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Police allow car break-ins to become a Seattle growth industry

seattletimes.com

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Re: Police allow car break-ins to become a Seattle growth industry

#81

Post by king_jester »

panarky wrote: post #24

Take care of the small stuff and the big stuff will take care of itself. The broken windows theory is a criminological theory of the norm-setting and signaling effect of urban disorder and vandalism on additional crime and anti-social behavior. The theory states that maintaining and monitoring urban environments in a well-ordered condition may stop further vandalism and escalation into more serious crime[1]. From the…

The broken windows theory is not accurate and is extremely controversial in its implementations. Moreover, the kinds of things broken windows fallacy argues against are not petty theft, but things involving infrastructure and the status of neighborhoods.

Re: Police allow car break-ins to become a Seattle growth industry

#82

Post by kybernetyk »

tantalor wrote: post #64
iramiller wrote: post #47

Perhaps this is a also a growth opportunity for a private security firm. Call us, we will use our trained armed personnel to confront the suspects and return your stuff. I would hope that it would not take too many incidents of private security 'resolving' issues to see that a police force doing its job is a far more preferred solution.

Just call Phoenix Jones! Seriously, how much would you pay for private security to return your stolen iPhone?

Make it an insurance type of contract. Pay $9.95/mo and get your stuff back when it's stolen.

Re: Police allow car break-ins to become a Seattle growth industry

#83

Post by kirillzubovsky »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #40
Chevalier wrote: post #15

I really hate to see blind hatred for the police on HN. It's a tough goddamn job, people, made all the more so by political pressure to improve statistics. As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, police are forced to focus on serious crimes and solvable crimes and avoid minor and unsolvable crimes. Nobody wants it to work that way, but departments are hammered when they bring down crime stats. This story is pretty o…

It's true, though. They are not legally obliged to help you: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/04-278.ZS.html

Legalese is not my forte. Am I reading this correctly?

A woman called the police and told them that her husband, against a restraining order, came and took her children. Police did nothing. The husband then murdered the children, and a woman filed a suit against the police, saying they should've responded to her call.

The Police argued that it was essentially not their job to go after the husband, until an appropriate arrest warrant was issued, and therefore they were not at fault?

Fabulous...

Re: Police allow car break-ins to become a Seattle growth industry

#85

Post by rayiner »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #79

I used to commute between Manhattan to Stamford. A 5AM train would take me up and an 8, 9 or 10PM would haul me back. Staying awake for the duration of the return journey was rare. This led to curiosities: going to sleep in Stamford and waking up, four hours later, in Stamford again (Sartre had nothing on this fate) because you slept through arriving and then re-departing from Grand Central. Or waking up phoneless. I…

I used to take Metro-North from New Rochelle down to Grand Central, and I miss it so much. Four trains an hour during the rush, always arriving within a minute or two of schedule. The 8:03 Amtrak between Baltimore and DC hasn't been on time in two weeks. As for the wide socieconomic spectrum--the only thing that ever bothered me about the crowd on MNR was the drunk suburban kids that'd take the 1am with me Saturday morning. Nothing like coming home from a long day at work and having some 19 year old Westchester brat puke all over the floor.

Re: Police allow car break-ins to become a Seattle growth industry

#86

Post by rdl »

jedberg wrote: post #77
iramiller wrote: post #47

Perhaps this is a also a growth opportunity for a private security firm. Call us, we will use our trained armed personnel to confront the suspects and return your stuff. I would hope that it would not take too many incidents of private security 'resolving' issues to see that a police force doing its job is a far more preferred solution.

I don't think it is legal to use deadly force to retrieve stolen goods, yours or anyone else's. You'd have to staff your firm with off duty cops or something to skirt that law.

You don't use deadly force to retrieve the stolen goods; you use regular force to retrieve them (at a level supported by your insurer, which is far below the limits of the law), and then use deadly force if the thieves threaten your life in the course of doing so.

