Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Train burglaries in LA

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 652 posts

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#321

Post by asiachick »

dusted wrote: post #102

My observation from the comment sections to this post-apocalyptic video is the following: People focusing on how to prevent the theft of these cars, funding police, armed guards on trans, better security. I think this is an interesting perspective, it's very "American", it's like it has been accepted by these commenters that rampant thievery is a perfectly natural part of life and so, must be worked around rather tha…

I see two ways to interpret this

(1) make sure everyone has enough and they won't steal

(2) promote a culture that stealing is unacceptable regardless of your situation

I don't personally believe (1) is sufficient nor will it solve the problem. Most people stealing are not "that" poor. They are not starving etc...

Instead they (we) have a culture that it's acceptable to steal. Even many well to do middle and upper middle class westerners feel like it's a right of passage to steal a few things, to shoplift once in a while, etc...

The places I've lived where theft is low didn't have much absolute poverty but they also had a culture of stealing is wrong almost regardless of your situation.

I have no clue how to promote that culture. it seems an impossible task. I'm confident though that the majority of the issue is culture , not poverty

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#322

Post by ErikCorry »

drewwwwww wrote: post #277
NeverFade wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When risking getting caught stealing is more attractive than working then it's safe to say the working opportunities for those people aren't worth almost anything. Except when these thefts are de-facto decriminalized in Califronia, and police is either defunded or directed not to fight these crimes, the "risk of getting caught" is effectively zero. That means that unless you start handing out iPhones for free in lo…

there has been no meaningful defunding of police in any major metropolitan area in california and no directive to not pursue property crime. police have not pursued property crime for decades. you are regurgitating authoritarian propaganda with no evidence.

> no directive to not pursue property crime. police have not pursued property crime for decades

If there's no directive, why is property crime not pursued?

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#323

Post by unclekev »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #128
Ansil849 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't have to be the lock that's secured. What about a hinge mechanism which takes a programmable amount of time to open the container door? If it takes 10 minutes for the door to open, the lock doesn't matter as much, since the thieves have a very limited amount of time before the trains start moving again, apparently.

That sounds like it could be quite error prone. If it's electronic, what about power failures? If mechanical, sounds like lots of intricate machined parts which will wear down over time.

I guess you could apply some of the same solutions used in refrigerated shipping containers for power redundancy.

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#324

Post by cm2187 »

imgabe wrote: post #77

Amazon has already started doing their own shipping. Maybe they'll hire their own mercenaries to guard the shipments too. Eventually they'll replace the government. United States of Amazon. We won't even have to change all our monogrammed stuff.

You are describing the rise of the East India Company!

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#325

Post by albert_e »

kqr wrote: post #120
Ansil849 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the thieves just lurk around the area, waiting for trains to come to a pause, and then break open the containers, I guess the containers are not very secure? And there's minimal patrols? It just seems like extraordinary 'easy pickings'.

Containers are secure in the sense that you can tell when you receive them whether someone has been inside them (and had the opportunity to change their contents). They are not secure in the sense that they prevent people from entering them.

so .. tamper-evident but not tamper-proof?

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#326

Post by ErikCorry »

avidphantasm wrote: post #319
dusted wrote: post #102

My observation from the comment sections to this post-apocalyptic video is the following: People focusing on how to prevent the theft of these cars, funding police, armed guards on trans, better security. I think this is an interesting perspective, it's very "American", it's like it has been accepted by these commenters that rampant thievery is a perfectly natural part of life and so, must be worked around rather tha…

We (Americans) don’t solve big problems, just like we don’t deliver justice for big crimes. The rot is deep.

I wonder how American it is. It's illegal to beg in Denmark. It's illegal to sleep rough in Germany. The police will absolutely bother you if they catch you at either.

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#328

Post by rob74 »

dusted wrote: post #102

My observation from the comment sections to this post-apocalyptic video is the following: People focusing on how to prevent the theft of these cars, funding police, armed guards on trans, better security. I think this is an interesting perspective, it's very "American", it's like it has been accepted by these commenters that rampant thievery is a perfectly natural part of life and so, must be worked around rather tha…

Good observation - my first though when reading this was "wow, didn't know this happens in the US, until now I only heard about things like this from third world countries". I mean, sure, crime happens everywhere, but you have to be pretty desperate to do things like this (relatively high risk of injury or getting caught, relatively low chance of finding something really valuable). Then I realized that unfortunately, despite being one of the richest countries in the world, many US citizens have standards of living comparable to a third world country...

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#330

Post by vanilla_nut »

snowgrove wrote: post #167
Z0rr0 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are confusing high profile art theft in Europe with low profile UPS theft in the US. The trains are clearly being robbed out of desperation by the poorest citizens. If those citizens lived in the EU, they would have free healthcare, free education, unemployment subsidies and housing. And so they would not be forced to steal our packages.

>The trains are clearly being robbed out of desperation by the poorest citizens. That isn’t clear to me at all. In Washington DC, for example, much of the recent increase in theft (grand theft auto especially) has been committed by unsupervised juveniles. AFAICT they do it because they’re bored, it’s easy, it’s exciting, and they generally escape punishment. Who’s to say it’s not a similar situation with these train…

In Denver, we experienced a huge increase in bike theft because a massive crime ring was exporting them to Mexico and then reselling them for thousands. Sometimes crime isn’t desperation or opportunistic (though Denver still has plenty of opportunistic thefts), it can be organized too!
Post reply on HN