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Comment by errcorrectcode | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotal regional issue:

I had an AirTag on my AirPod Pro's case that was stolen. I immediately notified Austin's police (APD) as I could see where it was going. Unfortunately, due to understaffing of 100-200 police officers and detectives, most calls unrelated to imminent threats of injury or death aren't being handle for days or ever. So, it's open-season on packages and property because APD can't or won't do its job, even if you tell them where stolen property is located. As long as a crime is nonviolent or the threat of violence has passed (with the exception of rape), ATX has the security measures of a third-world country. I met a UT campus police officer who refuses to live in or bring his family to ATX because of the risks and de facto lawlessness.

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Lot of assertions without citations in this thread. HN can do better.

If you’ve never had something stolen before, let me flesh out your data point. The police almost never investigate theft of private property—if they do, it’s when there’s serial theft in an area. That’s anywhere in the US, in any year. They’re only there as a notary of sorts for your claim to the insurance company.

It’d be cool if police used the surveillance tech built into our products for our benefit, but that’s not how the world works. They’re not standing by for hot pursuit of your earbuds.

Yup, can confirm. Had $20K++ worth of stuff stolen from my shop. Police were there only to take notes, file a report, and send me the report # for the insurance claim. the officer didn't even ask any interesting questions, and offered no hope when I suggested maybe they could check around come likely locations where it might be. He was just acting as a stenographer with a badge. I totally get that they are overwhelmed and have to prioritize.

20k is grand theft which is a felony. I am surprised they did not take it more seriously.

I had 2000ish dollar bicycle stolen, the police where I live took it very serious because the value. They ended up arresting the guy. They also find dozens of other bicycles that were stolen and in various levels of being parted out from what I was told.

Also note a tracker in a bike can definitely lead to it being recovered.

Yup, it was an industrial transformer, and a 0-hour racecar motor/transmission setup... no tracking devices on them though...

Once you take the emotional factor out of theft, it's basically solved by the concept of insurance. Just replace your things, and you should be mostly whole again.

Solved by insurance? We should normalize the idea of theft because some large entity will replace our goods whenever they are stolen? This seems like it sets up an incentive to steal, since "don't worry, it will be replaced for them by insurance anyways".

Not to mention the emotional factor isn't the only factor by far. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer to have my car available to me on demand, rather than have to wait to make a claim with insurance and finding a replacement. Has nothing to do with my emotions.

Yes, we should normalize not reacting violently to theft because items can be replaced by insurance.

Theft is not a problem at the volume you're suggesting it is a problem. Most people don't have most of their things stolen most of the time, and AirTags have absolutely nothing to do with addressing the threat of theft.

And yes, it absolutely has to do with your emotions; everything has to do with emotions, the entire concept of reacting unemotionally is literally not possible for a human being to successfully execute unless you have a severe mental disorder (you don't, I gather).

There's a lot to unpack in this back and forth.

Violent reactions are really the only deterrent left to keep thieves at bay. If everyone was so laissez faire about it, well, I'd eventually expect my house to be emptied daily, and my insurance to cost about $30k a month.

I get your point that theft isn't currently -that bad-, but realize that using that info to justify thievery just keeps compounding the problem.

> Violent reactions are really the only deterrent left to keep thieves at bay.

This is objectively false. There are laws, which are enforced by courts, that provide sufficient deterrent.

I cannot stress this enough; if you respond to property loss with violence, you deserve anything bad that happens to you.

> This is objectively false. There are laws, which are enforced by courts, that provide sufficient deterrent.

Round and round we go. The OP of this chain was correctly stating that police rarely even investigate theft.

> if you respond to property loss with violence, you deserve anything bad that happens to you.

What a horrible thing to say. I don't think I'll reply here anymore, it's obviously going nowhere good.

What's actually horrible is committing acts of extrajudicial violence.

That's up to the thief to decide. It's pretty easy to avoid such "extrajudicial violence," simply by respecting the property rights of others.

What you're doing now is victim blaming.

There are a million things that can and often do go wrong already with our criminal justice system, but it does function, more or less, as a way of arriving at a just conclusion; your suggestion that we throw all of that out is, literally, barbaric.

I can't believe I have to say this, but society is worse off without laws and a just mechanism by which to enforce them.

your suggestion that we throw all of that out is, literally, barbaric.

