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Californian fed up with stolen mail sends Apple AirTag to herself to catch thief

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Re: Californian fed up with stolen mail sends Apple AirTag to herself to catch thief

#81

Post by _fat_santa »

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #42
bko wrote: post #4

I've come to believe that acceptance of crime is a choice by officials. Many low level crimes I've witnessed are trivial to catch. For instance, find out where porch thieves like to hit. Plant a package there and park a patrol car there for a few hours and chances are you'll catch someone. Or put in a tracker. A cop can get a bike stolen in hours in the right neighborhoods in NYC. If a youtuber can park their car wit…

I wish I understood the root cause of why places like SF and Oakland have given up on policing. Is it an ideological thing (think Chesa Boudin & co), where keeping people accountable for antisocial behavior is considered a form of oppression from a more fortunate class? Or is it more of an issue with there being too much bureaucracy to be able to push any change to policing through? Or are the voters simply too eager…

Its not one thing but a combination of factors.

- Police budgets getting slashed and police forces being reduced.

- Legislation like Prop47 (which made shoplifting of goods - Progressive DA's refusing to prosecute low level crimes.

Individually all these changes aren't so bad and make sense on paper, but put them together in practice and it's a recipe for disaster. If you're a criminal thinking about robbing a store in SF for example, you know that:

1. The police likely won't show up so you likely won't get caught

2. Even if you do get caught, as long as you stole Personally I think CA needs a "3 strikes" style law for low level petty crimes like shoplifting. The problem I keep hearing is that even if someone gets arrested for shoplifting, they are back out on the street the next day and there's no greater punishment for repeat offenders, so as a result you get a small group of people that do most of the crime and get arrested 50+ times per year with no consequence besides getting locked up for one night (at most).

Re: Californian fed up with stolen mail sends Apple AirTag to herself to catch thief

#82

Post by bhj »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #59
bArray wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's because policing in general is not at the standard it once was. Currently police are only rewarded for "big busts", but it's the smaller crimes that make all the difference to the individual. In the UK for example, only something like 4% of burglaries get investigated at all. We're talking about the police not turning up at all. A neighbour down the street had a car stolen from their drive, under no less…

In the US it is because District Attorneys have an explicit, open policy of not prosecuting petty crime. That has led to police not investigating or arresting, because there is no point. https://crownschool.uchicago.edu/news-events/magazine/leadin...

The linked article says:

> He [Epperson] is currently conducting a multisite study in Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Louis that examines the development and implementation of deferred prosecution programs, a prosecutor-led innovation to divert people with nonviolent charges from traditional criminal justice processing.

Seems reasonable to me, and a far cry from "an explicit, open policy of not prosecuting petty crime" that is somehow country-wide.

Re: Californian fed up with stolen mail sends Apple AirTag to herself to catch thief

#83

Post by skeeter2020 »

bko wrote: post #4

I've come to believe that acceptance of crime is a choice by officials. Many low level crimes I've witnessed are trivial to catch. For instance, find out where porch thieves like to hit. Plant a package there and park a patrol car there for a few hours and chances are you'll catch someone. Or put in a tracker. A cop can get a bike stolen in hours in the right neighborhoods in NYC. If a youtuber can park their car wit…

a HUGE part of this is current drug-use trends. Opioids are having a sea-change impact on society. This is hugely complex, involving everything from pharma "legit" drugs, to global trade patterns & efficiencies, how we view, treat and punish drug use, the people in our communities impacted the most, and pretty much every other dimension. It's not the same thing as say, heroin, when ANYBODY could (knowingly or not)use fentanyl once and die, or become incredibly addicted so quickly.

Re: Californian fed up with stolen mail sends Apple AirTag to herself to catch thief

#84

Post by stahtops »

pton_xd wrote: post #19
bko wrote: post #4

I've come to believe that acceptance of crime is a choice by officials. Many low level crimes I've witnessed are trivial to catch. For instance, find out where porch thieves like to hit. Plant a package there and park a patrol car there for a few hours and chances are you'll catch someone. Or put in a tracker. A cop can get a bike stolen in hours in the right neighborhoods in NYC. If a youtuber can park their car wit…

That doesn't pay. Pulling over a citizen with a job and citing them for speeding is a much more lucrative use of their time. Both are against the law, so they're doing their job either way. Kind of. Although as another commenter noted, I've noticed they've become strangely lax about even citing moving violations since Covid. Makes you wonder what they are even doing, then.

My understanding is that moving violations are perceived as high risk, low reward.

(1) The stop is dangerous because you don't know who the vehicle occupants are. If the driver is medium bad and runs, the public has low appetite for high speed pursuits that may cause collateral damage or put the public in danger. There's also the chance it's a very bad guy... someone in a stolen vehicle with a warrant out for a murder charge. Are they going to just give up and come quietly? Probably not.

(2) For a given region there is a list of things that the DA and/or judges are perceived as being soft on. There's little/no appetite from LEO to apprehend bad guy who is just going to be back out on the street a short time later.

So to the LEO, you want me to pull people over for speeding, but if it's a medium bad person they flee -> no pursuit allowed, and if it's a very bad person maybe they attack me? No thx, I'll wait for dispatch to call.

https://www.police1.com/traffic-patrol/articles/police-resea...

https://www.wcax.com/2022/01/13/prosecutor-takes-aim-chitten...

https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2021/06/stop-start-or-c...

