I count myself among the fortunate people who have never been a victim of crime . . . although a Russian street thug did once try to get his fingers into my cross-body bag on a crowded plaza in St. Petersburg, Russia, in broad daylight. I began yelling at him in Russian, threatened to call for the police, and he ran off. He thought I’d be an easy mark; he hadn’t counted on the one “helpless little lady” tourist who actually knew what she was doing.

But I’m quite certain that if I had ever been unfortunate enough to lose, say, a purse to a thief — whether here or in another country — I would never see that bag, or its contents, again. My complaint to the police would be added to a mountain of similar cases, and I would be left with a promise that they would do their best, and a patronizing lecture on being more careful in the future.

However, things are different if you’re the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and you’ve been careless enough to leave your bag on the floor below your table in a crowded Washington, D.C., restaurant while you’re busily engaged in conversation with your family.

To begin with, that was no ordinary handbag. It was a “high-end Gucci bag,” containing a “Louis Vuitton Clemence wallet, . . . driver’s license, medication, apartment keys, passport, DHS access badge, makeup bag, blank checks, and about $3,000 in cash.” [Josh Campbell and John Miller, CNN, April 27, 2025.]

With that number of contents, the bag must have been fairly sizable. And even medium-size Gucci bags sell for — not hundreds — but thousands of dollars. So that thief knew what he was doing. And when he opened it, he must immediately have thought he was the luckiest petty thief in town . . . because the Louis Vuitton wallet alone could run upwards of $600, not to mention the $3,000 inside.

So this was no longer petty theft; it was theft on a grand scale. And what the thief probably did not know — at least, until he looked at the remaining contents of the bag — was that he had chosen as his victim du jour a high-level federal government official.

Forget the police; this was a case for the U.S. Secret Service. And since they already had egg on their faces for having allowed the theft to occur under their very noses, they had, shall we say, added incentive to solve the crime. Which is what they reportedly have done, within just a week’s time.

Today’s report does not mention whether the bag and any or all of its contents were recovered; but there is a fair amount of detail concerning the thief and his modus operandi. Though he is not identified by name, he is obviously not a novice at his trade.

Security footage at the restaurant showed him “purposefully moving closer to Noem as he zeroed in on her Gucci bag near her feet . . . dressed in dark clothing, [he] sat down at an empty table next to Noem with his back facing her and used his left foot to slide the bag away . . . He surveyed the restaurant before eventually picking up the bag, covering it with his jacket and leaving.” [Id.]

So, my earlier fantasies of his possibly having cartwheeled through the restaurant, or rappelled down from the ceiling, were way off the mark. He is just a very practiced sneak thief, unnoticeable in a crowd, who happened to choose his Easter Sunday victim very well. Not everyone walks around with $3,000 in cash.

As for a description of the perpetrator, Noem posted on X that he is a “career criminal who has been in our country illegally for years. Unfortunately, so many families in this country have been made victims by crime, and that’s why President Trump is working every single day to make America safe and get these criminal aliens off of our streets.” [Id.]

What the hell . . . ??!!!

Did this unnamed suspect just hand the Trump administration a huge gift of propaganda material to support their ongoing purge of immigrants? Is this suspect the actual thief . . . or was he simply arrested in a roundup of the “usual suspects” — i.e., one of Noem’s “criminal aliens”?

The report states that, aside from the one person in custody, “multiple additional arrests are expected in a theft ring recently targeting Washington, DC’s, Penn Quarter area.” And a Secret Service representative has said that “the defendant is a serial offender.” [Id.]

So . . . stay with me here . . . if he has been in the country illegally for a number of years; and if he is indeed a serial offender; and if he is possibly part of a theft ring operating in D.C.; and if neither he nor any of the other members of the purported “ring” have been apprehended until now; then how is it that he was so easily identified and taken into custody this week?

Could it be because the victim — Homeland Security head Kristi Noem — was a person of substance . . . a government official . . . a Trump ally? Because the incident was an embarrassment to the Secret Service, and had to be rectified? Or because the Secret Service acted more quickly and efficiently than the D.C. Police Department might have done if the stolen goods had belonged to you or me?

Whatever the case, the truth is that — despite the promise of the Constitution that we are all considered equal under the law — we are not.

Some are simply more equal than others.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
4/27/25