Sounds like you're arguing with someone who doesn't actually exist. If this happens frequently, it might be a good idea to talk about it with someone who is there for you.

I'm arguing against what you wrote. If you didn't understand what you wrote, that's on you, not me.

Then you'll have no trouble quoting my exact words suggesting that we "throw all of that out." Right?

> Violent reactions are really the only deterrent left to keep thieves at bay.

Yes, it was quite easy to quote where you said, "Throw out existing laws, revert to what is literally the definition of barbarism."

Why?

You need someone on the Internet to tell you why extrajudicial violence is among the worst things a person can do in a society?

Ahmaud Arbery is a perfect example.

Killing someone because they kind of resemble someone else who had been doing burglaries in the area is a far cry from defending your own property while a theft occurs. If someone attempts to rob or burglarize me while I'm present, I can and will use force up to and including lethal force to stop them. This is legal in some circumstances, not extrajudicial. In the cases where it is extrajudicial, it can often be moral. Police are a great feature of society, but a citizen has personal responsibility over his own life and property foremost. The police aren't always with you; you are.

It is in no way different, and that's the whole problem. If you condone extrajudicial killings/violence, you condone all of them, because your position is that people should be able to take the law into their own hand, using their own judgement, even if it's flawed judgement (how can you know your own judgement is flawed)?

You can't both agree that violence without due process is acceptable, and then disagree with how someone applied their own set of morality to a situation that resulted in them using violence.

It's either/or, because the alternative is for you to have a say in their violence, at which point you're just re-creating a criminal justice system.

> Your position is that people should be able to take the law into their own hand, using their own judgement, even if it's flawed judgement

Yes, and if the judgment turns out to be flawed, then punish them accordingly. There are many instances of laws where the legality depends on circumstances bounded by reasonable judgment, such as self defense. I am legally allowed to kill someone if I fear for my life in some circumstances. The judicial system then determines if my fear was justified. Likewise, defending your own property with violence is legal, depending on circumstances and judgments which are validated in court. The case you referenced was obviously poor judgment.

Your original point is that property cannot be morally defended through violence. This is neither the actual law, nor does it make sense from any real world perspective.

My original point was not that property cannot be morally defended through violence, my original point was that you cannot defend property morally through violence, which is the law (not a single state allows the use of lethal force to protect property, only life), and it makes perfect sense when you value human life over property (as the vast majority of human society does).

And considering the stakes, it does not make sense to enforce post-hoc a punishment for incorrectly applying this imaginary "defense of property" law you've invented. People's lives are not something you can un-end.

You do realize that law is using force. Law enforcement will uses physical force if the person they are arresting is violent or physically resisting.

This delegation is still force/violence is some form. Now unlike a private individual we hope... law enforcement does not go overboard with it.

There are many more checks in place to deal with law enforcement abuse of power. It's far from perfect, but vastly superior to individual vigilante behavior.

You think the reason that every house in the world isn't emptied out daily is because of the threat of violent reactions by others?

You do realize there are loads of places in the world where people don't even lock their doors? And it's not cuz police are all over the place in those areas.

Perhaps material conditions are driving crime in many places...

> You do realize there are loads of places in the world where people don't even lock their doors

In a place with no daily crime, EVERY crime is investigated thoroughly, and the perpetrator brought to justice with all the resources of the (very bored) local police.

Think of the small town where no crime of note ever happens, and suddenly someone's house is robbed. Do you think the residents just shrug it off? Of course not — it's the only thing the town will talk about for weeks!

Of course every crime isn't investigated thoroughly in tiny towns, the unit economics don't magically work just cuz the town is smaller.

There are different dynamics in small communities on account of everyone knowing each other, etc. But it's not because there are expert detectives looking through all the clues to recover your stolen Macbook or some smashed window.

Hell, loads of times small town dynamics mean people "know" who it is, and still nothing happens! Because crime and punishment isn't some sort of kanban board with a list of crimes and tickets not going closed until a perpetrator is in front of a judge.

As one anecdotal point (and I’ve referenced it here before) but my iPhone was once stolen. I tracked it with Find My and, once located, called the sheriffs department of the jurisdiction.

