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How London thieves exploit organisational silos

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Re: How London thieves exploit organisational silos

#31

Post by davidmr »

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…

Serious question: are there any large (say >2,000,000) cities in western-style democracies (for example, Singapore is quite safe, but I think their system of government makes it a little easier to fight petty crime) in which the police really do take that stuff seriously? It makes me think of that scene in The Big Lebowski where he asks the cop if they have any leads on his car breakin.

I completely sympathize with this guy, and hope I don’t wind up in his situation, but how seriously does any big city resident truly expect the police to take relatively small-value nonviolent property crimes?

Re: How London thieves exploit organisational silos

#32

Post by IshKebab »

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…

Would you suggest that he posts his laptop home every day?

Re: How London thieves exploit organisational silos

#33

Post by IshKebab »

This should be required reading for all the Americans that think the UK has 50 CCTV cameras per person or whatever that bullshit statistic was.

Yes we have a lot, but they're mostly privately owned and nobody will look at them for anything less than GBH or murder.

Re: How London thieves exploit organisational silos

#34

Post by stefanfisk »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #27
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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?

The plastic ones take less damage from shipping, and people don’t seem to mind eating pretend strawberries, so that’s more of a free market failure thing.

Re: How London thieves exploit organisational silos

#35

Post by postgeographic »

usgroup wrote: post #29
jakublangr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

so where does the line between a crime being small enough not to warrant police attention and being big enough to warrant it get drawn? seems pretty arbitrary to me

Re: How London thieves exploit organisational silos

#36

Post by barry-cotter »

davidmr wrote: post #31
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…

Serious question: are there any large (say >2,000,000) cities in western-style democracies (for example, Singapore is quite safe, but I think their system of government makes it a little easier to fight petty crime) in which the police really do take that stuff seriously? It makes me think of that scene in The Big Lebowski where he asks the cop if they have any leads on his car breakin. I completely sympathize with t…

Tokyo

Re: How London thieves exploit organisational silos

#37

Post by ownagefool »

noir_lord wrote: post #17
thaumasiotes wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> his passport (leave it at home or in the hotel) You may be legally required to carry it with you. In China this is the case. (Or at least, China publishes a lot of documentation for foreigners claiming it is the case. I don't see why they'd be wrong about that.) I don't carry my passport with me anyway, because that is crazy, but I don't like being placed in the wrong like that either.

Not in any way victim blaming but there is zero requirement to carry ID in the UK (except if you are young and want to get served for alcohol). They tried to introduce national ID cards a few times and it got voted down each time. FWIW I have no issue with a national ID card if it's purely that , Identification but the government couldn't leave it at that and wanted to tie the card to everything . Turning a reasonabl…

Hooking it up to other Government systems such as tax, health, immigration, etc could be pretty useful. Currently each of the departments have to figure this out itself, and it is pretty messy from my understanding.

With an ID card, I probably shouldn't need a drivers license or a passport ( ignoring that some contries still stamp your passport, so this might not be achievable ). But I also probably shouldn't be required to carry on unless I'm trying to do something that requires one.

Once we've paid to solve the issue once, we shouldn't be paying over and over again. Next, once you have an identity, do you really want your bank or equifax to pay and build for the exact same thing? Sure they're private entities, but they're private entities that you can't avoid who pass the cost back to you, so why pay again?

On the other hand, this would likely make things like the porn pass easier to implement, so maybe we need to sort out the fact we're living in a nanny state first.

Re: How London thieves exploit organisational silos

#38

Post by robk »

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.

Already exists in production

Re: How London thieves exploit organisational silos

#39

Post by ghettoCoder »

usgroup wrote: post #29
jakublangr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

Since when is law enforcement about money? Laws exists to ensure a reasonably ordered society and level playing field for everyone. There as to be an attempt at enforcement, even a half-hearted one, to ensure the genereal population follow and believe others follow the rules. Or you have vigilantes rising to deal with issues the police can’t bother with.

Unenforced laws are pointless and will be used at the discretion of the police to mess up someone’s day. That’s what gave use expressions like “driving while black”, “sitting while homeless”, and so on.

I’m not necessarily advocating for jailtime but maybe catching them and giving trade school as their sentence would be time and money well spent.

Re: How London thieves exploit organisational silos

#40

Post by jfk13 »

stefanfisk wrote: post #34
heavenlyblue wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Did you know the UK is self sufficient in strawberries? Is that’s why I can never find sweet strawberries in the UK?

The plastic ones take less damage from shipping, and people don’t seem to mind eating pretend strawberries, so that’s more of a free market failure thing.

In my experience, there are good ones to be had, but only if you buy locally and in-season. Imported or forced fruit are almost universally disappointing.

Or grow your own, using traditional varieties like Cambridge Favourite or Elsanta.

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