing to steal, which will be amusing for everybody. Robbers and kidnappers love the surprise of a victim who actually has no money. When they find out that the victim is poor, they help out.

[Mist]

29. When I said "don't talk about money," I meant "don't talk about it in public, and don't show it more

than necessary." I don't think the woman "deserved" to be robbed, but she behaved foolishly.

[laconicsax]

20. Nothing in the article implies that she was robbed by somone who overheard her.

Just that she was robbed outside the bar while walking to her car.

With the facts given, it's equally likely that the two who held her at gunpoint hadn't been in the bar and had no idea that she was carrying that much money.

[Berry Cool]

21. It's possible. In any case, she didn't "deserve" to be robbed no matter how dumb she is

any more than a woman deserves to be raped for letting a guy buy her a drink and leaving it unattended while he drugs it, or a man deserves to have his wallet stolen because he keeps it in his back pocket, or a family deserves to have their house burglarized because they leave it unlocked.

Yes, such actions may make you vulnerable, but they don't justify the crimes themselves.

Foolishness and stupidity and downright naivete are not crimes. Rape, robbery and burglary are.

[laconicsax]

22. I never said she did.

The way I see it, there's no reason to suspect that the men who robbed her knew anything of the $27,000 in advance. It could have been someone from the bar who overheard it then decided to steal it, but there's no evidence that that was the case.

[LisaL]

27. Well you gotta admit that's some coincidence.

My guess would be somebody did overhear her.

[laconicsax]

28. Is it really?

How many people are robbed at gunpoint after dark?

[Realityhack]

35. well.

If she only had that much on her at the bar on one occasion...
what are the odds that a random individual will be mugged outside a bar on a given night.

I would say fairly low. I mean if the odds were 1 in 100 you would expect to be robbed about once every one hundred or so times you went out to a bar at night (making some assumptions about being alone and similar neighborhoods, etc. etc.)
Sure lots of people are mugged in a night... but a lot more are not.

It could of course be 1 in a billion (obviously the odds are higher than that) and still be a coincidence, but I think it is fair to say it is unlikely to be a coincidence if someone gets mugged on the one day they are carrying thousands in cash given that others knew about it.

[tonysam]

26. Kick n/t

[Writer]

30. Yes, everyone can do stupid things, but the only one responsible for their bad behavior...

is the perpetrator.

Not every door is yours to walk through.

[butterfly77]

32. Dumb,Dumb,Dumb,Dumb,Dumb...

how stupid can you get..Oh,I forgot about Bush.

[Canuckistanian]

34. That is all kinds of stupid

First off, WHY did she convert her insurance money into cash? The insurance company doesn't hand out settlements in cash.

THEN, she carries it around with her.

THEN, she goes into a bar and flashes the money.

Now everyone has a small chance of getting robbed on any day.

But she just increased her odds a thousand fold.