Based on what they told me they sent two deputies to the house and politely (yet firmly) “requested” the phone back. It actually went exactly the way you would expect - we have probable cause to search the entire house for grand theft. Just give it back.

I went to the Sherrifs department an hour later and picked it up.

Good use of resources? Probably not. Faith in public servants for me? Absolutely. Hopefully a scary lesson learned for an offender or two on a path of criminality? I hope so.

> I met a UT campus police officer who refuses to live in or bring his family to ATX because of the risks and de facto lawlessness.

I live in Downtown Austin, and this kind of picture simply does not fit with my day-to-day experience of Austin.

If you ask a lifeguard what they fear, they'll say drowning.

Cops are not objective sources of reality, neither is anyone else. More than a few grains of salt need to be taken when cops say stuff because they're steeped in a very different life than the average citizen.

Not necessarily more dangerous, either —- jobs like line cook, delivery driver are more dangerous than police work.

Since people are downvoting the parent, check out https://advisorsmith.com/data/most-dangerous-jobs/

Near as I can tell, there are good statistics available from the BLS about fatal on-job accidents, but not so good for definitions of "dangerous" that also include non-fatal injuries.

If we're talking pure fatalities, policing is dangerous (it's on that list), but it's much less dangerous than a bunch of other professions... such that you're about 2.3x more likely to die on-job as a delivery driver than as a police officer.

By this token, it's also worth noting that the people who are blaring the alarm horns over AirTags are also people who are steeped in a very different life than the average citizen. Notably, Eva Galperin of EFF who works on investigating stalking-related issues. So, more than a few grains of salt need to be taken when hearing what they say.

Yeah, likewise. Lived close enough to downtown (by Pease Park). Quiet and pleasant. Every time I went into the rest of the city it was nice. I have my problems with the town, but this is not it.

Spoiler: it’s that I can’t get psychedelics easily.

> ATX has the security measures of a third-world country

That's a pretty dramatic way to describe police not wanting to spend resources to get your $200 headphones back..

It is spending resources to catch a criminal. Very unlikely this loser is just stealing once and going back to being a decent citizen.

It depends, if he just found some AirPods on the ground and decided to keep them, I actually think it's very likely.

What's the threshold over which you believe crime is no longer okay?

AirPods Max? Only $549. A MacBook? Only $2000. A car? Only $20000.

Does someone have to burn my house down for it to be worthwhile for the police?

There are thresholds at which it becomes a felony, so that might be an answer to your question. Otherwise we have to ask it the other way as well -- should the police send out a detective if your 99 cent fidget spinner goes missing?

> There are thresholds at which it becomes a felony, so that might be an answer to your question.

Are you saying that police shouldn't bother investigating crimes that aren't felonies? Why even have misdemeanors at all then?

Most people who get in trouble for misdemeanors are observed by a police officer directly (drunk driving, speeding, vandalism etc). They usually aren't "investigated"..

Believe it or not, these thresholds have effectively existed in the US forever. It's why we have small claims courts, misdemeanors vs felonies, traffic violations, etc.

> What's the threshold over which you believe crime is no longer okay?

You completely missed the parent's point. It's not that they don't think crime should be "no longer be okay", it was addressing the the grandparent's point of "we're living in a third world country because my $200 AirPods got stolen" is simply out of touch with reality.

> Does someone have to burn my house down for it to be worthwhile for the police?

In third world countries this is pretty much how it works. As an American, going to Brazil or South Africa (for example), you're basically told "don't wear/carry anything of value". It's not that there is a chance that you'll get mugged, it's that it's likely it'll happen. I live in Austin and carry my AirPods on me all of the time. The likelihood that I experience what the OP experienced is so unlikely that it rarely crosses my mind. The grandparent's comment is hyperbolic drivel.

> It's not that there is a chance that you'll get mugged, it's that it's likely it'll happen.

Fake news: there's actually very few places where this would be true. You are being told that because in these countries most people are poor and afraid of losing their hard earned money/stuff more than in America generally. Doesn't mean it's likely to happen at all. Most of the times directly violent crimes don't pay as well as drug dealing, and the criminals sure know it: there's favelas in Sao Paulo and Rio where if there's a thief on the territory, drug gangs will hunt him down: they know drug clients need to feel secure to go in there and spend money.

