Got in a fight with a bike thief....

Hello everyone,

This is a short story, so bare with me.

I work as a security guard in an apartment building in Newark NJ. I want to share an incident that happened a week ago. I was working the late shift one night from 3pm-3am. It was a calm day from the start. I went around patroling the building as usual.

At about 11pm, I was told by a tenant that someone was walking around the bike rack suspiciously.

I walk outside to see if it was another tenant. It was a man I had never seen before. I noticed him feeling each persons bike locks. I approached him and asked him what he was doing as well as if he even lived in the building.

My first question was, "hey buddy, are you alright?". He responded by saying, "are you alright punk?". That immediately annoyed me. I asked him if it was his bike in which he responded by saying it was his cousins. I told him that I'm pretty sure that his cousin didn't tell him to break his lock. He drops his stuff and tells me that I better back off because I'm pissing him off.

I work in a rough area, so asking people to leave politely isn't going to work. I told him that he needs to leave before that bike becomes part of his ass.

He gets a little surprised but proceeds to tell me that he is going to get his cousin.

I go back inside and about 10 minutes later he comes back and tried to break the lock very fast. I run outside and tell him, "I thought I told you to leave". He tries to ignore me, but I grab the bike and told him to stop. He tries to swing a punch at me, but I got out of the way and get him right on the chin.

He falls a bit and realizes that he isnt going to win. He instead tries to run. I chased after him. Right before he gets off the property, I tackle him to the ground. The Police happen to be in the area and saw me tackle him. They see that I'm security and they separated us. I explained the situation and they took him in. I had 3 witnesses help me.

The police stated that there is no self defense law in New Jersey, but he is going to let it slide because he ran his name and it turned out that he is the prime suspect in 4 different bike thief cases.

I was lucky, but this is just one story. Here in NJ, this kind of thing happens on a daily.