> When someone has their car stolen, they do not take solace in the fact that...
But people aren't responding to their car being stolen, are they? They (we?) are usually responding to a story about someone else's car being stolen. Or a story about violent crime against someone we've never met. And that's what the statistics do show - there are disproportionately far more angry people than actual victims.
We're getting outraged because we hear regular stories about unfair things happening to people we've never met.
And I'm not suggesting these events don't matter just because they're happening to others. But it is incorrect to conflate what are effectively random and unlikely events happening to strangers as some sort of unacceptable level of threat to ourselves.
This is a challenge rooted in human nature that I don't pretend to have any solution to. Nevertheless, I think it's fair to reject any of this as an excuse for outrage or the vigilantism that Citizen promotes.
> The attitude of the police and the population at large is if you left ANYTHING in your car it’s your fault for baiting the car.
... Is that not the attitude of the police _everywhere_, though? I've never heard of the police anywhere taking much of an interest in items stolen from cars; it's not like they really have a realistic way to pursue that even if they wanted to.
> I think the point here is that filing a truthful police report about a stolen item isn’t going to get you in trouble.
> This has nothing to do with other systemic issues that are off-topic here.
And I rather think my point was that the “other systemic issues” are not off-topic here because they are why police interaction as a reporter/victim is not, and even more relevantly here is not perceived to be risk-free in a number of less-socially-privileged segments of society, and that policies which impose mandatory law enforcement interactions are (and are known to be by firms adopting them) effective means of disincentivizing engagement with whatever function is gatekept by those policies from people in those communities, not merely excluding “scammers”.
I know someone who had their car stolen in Manchester, basically the police said they don't even have the time nor the resources to come out, they gave him a case number and said to let his insurer handle it.
And the thing is, two days later he actually found his car sitting in a parking lot of a supermarket somewhere, rang the police, and they said "....ok? what do you want us to do?". He said that he would expect them to come out and look for prints or whatever - they said they don't have anyone available to do this, if he still has the keys he should take the car and be happy it was found.
I honestly think in UK unless it's an actual murder your chances of getting a successful intervention from Police are close to zero. They are just way too underfunded and understaffed, I do remember reading that some places like Manchester have like one policeman for 100k people. It's impossible to do effective policing with that kind of force.
I live in the UK and I feel like this is the crux of the issue. I am an active member of a sports car forum in the UK and it's terrifying how little police does in case of theft, even when the house was broken into to get the keys. If you get someone to come out and write down a report that is a miracle in itself - in 90% of cases you are just given a case number and told to speak with your insurer, nothing is ever done. I know a guy whose Range Rover was stolen, he reported it, no one came out - then few days later found it parked in a car park nearby, he rang the police to tell them that he found his stolen car, where it is, and asked if they want to come over and maybe catch whoever comes for it(or you know, maybe take fingerprints and such)? Nah, he was told that if he still has the key he can just take it, they don't have any officers to actually come out anyway. I have friends who were robbed, burgled ,and literally nothing is ever done. There is zero police on the roads around where I live, I'm actually surprised people still follow the rules of the road because realistically, the chances of ever running into a police car are somewhere around zero.
It just feels like police in the UK has been gutted to the point that unless you are literally being shot/stabbed, there is not enough resources to actually help or investigate anything. It's a shell of a functional service.
>I suspect that's really just an emotional lashing-out at a pervasive problem.
It's not. It's my personal experience and was stated that way. I, unambiguously, have never once seen the police improve a situation. I've never even really heard about it happening.
It's good that it's happened to you - it probably makes you feel more secure in the place where you live.
> who here can already see clearly the NYPD officer's completely blank stare when you show them exactly where the car thief took your car. "did you see them do it? otherwise it's not our problem"
With NYPD, it's even worse: "if we didn't see it, we can't do anything about it". This is, of course, entirely false, but good luck trying to argue with a cop and getting them to do their job.