Once I had my car stolen near the uni I was attending, and also near a favela. One of my colleagues lived there, and I told him the fact: next day he told me drug gangs assured him, and he was assuring me, that they would investigate and if the thief was found to be a local resident they would find him and return my car. The car was found 2 days after the fact, in very bad condition with a hole underneath the motor (they were probably using it to go into ramps/offroad), by the police, in another favela a few miles away - by the looks of it, the thiefs didn't want to gain money on this: they took the car only to have drinks and fun and trash it, then abandon it.

I never said it was okay to steal anything. It's just not obviously a good use of taxpayer resources to hunt down something with such a low value. I don't claim to know where that threshold is, but it's probably above $200.

Conversely, let's say I accuse an Uber driver of stealing a $1 bill I left in his car, is that a good use of police time? Where do you draw the line?

There is a separate category for theft called grand theft, which is typically more heavily pursued. The opposite is petty theft.

However, the big problem with spending resources to investigate a theft is that the vast majority of the time there will be no leads, and no way to pursue them.

My laptop was stolen out of my truck, window smashed and backpack gone. Unless I had video evidence or witness testimony to go off of.

There are only so many detectives and forensics experts and only so much time and they typically have multiple cases going on at a time.

It's a matter of resources. They literally do not have the time to track down every single theft. Therefore, they have to triage.

Capturing and punishing thieves has a deterring effect on other thieves. Police spending resources to get "your $200 headphones back" saves more than just the $200 headphones, since usually thieves are repeat offenders and it discourages would-be thieves from becoming thieves. If you think about it, if a police officer makes $100/h you could conceivably make the case that catching a single thief could potentially save local taxpayers who had stuff stolen the officer's full time salary for an entire week. I'd say that's worth it.

Take a look at this phone thief at a concert [1].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBb33bKG1hQ

Having a working law enforcement system that people can trust also means people can rely on the law to be enforced to protect them, instead of taking the law into their own hands.

First world countries make efforts to stop thieves.

Meanwhile, countries in America's league do not.

This is every major city right now, unfortunately.

Which? Where?

San Francisco, for one.

They've never responded for things like this, be it now, pre-pandemic, or 20 years ago. It's never been an understaffing issue.

San Francisco. Los Angeles. Seattle. San Jose (albeit theft has never received attention in San Jose)

Portland, of course, definitely belongs on the list.

I live in a small town outside of Portland and it's not bad, we haven't cut the funding for our police.

Well, San Francisco cut their police budget by $6m... From $668 million. And they increased funding to other parts of the justice apparatus. Like and increase to juvenile programs and the district attorney's office. You'll be hard pressed to find even the most liberal cities in America have actually cut police funding in any significant way.

Toronto ON

I can only speak for the city I live in, but Seattle fits the bill perfectly right now.

Every city in the US. Between 'are we the baddies' and relatively meh pay most municipalities are short of officers.

I'd link an article, but googling 'police shortage' would seem to do the trick.

Is "are we the baddies" really a reason? Because many other industries are having a shortage of workers right now.

Law Enforcement definitely do not have "meh" pay in "most municipalities".

And let me guess, all teachers do is hand out worksheets for 6 hours a day and why do you always see 3 constructions workers standing around a hole? But you- you cleared 1.5 story points today tying two Javascript libraries together, that's where the real value is.

In New Jersey most of the town cops make 6 figures and are in less danger than a bicyclist on public roads.

I think that speaks more about being a bicyclist on the roads of New Jersey than the dangers a cop faces.

It's funny when people complain about HN being too US-centric, when in reality it's CA,NY/NJ, and MA centric. NJ is awash in money flowing from Wall St, so I don't feel bad that their cops make a decent wage.

The biggest danger most cops face is being hit while standing by a car they've pulled over. That totals to ~60mins if you spend a full day issuing traffic citations. There are much more significant risks the general public faces in their daily lives.

The entire world is not New Jersey- I'm sorry your posh township doesn't have more going on, but my guess is the garbagemen, plumbers, carpenters, etc make similar amounts. Move to Camden, they don't even have a police department anymore so I'm sure you'll love it.

Do you believe it's worse than 10 years ago? than 20 years ago?

Pay for officers in the US has only gone in one direction, and it's up. They have more resources than ever, more staff than ever. They are perhaps hit with Covid-related issues like everywhere, but "meh pay"? They're not teachers.

