Elisabeth Gentieu was on her way to the post office a few weeks ago when she noticed two men lugging a pair of huge potted plants down her street in Philadelphia`s Germantown section.
Could it be? Again?
The 68-year-old Gentieu angled for a closer look. No mistake: The
”hooligans” were ”making off with Hannelore Hamme`s jade plant!”
Like most of her neighbors in the first block of Tulpehocken Street-in fact, like legions of folks across the city and sundry suburbs-Gentieu already had learned the hard way that flowers, shrubs, pots, porch chairs, watering cans, hoses, doormats, even bug candles have become the latest cash crop for garden-variety crooks. Since last fall, she has lost a dozen plants, two wrought-iron planters, porch furniture and, worst, a couple of old aspidistras inherited from her mother.
”I remember them on my mother`s front porch as a child,” Gentieu said.
”My mother died. And then the plants went, and I was really upset.”
Plant poachers are not a new breed. But never have they been so busy in Philadelphia as in the last few months, harvesting geraniums from porches, ripping rhododendrons right out of the ground and trucking away trees. As the petty theft has blossomed, resignation has taken root. As Capt. Albert Harris of the Philadelphia police put it, ”Anything that`s not nailed down” might disappear-”and some things that are nailed down if they aren`t nailed down strong enough.”
Bill Falcone lies in bed each night and hears would-be thieves trying to steal his flower pot, which is chained to his front step. Burglars already have carted off his coleus (”Strangely enough, they don`t like impatiens”), along with his neighbor`s downspouts. ”I`m waiting for them to come with a snipper and cut the chain,” Falcone said. ”It will happen sooner or later.” Among the thieves, police believe, are some ruthless residents who plunder nearby porches and gardens to stock their own. But many culprits are drug users and homeless people, and the crime is fed by a flourishing hot-plant market, police are convinced.
Addicts involved
Addicts, Capt. Thomas J. Doyle said, ”are stooping as low as they can possibly go. They steal plants for resale value to satisfy their need to buy drugs. . . . You can buy crack for as little as $3. In most areas it`s as low as $5.” Cashing in a good garden hose, a nice begonia, a chaise lounge ”can satisfy that urge for four or five hours.”
Some drug dealers even are accepting plants and porch furniture in lieu of cash. ”Today they`ve sort of gotten to be entrepreneurs,” Harris said,
”to the point where they will trade drugs . . . for rhododendrons.”
The thieves strike day or night, scaling fences and raiding back porches. But seldom are they seen. So when Gentieu saw her neighbor`s ”monumental”
jade walking away, she grabbed the chance to stop it.
She flagged down two neighbors and told them to call police. Then, she said, she tracked the thieves along a street, where one poacher disappeared down a one-way street. Another, she said, hooked up with a third man behind an abandoned restaurant.
”The third guy said he had just bought that jade plant for $5,” Gentieu said. ”If you can believe that!”
Police apprehended one of the men, a 21-year-old street person, and recovered both the jade and another plant stolen from Hamme`s porch. ”The police said if I were to press charges,” Hamme said, ”it would probably involve three days of my time and, in the end, no one was going to go to jail for stealing a plant. So I decided not to press charges.”
Hamme returned the plants to her porch. Two days later they were gone again-this time for good.
”I raised these plants from infancy,” Hamme said. ”They`re 25 years old, the same age as my son. It`s no major deal. It`s not a murder. It`s not a mugging. But it changes my style of life. I`m angry and I feel very helpless. I can`t live an ordinary life. I can`t sit on my porch and enjoy my plants.” Some people have nothing left to sit on. One resident, out patrolling for his neighborhood watch, recently stopped a man walking from an alley about midnight with two wire-mesh patio chairs and two tables. The thief turned over the goods. Several days later the resident put a flyer in every mailbox along the alley, announcing that he had recovered the furniture and asking the owner to claim it.
”Within 30 minutes I got calls from three different people,” he said.
”All of them said their porch furniture had been stolen.”
”Basically anything is fair game,” resident Caryn L. Hetherston said.
”I`ve had hanging plants taken. I have had tulips ripped out of the ground. And it`s very discouraging.”
Frustration widespread
That frustration has cropped up far beyond the city lines. Suburban police report that plant theft occurs from time to time in their communities. But Northampton Township in Bucks County endured a rash of plant-pilfering last spring.
”They were digging plants and bushes and small trees right out of lawns,” Sgt. William Tomlinson said. He estimated that 20 to 25 shrubs were taken in six weeks. ”Stuff that had just been planted, and that stuff comes out of the ground as easy as it goes in. We never did solve it.”
Germantown`s Capt. Doyle, for one, suggests that residents keep plants indoors or install motion-detector outdoor lights, which turn on when someone approaches. ”If it means chaining (flower pots and porch furniture) down,”
he said, ”well, that may be a sad state of affairs, but that`s what we will advise them to do.”
Some folks have done exactly that, and it`s still not enough.
On a beautiful block of old homes, thieves stole David Ben-Yaacov`s wheelbarrow and 30-foot ladder, both of which were chained to his fence. Just a week later a man came to his door and tried to sell him a new ladder, which Ben-Yaacov is sure was stolen from someone else. ”I had words with the guy,” Ben-Yaacov said. ”It`s incredible.”
Other residents fight dirty.
”Some homeowners have started to put glass in the plants so people will cut themselves when they pull them out,” Joan Wachlin said. ”I haven`t done that, but many neighbors have. They`re putting in broken light-bulb glass. One neighbor had one plant pulled out, but they didn`t take it. The plant was left on the sidewalk. We assumed they got cut.”
Most victims, police say, probably don`t even report plant thefts, realizing the futility. ”Even if they get caught, what is the consequence?” Doyle asked. ”What`s going to happen? Let`s be realistic.”
Though plant thefts might seem petty, they are particularly vexing to people committed to urban living. ”It`s outrageous that they`re doing any of this,” said Jay Kottoff, the ”unofficial CEO” of his neighborhood watch program. ”The plants are the epitome of how low can you get. How much can you sell a plant for?”
”The plant stuff has just gotten crazy lately,” Trish diPietrae said,
”and it makes you so angry because it robs the city of the little beauty that it has left.
”I get out there and weed and prune and it makes me feel good,” she said. ”And the plants are taken for senseless reasons, and when you know it`s taken for drugs, it makes you even angrier.”
Twice in one month thieves made off with 100-foot garden hoses from a rack that diPietrae had bolted to her fence. ”You know where my hose is now? It`s in my den.”
A few weeks ago she was working in her front yard when she saw a man with a garbage bag circling into her back yard, where 12 potted plants sat on the ground. ”I had this terrible feeling,” she said. ”I walked back to check and, sure enough, they were all gone. And I chased him, and I screamed `Drop it!` and he did.”
It`s the `hooligans`
Some residents are digging in.
”Listen,” Gentieu said, ”this place is paradise to live except for the security. I love the racial mix, the ethnic mix, the income mix. I love the varied architecture on the street. It`s a wonderful mix of people. But we have these hooligans, and they just spoil everything for everybody. And if you run, you let the hooligans take over. And I`ll be damned if I do that. I love the city too much.”
Eric I. Mitchell said that three times in the last two years, flowers were stolen from the front of his office. At one point, he even had a bet with his staff to see how long a newly planted peony would last.
”Everything is a tradeoff,” he said. ”My perspective is I`m here and I`m going to fight. We`ve got to look out our windows and protect our shrubbery like it`s gold.”
What`s left outside his office now are a couple of wilting chrysanthemums-though Mitchell attributes their demise to passing dogs. –