Heck, NYPD refuses to even take police reports on stolen property (which is a huge hassle because insurance usually requires a police report as a prerequisite to filing claims). You literally have to argue with them just to get them to file the report - not even do anything about the issue, mind you, just to get them to fill out the form.
> Police only work _AFTER_ the car has been stolen.
They can also take proactive measures, like leaving bait cars and arresting the people who steal those. There was a very amusing television series made out of the footage from this.
> When you have somebody actively looking to steal $THING, they will find it and steal it.
The goal is to remove these people from the general population. I don’t actually think deterrence works; these people just need to be identified, caught, and incarcerated until they outgrow their antisocial behavior.
> If you set up some bait cars and catch some thieves, they will probably just be replaced with other low level men
This is a maddening learned helplessness. In some cities the majority of crime is done by less than 100 people. You can find dozens of examples of this, eg purse thefts in the 90's being one person, or 90% of bike theft being attributed to 11 people. Both anecdotes: https://twitter.com/AnechoicMedia_/status/176177303735813354...
Claiming that new people will magically spring up to take their place is nonsensical, so long as the punishment is not letting them go 5 hours later, as it is in some cities. There is no reason to believe that prosecuting crime will not lower crime and it is fabulous to believe that.
> 1. This has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion at hand
We can't expect to solve the car crime problem by only beefing up car security. It also requires holding people accountable for their behavior. Besides, what a ridiculous thing to say. This is the discussion at hand, partially by virtue of you talking about it.
> you’re literally just pulling a specific criminal case out of your ass in a country of 315 million.
So you agree they are clearly in the wrong with this one case then? Besides, this case is a result of policy set by the largest city in the country. We can look at policies in other cities like LA and SF. They do nothing to dispel the fact that the policies on crime are very weak.
> 2. The perps were charged and indicted, hardly ‘not enforcing laws’.
They were released in 4 hours then fled the city
> 3. Law enforcement and prosecutorial discretion exists in every developed country in the world.
And no one is criticizing that it exists. The judgment is just extremely poor sometimes. Wouldn't you agree the judgment was poor in this case? Do you think it was the right decision to release them after 4 hours?
> If people have learnt not to report crimes (because it makes no difference)
I call bullshit on people saying there's widespread crime not being reported. If your car window got smashed if you are either:
- A Lyft or Uber driver
- Your car was a rental
- You have a lease on your car
- Have "premium" or expensive home or car insurance
you get actual money from filing a police report from your insurance provider.
If your gadgets get stolen in the street a lot of credit cards or stuff like Apple care, and also some home insurance, will cover part of getting a replacement. But you also have to file a police report.
I really doubt most people are "learning to not report crime" when they literally can get payed for it.
> i saw a guy breaking into a car. a block later, two homeless people were arguing and then started beating each other
Implied is that you didn't do anything about either of these things you witnessed. I don't mean to single you out, but collectively for the people of the city: wouldn't it be better if you stopped expecting somebody else to fix the problems? Instead, be part of a better community by trying to right what wrongs you can. At the very least, photograph the thief and send it to the police, if not trying to stop him yourself. Similar for the fighting homeless people.
Yeah, maybe that's dangerous. I don't want to start the conversation of Californians trying so hard to give up their right to self defense. But maybe that's the reason we don't see such a big problem in, e.g., Texas.
> telling people not to leave anything visible in their cars
I effing hate that attitude. We shouldn't have to live in a society where every moment you have to be vigilant against the bad guys.
It keeps piling on. I suspect if we keep this up there will be signs "don't use your phone in public" (because people will steal phones from your hands). "don't eat in public" (because people will steal food from you). "don't drive a car" (because your car will be wrecked/stolen). "Don't leave your house" (because outside you're likely to be mugged).