Or maybe you think everything has been terrible for the past 20 years. Maybe you think there's always been a police shortage.

Berlin certainly too

In North America. Not every major city in the whole developed world.

At least in most major city in Germany its the same.

MY GF filed a public assault (very minor) case like a year ago and there is still no success yet all persons identities are known. Police is horrible understaffed.

Refund the police!

Repair the police

That too

Every major American city*

Same, I had $4K of camera equipment stolen in the Bay Area and police just closed the case.

I wouldn't be surprised if the next 10 car smashings were the same crooks because the police department won't do its job. They keep letting the crooks go, and we wonder why there are so many thefts in SF these days. Well maybe don't let the crooks go!

That said though I wonder if AirPods are having success in other countries with more competent police.

For the US I really wish we could commercialize some kind of tracker that releases fart spray, honey, flour, ink, glue, and other annoying substances if stolen. If the police won't do their job we need to do it ourselves.

> For the US I really wish we could commercialize some kind of tracker that releases fart spray, honey, flour, ink, glue, and other annoying substances if stolen.

I assume you've seen this already, but just in case you haven't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3c584TGG7jQ

Mark Rober's videos are always entertaining, but I wonder the legality of audio/video recording in supposedly an unaware person's house. I assume he has this figured out, but it also makes me wonder whether the "thieves" are actually plants.

It's on them, they stole the device, if they didn't steal it, they wouldn't have been recorded. It's 100% their fault.

Be careful with creating traps — booby traps are illegal in most jurisdictions.

and ironically, this is definitely the sort of criminal act the DA would go after.

> CA Codes (pen:12355) (c) For purposes of this section, "boobytrap" means any concealed or camouflaged device designed to cause great bodily injury when triggered by an action of any unsuspecting person coming across the device.

I don't think any of the substances I listed would match this description.

I once wired a cheap 120db siren to a 9v battery and a pressure switch with the default "on" position. Packed it in a plastic pint sized ice cream container with a hole drilled in the bottom for the switch. Packed that full of rocks for weight, with the switch pointed down towards the floor. Packed it all inside an Amazon box with a hole cutout for the switch.

Lift the box, and immediate piercing sound blast. For < $10 in parts off AliExpress. Unit price could be a couple bucks max at volume.

The unfortunate truth is that police have better things to spend their time on. Heck, I had a nighttime home invasion/$4k+ of goods stolen in Boston 9 months ago and as far as I can tell the police couldn’t even be bothered to get their hands on the security camera footage from a neighboring convenience store after I told them there were cameras outside.

> The unfortunate truth is that police have better things to spend their time on.

From what I can "better things" is mostly pulling people over (legitimately or otherwise) in order to hand out tickets to raise revenue. Catching criminals is what we're told they do, stealing from the public, making money, and protecting only the most wealthy seems to be their real job.

You aren’t wrong! I saw this recently and it blew my mind…

https://www.instagram.com/p/CYtk8HVr3SP/?utm_medium=copy_lin...

Police actually spend a tiny portion of their time on what you think they spend their time on.

That's definitely over the line. Theft of a laptop or bicycle is one thing, but home invasion is a violent crime, and should justify a far more significant amount of attention.

There was an initial flurry of officers and detectives right off the bat but it felt like theater and there hasn’t been any follow up that I haven’t initiated myself.

It has literally been like this for at least the last ten years in America. It takes a huge amount of work to get the police to do anything.

But also, you guys don’t know what the Third World is like. But at least I can tell that Nextdoor and HN have some overlap.

But hey lets defund the police!

That’s wild. The first reason we even have a government is for police and judges.

> I immediately notified Austin's police (APD) as I could see where it was going.

Was the tracking good enough to reasonably narrow it down to a single person?

I think people expect too much of the police with a lot of these tracking devices/services. I don't have any experience with AirTags, but I know Apple's Find My can narrow down the location of e.g. a lost phone to a street corner. But if you're in a city there's a decent chance that there's more than one person on that street corner. The police can't/shouldn't stop everyone there and search them. Tracking a stolen item to a house is even harder (need a warrant). And an apartment is probably impossible because I doubt the tracking is good enough to narrow it down to a particular unit.

You just described every police department in the country.

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