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

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101–110 of 141 posts

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

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't there two locks? One, a master keyed lock for post office employees to fill the boxes and the other is individually keyed for customer access. Perhaps the crooks obtained a master key by either bribing an employee, cloned one, or stole one. Back in high school a friend was obsessed with the MTA subway and had a neighbor who was an MTA employee. He somehow convinced them to hand over their keys which had both t…

> All it took was one irresponsible employee handing their keys to a 16 YO. Sometimes not even. As a semi-related personal story, many years ago in university some friends and I set out to reverse-engineer the master keys. All it took was buying 10x of the same blank from an online retailer for ~$12, cutting 6/7 positions to the same dephs of our dorm keys, then iterating the last remaining position down one depth at…

> steam tunnels, roofs, and penthouses explored,

Most of those should be explicitly open anyway. If a steam tunnel isn't safe for a few students to be in maintenance should need extra training to enter it as well. Roofs are too valuable spaces to make off limits (this is a rant should apply to all flat-top buildings). A penthouse might be a private space if so stay out, but many of them serve public functions at a university and should be open.

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

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> being the child of and raised by terrorists (and other evil people) should automatically disqualify you from certain jobs Wat.

You think that the children of dictators, mass murderers and terrorists should be allowed to be politicians? Here's a question for you, would you vote for the child of a KKK member?

Here's a counter-example from the real world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandra_Mussolini

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

#103
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that even when the DA was trying to pursue stuff, the SFPD refused to help, and forced the DA's office to do stuff like move evidence in a U-haul truck. https://www.ksbw.com/article/sfpd-refused-to-help-stop-san-f...

I agree with you on this one case. But this was after years of him letting criminals go. This case was in the run up to the recall in which he was removed from office by SF voters for being too soft on crime.

That was the narrative that was presented. However, though the data made available by the DA's office is limited and flawed, I don't think the story is really borne out.

1 year after the recall, violent crime was up.

https://missionlocal.org/2023/06/one-year-after-recall-viole...

After a little more than a year in office, she had raised the conviction rate slightly, but had a lower charge-filling rate -- i.e. charged fewer things but won more.

> in her first 15 months, raised the city’s conviction rate for the first time in eight years, according to data from her office.

> Despite the reversal in conviction rates, it appears that Jenkins is taking fewer individual cases to court. Her charge-filing rate is about eight percent lower this year than last.

> While conviction rates have risen slightly, the total percentage of cases charged, or prosecuted, by the DA has remained relatively flat.

This also came with a shift towards more convictions for petty theft and narcotics, and less use of diversion programs. But given that the charging-filing rate actually decreased, I think this implies that other more serious stuff was being charged less. So the "soft on crime" guy actually was filing charges at a higher overall rate, and was prioritizing the more serious crimes.

https://missionlocal.org/2023/09/sf-da-brooke-jenkins-revers...

Note, I tried to view the DA data dashboards today and none of them even load for me. The article above shows top-line rates but not with a breakdown by the type of violation.

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

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> being the child of and raised by terrorists (and other evil people) should automatically disqualify you from certain jobs Wat.

You think that the children of dictators, mass murderers and terrorists should be allowed to be politicians? Here's a question for you, would you vote for the child of a KKK member?

> would you vote for the child of a KKK member?

Idk. Depends on what they believe. Plenty of kids of Nazis and Confederates became upstanding citizens.

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

#105
post #8
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 think it heavily depends on what local district attorneys policies are. Police may not see a point in taking a risk by apprehending someone just for them to be released hours later anyway. Not a huge fan of US police departments in general but this isn't necessarily all on them.

You are right about that, friend in Nevada county had his house broken into, guy stole some stuff including a rifle, drank one of his beers. Cops came dusted for prints, took the empty beer can. And nothing came of it.

Two years later gets a call from a detective they got the guy. He got arrested they took his DNA and it was a match for the DNA on the beer can. So they charged him for the break in and stealing the rifle.

Cops in the Bay Area would never even bother with that.

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

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn’t this the broken windows philosophy that may or may not have reduced crime in NYC in the mid 90s? It seems like cracking down on low level crime should reduce bigger crimes, but the research seems to become politicized based on who instituted the policy.

The cost of punishment has also skyrocketed. Keeping someone in jail "a few years to cool off" costs a fortune.

Having some one punch random women on the subway a few times a year also costs a fortune

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

#107
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…

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Are you really making a thinly-veiled argument for ethnostates? Careful, your racism is showing.

Society isn't an algorithm that should be optimized for max efficiency/productivity anyways. A completely unregulated market like you allude to is like an ouroboros. It will consume itself because unchecked growth is unsustainable.

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

#108
post #19
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.

They're also not doing that either. Something else is going on

https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/11nbnxw/san_f...

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

#109
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is insane the amount of money police officers and their pension funds get paid. Yet??

Some public schools have played around with the idea of "performance-based" compensation, where teachers get paid more if they deliver better outcomes (unfortunately generally measured by standardized test scores) than would be expected on average, given the students coming in. This is mean to be about a 'value add', so teachers in schools with high socio-economic status students who were already going to score well…

The only crime statistic that is pretty reliable is the murder rate. The vast majority of murder victims are found.

For lesser crimes the numbers can't be trusted. Many victims don't bother to file reports because they're afraid or they don't believe that law enforcement will act. Some police forces even have an unofficial policy of discouraging victims from filing official reports in order to minimize workload and make their statistics look better.

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

#110
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…

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What a unfettered load of bullshit.

Steal from "normal people" and nothing happens; steal from the owner class and _then_ see what happens.

The pettiness of the crime doesn't matter, what matters is the class the victim belongs to. That's a feature of capitalism.

"Corruption" is not an exclusive feature of socialism.

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