The whole point of having police instead of having to walk around with your own armor and armed guards is so we can not have to put up with this stuff. But nearly everyone, at least on the west, takes it for granted that "it's just the way it is". It's not. It's the way we let it be. Not every place/country has this issue. We let it get there by both by encouraging it ("looking for a partner in crime") and by letting it slide (see police response above)
This isn't just SF. In Berlin I was told not to put my bag between my legs because someone would steal it from behind. In Paris a friend had her wallet stolen from her purse in ~15 seconds. She reached into her purse for her camera, took a picture, looked back into her purse, saw her wallet was gone.
> This all makes me believe that the biggest danger to our civilization are we ourselves - and our massive overreactions to media-manufactured non-problems.
Completely agree with this point, but it's irrelevant to the subject of unaccountable police (although it's quite relevant to the media's derailing the issue into racist tripe)
Any single case where police and prosecutors harm someone who is neither subsequently found guilty nor compensated for the harm suffered is an injustice. It doesn't matter if its 10% of cases, 0.01%, or a single innocent person who was detained for a mere 2 hours of their life. The relative frequency isn't important - these cases simply shouldn't exist, the same way a hypothetical mayor's brother not being investigated for murder shouldn't exist.
Better top-down policies and training won't fix the police or justice system - they need better incentives to change behavior at the lowest levels. The kind of incentives where they can no longer push the damage from their moral hazard onto unlucky victims, and are instead bound by the laws they purport to uphold.
Public safety departments everywhere are in denial how absolutely, utterly, batshit pissed off people are about property crime.
If police never investigate or arrest a single person or do one preventative thing against people breaking into your car, your house, stealing your bike, scamming you on the phone or on the web, taking random crap, no matter how big or small, you're going to prefer vigilante justice.
>> Fewer than half of the crimes in the survey were reported to the police.
That really gets to me. I find all reported of non-reported crimes to be very untrustworthy. Police at least know what is and is not a crime. Often police are confronted by people who believe themselves victims, but who are in fact not. A person can feel wronged, a person can even be injured, without any crime taking place. If we draw statistics from unreported crimes then we are relying upon lay opinion in an area open to mistake.
>Crime stats and polling of people’s perception of crime show this as clearly the wrong approach for instance.
The only crime stat you can trust is murder and that's because bodies can't be hidden (easily).
Everything else gets swept under the rug.
When I wanted to report my car broken into I was hung up on three times because of a poor quality line, which was fine before I told them what I was calling for. When I went there in person I had to wait 40 minutes for someone to take my report and give me a reference number for my insurance.
> "I have a hard time believing that the only thing that's keeping people from stealing shit is that there's a cop with a gun somewhere down the line."
How many news articles about porch pirates have there been? That's just the tip of the iceberg; I certainly have had a number of things stolen just outside my home over the years.
> Police only work _AFTER_ the car has been stolen.
Right.. but the goal of the police work is to find the criminal and put them in jail for a while. This is meant to be a social deterrent, wherein, the punishment for the crime makes committing the crime not worthwhile.
> When you have somebody actively looking to steal $THING, they will find it and steal it.
Exactly.. which is why we use jail. You also seem to be suggesting that the lack of anti theft wouldn't matter to the overall rate, it just makes these particular cars more likely to be targeted. There are obvious and measurable problems with this idea.
> So it is a failure of policy, not policing.
Well.. if you don't have enough police to actually find and put criminals in jail, you can call that a policy problem, but the policy failure is simply not having enough police.
But people aren't responding to their car being stolen, are they? They (we?) are usually responding to a story about someone else's car being stolen. Or a story about violent crime against someone we've never met. And that's what the statistics do show - there are disproportionately far more angry people than actual victims.
We're getting outraged because we hear regular stories about unfair things happening to people we've never met.
And I'm not suggesting these events don't matter just because they're happening to others. But it is incorrect to conflate what are effectively random and unlikely events happening to strangers as some sort of unacceptable level of threat to ourselves.
This is a challenge rooted in human nature that I don't pretend to have any solution to. Nevertheless, I think it's fair to reject any of this as an excuse for outrage or the vigilantism that Citizen promotes.
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