(Even the police are not supposed to be using deadly force to apprehend property crimes; the justification for deadly force is officer safety or the safety of others.)

Re: Police allow car break-ins to become a Seattle growth industry

#87

Post by dobbsbob »

raldi wrote: post #56
x0x0 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sf is the same -- the city is a dump, and people there tolerate a level of misbehavior from the street trash that is stunning. One of them attempted to kill my so by chasing her around a parked car with a screwdriver trying to stab her while a bunch of sf asshole pedestrians crossed the street to avoid getting involved. In the middle of the afternoon. We came from nyc and stuff like this -- and it's far from the only…

New York can also manage to win a World Series without allowing the city to be taken over for the night by violent, destructive mobs. That's because they have a much better funded, and well-run, police force.

A friend of mine in Washington DC can go down to a public park where they have movie night in the summer, and with a bunch of random people they can openly drink wine and enjoy a movie outside without incident.

Every time they have temporarily relaxed drinking laws to try something similar here like DC movie night it resulted in brawling, stabbings, street hobos showing up to scream gibberish and aggressively pan handle, and the audience got so wrecked ambulances had to be called. It's like the heavy regulations that the West Coast cities screws into society creates a community that turns to bedlam the moment those chains are temporarily removed.

Re: Police allow car break-ins to become a Seattle growth industry

#88

Post by sigstoat »

Chevalier wrote: post #55
jjoonathan wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> blind hatred for the police Reactions to a detailed first person account are "blind"? What, pray tell, is your standard of acceptable sources for a debate? > I understand why cops are leery of having citizens pursue and enforce vigilante justice. 1. The victim of theft did not "enforce vigilante justice" even when the police refused to help him. 2. The victim of theft did not propose enforcing vigilante justice at…

Sorry, but you're either deliberately or negligently misinterpreting my post. The cops ordered the author to stop pursuing the thieves, for fear of a shootout. They were not themselves afraid of shooting the thieves. The author seems to be quite correct in all his actions, and his anger is appropriate. The cops should have pursued his case, and their failure to do so is wrong. However, scan this thread for idiotic kn…

> Seattle PD failed to do their jobs in this case, and should step up enforcement of possible car break-ins -- but then the next HN story will be that cops are racist because they arrested felons for having car theft tools.

There's a nice wide middle ground between these two alternatives, where the cops arrest people when there is probable cause that they committed a specific crime.

Re: Police allow car break-ins to become a Seattle growth industry

#89

Post by psychometry »

freditup wrote: post #4

I don't understand this story. Why wouldn't the police do anything? If I'm an officer who's motivated by helping others, it's a clear way to do that. If I'm motivated by a desire for justice, easy way to promote that. If I'm motivated by power, I can go take down the thieves and bring them down a notch. Perhaps one explanation is that the police get enough zany people calling in about enough zany things that they don…

What incentive do the police have to actually help anyone? The police chief answers to the mayor, but everyone else in the department is pretty much unaccountable. Have a complaint about your PD's conduct? Great, fill out this complaint form so that they can file it away.

Unfortunately, police work isn't really appealing to your typical idealist who wants to better his/her community, so appealing to officers' sense of morality/duty won't work. This line of work is much more attractive to former high school bullies who want to carry a service weapon and wield power. That and lazy civil servants who won't lift a finger unless it's for overtime.

And the cream of the crop, those officers who rise in the ranks and guide department policy, are the ass-kissers who figure out how to make police work easier, not more effective. This story comes as no surprise to me.

Re: Police allow car break-ins to become a Seattle growth industry

#90

Post by psychometry »

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #52
randallsquared wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really believe that voting in team A instead of team B would have helped ordinary citizens?

Yes, I believe that our republic is strengthened if, occasionally, "throw the bums out" occurs. Even if it results in "meet the new boss, same as the old boss".

Not always. See: 2010 Tea Party backlash to Obama.
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