61–70 of 142 posts
Just read about this a few days ago in the local news, they caught one in Aloha/Beaverton, Oregon (about 30 minutes west of Portland, OR) https://www.kptv.com/news/deputies-delivery-driver-for-amazo... This is where a lot of Intel employees live as Intel's headquarters are here, just to give a picture of the area.
I wonder why stings/bait-items aren't used more often, when an area is facing a rash of specific kinds of crime, like bike theft, parked-car smash-and-grabs, and package theft. It's often a small number of violators – sometimes professional – who've been emboldened by early successes to scale up. So just a few stings, with adequate follow-through prosecution, could have a highly-leveraged effect on the overall rate.
It is creating crime which otherwise may not have existed. Maybe it's a small number of violators (do you have a citaton?) or maybe it's just a few opportunistic kids. I'd really need to see a cost/benefit analysis (not just monetary but social too).
There is nuance here. While I am traditionally against entrapment, I don't believe this crosses that line. If the police were surreptitiously encouraging the theft it might be different.
> I'd really need to see a cost/benefit analysis
It's a bit hard to quantify peace of mind or be able to correlate changes in theft counts due to sample size issues and the myriad of other reasons why theft counts may change.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is creating crime which otherwise may not have existed. Maybe it's a small number of violators (do you have a citaton?) or maybe it's just a few opportunistic kids. I'd really need to see a cost/benefit analysis (not just monetary but social too).
> It is creating crime which otherwise may not have existed There is nuance here. While I am traditionally against entrapment, I don't believe this crosses that line. If the police were surreptitiously encouraging the theft it might be different. > I'd really need to see a cost/benefit analysis It's a bit hard to quantify peace of mind or be able to correlate changes in theft counts due to sample size issues and the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the adequate follow-through prosecution that's the problem. Fines? Can't get blood from a stone. Jailtime? The cost-benefit analysis doesn't support that, prison time is expensive and petty theft doesn't really cause that much damage. I have no solution to offer here.
The cost-benefit analysis doesn't support that, prison time is expensive and petty theft doesn't really cause that much damage. That's the rationale that makes car theft such a huge problem around here in the Seattle area, or did until the laws were tightened up a bit. Prosecutors and judges either didn't consider it worthwhile to punish offenders heavily or didn't have the legal tools to to do, so we ended up with p…
It should be if you’re paying taxes. I personally don’t want my taxes to skyrocket to cover expanded law enforcement if it doesn’t provide a meaningful benefit.
For the record, (almost) no one thinks law enforcement should be profitable. That doesn’t mean that cost/benefit analysis shouldn’t factor in.
Good to see private enterprise stepping in to show leadership on solving social problems (e.g. property crime) that the government has failed to take any initiative on.
In Germany the packages are usually given to a neighbor. Amazon's own delivery service sometimes leaves it in front of your door, but mostly in houses with multiple flats. When it's gone, they just deliver again. Does it work differently in the US, so are packages usually left at the doorstep?
I wonder why stings/bait-items aren't used more often, when an area is facing a rash of specific kinds of crime, like bike theft, parked-car smash-and-grabs, and package theft. It's often a small number of violators – sometimes professional – who've been emboldened by early successes to scale up. So just a few stings, with adequate follow-through prosecution, could have a highly-leveraged effect on the overall rate.
It's the adequate follow-through prosecution that's the problem. Fines? Can't get blood from a stone. Jailtime? The cost-benefit analysis doesn't support that, prison time is expensive and petty theft doesn't really cause that much damage. I have no solution to offer here.
Sure it does. Insurance rates. Compare rates for San Francisco vs. Houston for comprehensive coverage. Or San Francisco vs. Cupertino for that matter. Every smash and grab costs everyone more money.
Prop 47 is a big culprit. These thieves can cause $1000 in damage to a car, but their prosecution is pretty much pointless.
If we want to talk cost benefit analysis, prosecuting armed robbery with no injuries doesn’t make sense either: if the robber gets $100, and it costs $100,000 to imprison them, then that’s a bad cost benefit return right? If you want to operate under a cost benefit analysis, jail time should only be required if whatever damage is done exceeds the cost of incarceration. That’s absurd, but that’s what a cost benefit analysis would reveal, assuming costs are measured in dollars.
Broken windows policing works [1].
https://cebcp.org/evidence-based-policing/the-matrix/micro-p...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty much guaranteeing improper disposal. I highly doubt anyone who steals packages off doorsteps is going to bother to dispose of substances like that correctly.
I had a package stolen a few weeks back, for the first time as far as I know. It was Disney Baby Swaddles. Guy was pretty derro (dodgy) looking guy. I hope he enjoyed his swaddles. Caught him on my Ring camera sadly my front door is an alcove that is about 1m deep so the motion detection only triggers at the last second. Thus I only got him as he was turning around and got the side of his face and not the front.
Blue Iris and most NVR software lets you specify an arbitrary length buffer. It eats some memory, but nice to get context. I very much doubt Ring exposes an RTSP stream locally though.
I wonder why stings/bait-items aren't used more often, when an area is facing a rash of specific kinds of crime, like bike theft, parked-car smash-and-grabs, and package theft. It's often a small number of violators – sometimes professional – who've been emboldened by early successes to scale up. So just a few stings, with adequate follow-through prosecution, could have a highly-leveraged effect on the overall rate.
It is creating crime which otherwise may not have existed. Maybe it's a small number of violators (do you have a citaton?) or maybe it's just a few opportunistic kids. I'd really need to see a cost/benefit analysis (not just monetary but social too).