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

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121–130 of 141 posts

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

#121
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. > And it's only a handful of people engaged in this low level crime. Arrest a few. And if they have a dozen prior arrests, like many of them do, keep them in jail for a while. The USA easily has the highest incarceration rate in the industrialized world, and yet Americans like this say…

> Their solution to this high level of crime is yet more incarceration. True, more incarceration doesn't seem to fix anything. However less incarceration also does not fix anything (see downtown San Francisco). > Finland and Norway have a much lower rate of incarceration Finland and Norway are effectively monocultures. They don't have the same social issues we do. Look at any 1st world monoculture and you see the sam…

There are plenty of “multicultures” out there that don’t have the problems the US has.

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

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "key" which opens the entire PO Box "front" is extremely easy to obtain; and if you don't have one, a crowbar/lockpicks [used just once] will simultaneously open entire ~250 box panels.

I know many apartment building mailboxes have a front key, but shouldn't PO Boxes at the post office be filled from the BACK?

Not every post office has a "back," albeit many due.

Many of the ones with backs still have keyed fronts; apartment complexes are notorious for front-access break-ins.

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

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seattle thought about doing that but reactionaries framed it as defunding the police department so they elected a more conservative council who moved it back.

> reactionaries framed it as defunding the police department Couldn't one hit back by increasing funding for the resulting police and traffic enforcement departments?

They're millions of dollars in the hole already, and the problem was that low information voters read "police department budget: 2020, 100 million. 2021, 80 million" and no farther.

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

#124
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any sources to this? I've long thought traffic cops should be their own separate entity, and would like to know how this played out

I wasn't even aware Seattle pulled people over for speeding much at all. WSP on the highways yes, but on the city streets there is not really any traffic enforcement by cops (outside of parking). Seattle went from like 40k/yr moving violation tickets to 3k/yr over the last decade-ish. I think GP might have been talking about the proposal to split parking enforcement out of the police department: https://mynorthwest.c…

Yes, I did mean parking, oops.

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

#125
post #79

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.

They already do that. Seattle at least is populated by expensive cars with rounded semi-transparent plastic covers over the plate that are intended to block camera capture.

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

#126
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…

In California, state law holds that stealing merchandise worth $950 or less is just a misdemeanor, which means that law enforcement probably won’t bother to investigate, and if they do, prosecutors will let it go. Most packages are probably under the $950 threshold, so there is no enforcement. Why bother investigating and arresting when the DA won't prosecute and they'll be let out immediately?

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

#127
post #126
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…

In California, state law holds that stealing merchandise worth $950 or less is just a misdemeanor, which means that law enforcement probably won’t bother to investigate, and if they do, prosecutors will let it go. Most packages are probably under the $950 threshold, so there is no enforcement. Why bother investigating and arresting when the DA won't prosecute and they'll be let out immediately?

This is repeatedly brought up, but the same barrier is over $1500 in Texas[1]. Sooo..what is happening here? I am genuinely confused.

[1] https://www.reneaflores.com/criminal-defense/theft-crimes/mi...

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

#128

> stolen out of her mailbox at the Los Alamos Post Office All the P.O. mailboxes I've ever seen have locks. What's going on? Was the thief actually a USPS employee?

Locks keep honest people honest. They are pretty universally easy to bypass if you are willing to put a little work into it.

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

#129
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…

[flagged]

What do you mean by "socialist policies" exactly? Ignoring petty crime is somehow a socialist policy?

You say all of those things and the mention the Soviet Union etc. Which makes very little sense because if modern Western countries have enacted socialist policies then the USSR couldn't have been "socialist" (or the other way around).

Also what do you mean by "productivity"? Because by almost any measure it has been going up by quite a lot over the last few decades.

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

#130
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've come to believe that acceptance of crime is a choice by officials. Many low level crimes I've witnessed are trivial to catch. > And it's only a handful of people engaged in this low level crime. Arrest a few. And if they have a dozen prior arrests, like many of them do, keep them in jail for a while. The USA easily has the highest incarceration rate in the industrialized world, and yet Americans like this say…

> If you want to lower crime, ask a Finn or Norwegian how they did it.

Has crime there ever been high? If not how can they tell you anything if they never had to do anything to "fix" it?

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