Re: Californian fed up with stolen mail sends Apple AirTag to herself to catch thief

#85

Post by skeeter2020 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #39
pton_xd wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't pay. Pulling over a citizen with a job and citing them for speeding is a much more lucrative use of their time. Both are against the law, so they're doing their job either way. Kind of. Although as another commenter noted, I've noticed they've become strangely lax about even citing moving violations since Covid. Makes you wonder what they are even doing, then.

> Pulling over a citizen with a job and citing them for speeding is a much more lucrative use of their time The solution may be in segregating the police from the traffic cops. Policework is dangerous and specialised. Its officers need a lot of training and good pay. Traffic cops are basically humans trained to be cameras, inasmuchas 90% of what they do can be automated.

What I would rather see is a 4th branch (police/fire/emr) added that focuses on drugs. Sending police for a drug OD or psychotic episode is gas on the fire; an ambulance can't respond to a potentially dangerous situation without security.

Re: Californian fed up with stolen mail sends Apple AirTag to herself to catch thief

#86

Post by skeeter2020 »

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #45
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pulling over a citizen with a job and citing them for speeding is a much more lucrative use of their time The solution may be in segregating the police from the traffic cops. Policework is dangerous and specialised. Its officers need a lot of training and good pay. Traffic cops are basically humans trained to be cameras, inasmuchas 90% of what they do can be automated.

The US is strangely staunchly opposed to traffic cameras, whereas you barely ever see cops on the roads in many EU countries, and yet traffic tickets flow abundantly.

this is a good thing, I think. Traffic safety is about feedback that changes behaviour - immediate feedback. Traffic cameras and photo radar are about revenue generation.

Imagine if you pull aside your toddler tonight and take away their ice cream cone, because they sad a bad word 2 weeks ago.

Re: Californian fed up with stolen mail sends Apple AirTag to herself to catch thief

#87

Post by ssl-3 »

1propionyl wrote: post #54

I'm glad the sheriff actually did something, my experience with a stolen Apple Watch has been that police will not act if the location is a multi-floor multi-unit dwelling (e.g. a house converted into a duplex), since they don't know which unit to issue a search warrant for and won't issue one for the entire building. The underlying issue here is that AirTags do not provide any sort of altitude information. The X/Y r…

AirTags don't really provide any information at all except for a periodic 32-bit BLE beacon for any iPhones (or iWhatevers) that may be nearby, and sometimes participation in some fairly magic (largely undocumented) UWB RF tricks in Precision Finding mode with a compatible device.

The AirTag itself has no idea where it is. It doesn't have GPS or any other ways for it to determine its own location. It has essentially nothing to provide.

Re: Californian fed up with stolen mail sends Apple AirTag to herself to catch thief

#88

Post by brendoelfrendo »

brigadier132 wrote: post #51
8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I understood the root cause of why places like SF and Oakland have given up on policing. Is it an ideological thing (think Chesa Boudin & co), where keeping people accountable for antisocial behavior is considered a form of oppression from a more fortunate class? Or is it more of an issue with there being too much bureaucracy to be able to push any change to policing through? Or are the voters simply too eager…

It's ideology fueled by fabricated science. Things like drug and petty crime decriminalization have just completely failed at achieving their goals and these policies were backed by studies that have consistently failed to replicate. The people behind these things are serious hard core ideologues. Remember Chesa Boudin? His parents were literal communist terrorists that murdered a cop while robbing a bank (when I say…

> How does someone like that become a DA?

Presumably by going to law school, doing work in the DA's office, and eventually campaigning for election. His track record as DA notwithstanding, I think it should be obvious that the crimes of the parents are not the crimes of the child, and I think it's kinda funny that you'd make that claim in a thread about policing actual crime.

Re: Californian fed up with stolen mail sends Apple AirTag to herself to catch thief

#89

Post by skeeter2020 »

toast0 wrote: post #50
NorthTheRock wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> DA refuses to prosecute crime Have there been any actual documented instances of this? I see it cited a lot, but rarely any specific names of DAs or cases attached to it, and it feels like an easy excuse for police to not even attempt to do their jobs.

Even without a specific policy to not prosecute crimes, there's a pipeline problem. Courts are backed up and jails are full. DAs have to prioritize cases so that important cases are prosecuted within the statutes of limitations and constitutional speedy trial limits. Arresting people under suspicion of crimes that are unlikely to be prosecuted isn't very effective and nobody likes doing ineffective work.

or everything goes perfectly but the punishment is time served, a fine they can't pay anyway or some sort of service & promise not to do it anymore. I believe police and prosecuters want to do good work, but they also want the biggest impact of their work.

Re: Californian fed up with stolen mail sends Apple AirTag to herself to catch thief

#90

Post by JumpCrisscross »

bityard wrote: post #79
8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is strangely staunchly opposed to traffic cameras, whereas you barely ever see cops on the roads in many EU countries, and yet traffic tickets flow abundantly.

It's not strange at all. Driving is dangerous enough as it is. Adding the extra anxiety of getting lit up by a speed-limit camera for accidentally exceeding the speed limit does not make it safer. Plus, we Americans are inventive. If there were no traffic cops, the wealthy and mischievous would simply modify their cars to hide their license plates when driving past speeding cameras on their normal route.

> the wealthy and mischievous would simply modify their cars to hide their license plates when driving past speeding cameras on their normal route

This is a good way to meet the local police in any jurisdiction with cameras.

We hate speed cameras because Americans like to speed. There is a minority that is privacy focussed. But the majority hate it because most we drive unsafely [1].

[1] https://newsroom.aaa.com/2016/02/87-percent-of-drivers-engag...

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