Comment by sigmaprimus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sigmaprimus | Hacker News Reader

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The sad part of this situation is the initial people that broke into the containers on the trains are long gone with their loot, now the marginalized people are getting caught digging through the discarded items that were not valuable enough for ones that broke in and most likely they will be the ones prosecuted for political gains even if they get out on no cash bail.

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.

In many states a pawn shop is required to hold any items brought in for a minimum amount of time before they are allow to resell them. This may be a solution to prevent online marketplaces from enabling thieves to ply their wares so easily.

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.

> There are waiting periods to buy guns

No, there aren’t - not outside CA and a few other places.

You don’t really believe that rich people stormed in and stole all of the good stuff before the poor people got there, do you?

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

There is a lot of people that fit between rich and poor, do I think that organized gangs with cell phones and bolt cutters were the ones that initially broke in? I sure do, do I think they are rich? nope.

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.

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