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

How London thieves exploit organisational silos

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 53 posts

Re: How London thieves exploit organisational silos

#21

Post by angry_octet »

dTal wrote: post #3
Traster wrote: post #2

This honestly doesn't seem like a problem with organisational silos. The level of efficiency the author is suggesting is completely unnecessary. If the police had done some very basic police work, followed up the unauthorized transactions at each location for CCTV they would have gotten a very clear idea of who this person was. In fact hell, find out which phones pinged the phone tower near each of the locations at e…

>find out which phones pinged the phone tower near each of the locations at each of the relevant times I don't know that that is actually possible. The police can access the records for any one number, but accessing all the records for a set of towers in a given time window is a different matter. I would actually love to know if this is within their capabilities.

It totally is within the capability of telcos. It's a database query away. Whether the police can get a warrant for it is a different matter. I'm not au fait with the details of RIPA post the EU decision [1][2] but it is safe to say the barriers are not that high. Meta data (like cell tower signal strength) is almost certainly available. Towers log everything, and location is a valued derived product.

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/uk-surveillance-regime... [2] https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mediapolicyproject/2016/01/05/some-t...

Re: How London thieves exploit organisational silos

#23

Post by [deleted] »

jarym wrote: post #20

Nicely written article and I am sorry for what happened. Similar thing happened to a friend of mine some years ago and since then I don’t dare take my bag out during evenings. Re The Met - it’s a sad state of affairs with policing in the UK. It comes down to the following: police only ‘care’ to investigate or deal with 3 types of criminals: 1. Terrorists 2. Paedophiles 3. Speeding motorists If you wish to do any othe…

[deleted]

Re: How London thieves exploit organisational silos

#24

Post by rtpg »

Traster wrote: post #2

This honestly doesn't seem like a problem with organisational silos. The level of efficiency the author is suggesting is completely unnecessary. If the police had done some very basic police work, followed up the unauthorized transactions at each location for CCTV they would have gotten a very clear idea of who this person was. In fact hell, find out which phones pinged the phone tower near each of the locations at e…

Even given that, there are only so many police officers. Even assuming that it would take a person about 30 minutes of work to get an ID of the person, that's Yet Another Person in the system. The extra work goes through the entire chain of operations (can we automate away the court system too? Who is going to drive down to tell the criminal they need to show up?)

There is a checklist with hundreds of items that will appear if a person like this gets picked up. And a hell of a lot of work after that. This is the really dumb pragmatic argument to not being a police state (beyond the other arguments)

Re: How London thieves exploit organisational silos

#25

Post by rndgermandude »

jarym wrote: post #20

Nicely written article and I am sorry for what happened. Similar thing happened to a friend of mine some years ago and since then I don’t dare take my bag out during evenings. Re The Met - it’s a sad state of affairs with policing in the UK. It comes down to the following: police only ‘care’ to investigate or deal with 3 types of criminals: 1. Terrorists 2. Paedophiles 3. Speeding motorists If you wish to do any othe…

You forgot

4. Steal swords from random motorists[1], find dangerous rusty butter knifes[2]

and 5. and occasionally give lectures about[3] and investigate[4] "hate speech"

[1] https://i.imgur.com/zmZqQFY.jpg

[2] https://i.imgur.com/VhVQqQB.jpg

[3] https://metro.co.uk/2019/03/13/lecturer-reported-police-hate...

[4] https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/south-yorkshire-police...

Re: How London thieves exploit organisational silos

#26

Post by scruffyherder »

caymanjim wrote: post #13

The only thing this thief exploited is the idiocy of the victim, who carried around a backpack full of expensive items, his passport (leave it at home or in the hotel), and his wallet (put it in your pocket), and then left it piled in the corner. Of a bar. We should all be glad that the police don't waste their time on petty crime like this. This guy didn't deserve this, but the rest of us shouldn't have to pay for h…

having been stopped by immigration people in several countries always have your papers on hand.

There is nothing less fun than being arrested, and going through processing (which takes FOREVER) to then talk to someone much later that'll take down details arrange cops to either pick it up for you (by ramsacking your room) or escort you there to pick it up (by ramsacking your room first).

If you are an immigrant in another country, also keep your papers on your person 24x7x365. All it takes is one jerk and bamm your how day or week just got ruined.

Re: How London thieves exploit organisational silos

#27

Post by heavenlyblue »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #11
Traster wrote: post #2

This honestly doesn't seem like a problem with organisational silos. The level of efficiency the author is suggesting is completely unnecessary. If the police had done some very basic police work, followed up the unauthorized transactions at each location for CCTV they would have gotten a very clear idea of who this person was. In fact hell, find out which phones pinged the phone tower near each of the locations at e…

>> it's that the UK has decided it would rather have some petty crime than to pay the taxes necessary to catch petty criminals No such "active" decision has ever been taken by the UK citizens and simply never would be by any democracy I can imagine - and this is probably the next major problem democracy needs to solve. Did you know the UK is self sufficient in strawberries? Supermarkets saw they had demand, and put s…

>> Did you know the UK is self sufficient in strawberries?

Is that’s why I can never find sweet strawberries in the UK?

Re: How London thieves exploit organisational silos

#28

Post by usgroup »

TLDR : thieves often get away with crime because resources are limited, and smarter thieves play into it.

However I hardly think that concerntrating power is a solution nor that this is really a problem that needs to be solved by finding he thieves.

I’d be curious to know by how much incidents of petty crime are reduced for every 1% increase in the wealth of the poorest 5%.

Meanwhile, I think the police are doing the right thing by focusing on organised and serious crime, and society would be doing the right thing if it focused on the causes of crime rather than on expanding the police force.

Re: How London thieves exploit organisational silos

#29

Post by usgroup »

jakublangr wrote: post #4
Traster wrote: post #2

This honestly doesn't seem like a problem with organisational silos. The level of efficiency the author is suggesting is completely unnecessary. If the police had done some very basic police work, followed up the unauthorized transactions at each location for CCTV they would have gotten a very clear idea of who this person was. In fact hell, find out which phones pinged the phone tower near each of the locations at e…

While I agree with most of what you've said, there is an issue of (a) what level of economic damage does this crime need to cause before it gets investigated—both for individual cases and for London overall (b) any efficiency gain would hopefully decrease the cost of investigation (in terms of hours spent), hence the assistance them with details (e.g. transactions) which they have completely ignored.

Except once they catch him they have to charge him and then prosecute him and then house him in prison and then release him with even worse prospects then he started with, so that he can go back to stealing.

I think that there is no economic gains, and there is no efficiency to be had in catching petty criminals. It is a symptom of a bigger social problem which needs to be dealt with .

Re: How London thieves exploit organisational silos

#30

Post by paganel »

One of the morals of the story is to never leave your wallet out of sight or out of feel when you’re in public spaces. Leaving your wallet in a back-pack and the back-pack in a corner of a restaurant/pub is asking for big trouble. In the very few cases when I have to leave my wallet unattended (like in a backpack at the side of a basketball court) I previously leave my bank cards and ID at home, I only bring some cash with me.
Post reply on HN