The Bonaire criminal exposed, and it is ........YOU!

[lmorin]

..................
Whether these crimes point to two or three different thieves or more, it does illustrate what some have suspected for years. That is that a significant part of the thefts from divers on the island have been done by non native divers, taking advantage of the low key atmosphere to steal whatever they see as tempting, from other divers.

A Bonaire divemaster rather sheepishly admitted to me one hot summer day that he had been diving up north a few weeks earlier and had made a serious miscalculation. That is, he did not bring water with him and he became exceedingly thirsty to the point that he took a water bottle from a parked diver's vehicle and drank the whole thing. This one incident would obviously be taken as evidence that vehicle pilfering was going on and reinforce the notion that one should be careful about anything left behind in the trucks during dives.

 

[gypsyjim]

A Bonaire divemaster rather sheepishly admitted to me one hot summer day that he had been diving up north a few weeks earlier and had made a serious miscalculation. That is, he did not bring water with him and he became exceedingly thirsty to the point that he took a water bottle from a parked diver's vehicle and drank the whole thing. This one incident would obviously be taken as evidence that vehicle pilfering was going on and reinforce the notion that one should be careful about anything left behind in the trucks during dives.

Good thing they left the truck open, eh?
Otherwise he'd have had to smash out a window to get that water, and added vandalism to pilferage.

---------- Post added May 31st, 2014 at 07:13 AM ----------

The title of your post was:
[h=2]The Bonaire criminal exposed, and it is ........YOU![/h]
Maybe just change the title. The content of the post is a good reminder to not trust anybody.

I chose the title deliberately. I get tired of the continual drum beat, of the Bonaire bashers blaming the Police, etc for gear theft from divers.

I was consciously connecting my post with their rants, and adding the fact that divers themselves (ourselves) are a part of the equation most commenters have overlooked when blaming these thefts on local gangs with police support, an often repeated charge on the Internet.

 

[T.C.]

A Bonaire divemaster rather sheepishly admitted to me one hot summer day that he had been diving up north a few weeks earlier and had made a serious miscalculation. That is, he did not bring water with him and he became exceedingly thirsty to the point that he took a water bottle from a parked diver's vehicle and drank the whole thing. This one incident would obviously be taken as evidence that vehicle pilfering was going on and reinforce the notion that one should be careful about anything left behind in the trucks during dives.

I'm not sure I'd qualify taking a resource that pours freely from taps, showerheads and faucets is "stealing".




On another tack, I just returned from the Bahamas. A nice, peaceful place, right?

Nassau has had 50 murders this year; 12 this month. It's not against the tourists, for the most part; but who is ever "detered" from going to the Bahamas because of this appalling murder rate?

Humans will be humans, and there will always be some crime. But trying to portray Bonaire as "crime-ridden" because of a few petty thefts is inaccurate.

 

[deco_martini]

I was consciously connecting my post with their rants, and adding the fact that divers themselves (ourselves) are a part of the equation most commenters have overlooked when blaming these thefts on local gangs with police support, an often repeated charge on the Internet.

I get it. Provocative title, its cool. Most of the theft reports I hear on the interwebs are from people who experience vehicle or living quarters break-ins. I don't have an axe to grind against the blame-locals-first crowd.

This year will be my fifth in a row diving Bonaire. We leave nothing in the truck but water, towels, and 2 pairs of old crocs. We keep hoping someone will steal the crocs so we can talk about it. The dry shed is a sort of honor system. I hope the dive op who rented out the BC that got returned with the stolen pocket adds that person added to the island blacklist.