Eight Feet Deep

 Good­ness gra­cious. Another bank rob­ber in our fair city. One bad effect a city located on one of the nation’s most trav­eled Inter­states — I speak of IH-10 — faces is bank rob­bery. It’s rel­a­tively easy for a com­mit­ted bank rob­ber to drive off the inter­state, rob a bank and then hit the free­way in one direc­tion or another. Police will not say whether this is the same bank rob­ber who robbed a Hous­ton bank and appar­ently looked sim­i­lar to this fel­low, accord­ing to a local media report. I won­der what that Hous­ton bank robber’s nick­name might be? You know they all seem to get nick­names, like the Grandma Ban­dit.

 Our  — as in Beau­mont, Texas’ — ban­dit entered the Wells Fargo Bank at 595 IH-10 North on Tues­day morn­ing and robbed the place while “dis­play­ing” a sil­ver hand­gun, accord­ing to a Beau­mont Police Depart­ment press release. Police like to use words like “dis­play.” It’s like “Hey ya’ll, isn’t this the pret­ti­est 9 mm pis­tol you’ve ever seen? Now how ’bout that cash?”

 Bank employ­ees trig­gered the silent alarm and offi­cers were told the sus­pect was last seen run­ning on foot toward an apart­ment com­plex behind the bank. Police and a “K-9 Unit,” a.k.a. “a DOG and han­dler,” searched for the ban­dit to no avail.

He could be dis­play­ing his weapon in this photo.

 Police describe the sus­pect as a His­panic male, 5 feet, 10 inches to 6 feet in height, 180 pounds, dark com­plex­ion, wear­ing dark sun­glasses, a blue but­ton shirt and hav­ing short black hair. I’m sure he wears those sun­glasses and blue shirt every­where – to bed, play­ing bas­ket­ball, work­ing on his car. Okay, I’m pick­ing at the descrip­tions the police give out. I’ve writ­ten a hun­dred of these for news sto­ries when I worked as a reporter, but they sound kind of funny out of context. This one is actu­ally a bet­ter descrip­tion than some I have seen on local TV reports, such as “a black male, between 5′ 11″ and 6 feet, 175–190 pounds.” Hmm. I bet there aren’t too many of those run­ning around.

 Now I thought I had a sus­pect when I saw the shot below taken from a bank cam­era. Even though the police descrip­tion lists him as His­panic and dark-complected, he isn”t all that dark, at least in my opin­ion. Now, if you for­get that the man is sup­pos­edly His­panic and dark-complected, in this pic­ture at least, doesn’t he bear a slight resis­tance to for­mer Arkansas Gov­er­nor and failed can­di­date for the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion Mike Huckabee? 

“I’d appre­ci­ate your vote — and your money.”

I mean, look at him. Maybe Huck­abee  with a tan?

Per­haps a bit younger Mike Huck­abee with a tan.

Oh well. That’s my con­tri­bu­tion to the com­mu­nity today. That is partly why I try to write about things like this because I have a forum to do so and, who knows, maybe some­one surf­ing blogs stum­bles across this one and just might rec­og­nize the rob­ber I now dub the “Senor Mike Huckabee-almost-look-a-like-bandit-if-Huckabee-was-Hispanic.” That per­son calls the police and clang, he’s behind bars. You know, some­one might see this guy tak­ing a nap out in his chaise lounge wear­ing his sun­glasses, blue but­toned shirt and dis­play­ing his handgun.