> Being poor is not an excuse for criminality.
Nor being rich.
Nor being rich.
What needs to happen in these cities is some auditing of the second hand sellers. Pawn shops are required by law to record all items that they purchase but many of the people advertising and selling online are moving larger volumes of product with zero accountability.
The Kijiji and Craigslist type sites have mostly been allowed to operate in a gray area but there is no doubt they are facilitating the buying and selling of stolen items and as such a percentage of their profit is actually subject to seizure through proceeds of crime legislation.
If you’re stealing things off a train, you’re already in a pretty bad place in life, it’s not like the earlier people were any better off than the later people
Just the amount of discarded items indicates an organized effort on behalf of the thieves and most likely a steal to order game plan.
I have no doubt that the entire scheme was cooked up by some meth head while the rest of us were sleeping. Those guys are always looking for an angle to make a quick buck and yes they are desperate too but that shouldn't be the stick we measure criminality and the punishment required by.
There are waiting periods to buy guns it would be just as easy to require an item for sale to be advertised for a minimum amount of time before the contact details are provided.
No, there aren’t - not outside CA and a few other places.