9 ms·

I learned from Nextdoor, that a neighbor of mine put cat litter in an amazon box, and later found out her car's driver side window busted in and the litter dump

by kawfey 8y ago

I learned from Nextdoor, that a neighbor of mine put cat litter in an amazon box, and later found out her car's driver side window busted in and the litter dumped on the seat. I now just have packages sent to lockers and UPS/FedEX access points, and I know a few who have packages delivered to their office. The crappy part is that she captured clear detail of both events but police couldn't be bothered. Nest and Ring have been doing their part to fight back, allowing people to publicly post and set up neighborhood watches against porch pirates et al, but there's still a ways to go before security camera footage can be sent to the PD and automatically identify the offender via facial analysis.

DickingAround 8y ago
That is a real shame. If the police are not going to mediate property disputes between people, they take a lot of risk those disputes will escalate into violence. Perhaps really-good passive defense is enough (e.g. package lock boxes) but I also hope the police understand the deeper reasoning around their position and role.
- netsharc 8y ago
  Having lived in a "3rd world" country, I know the police there is useless, but it's interesting how things like resource issues (not enough manpower) is slowly turning living standards of rich countries like the US and UK towards "3rd world" levels.
  - Jyaif 8y ago
    Robbers and burglers basically have immunity now because the police is busy with... I'm not sure what.
    - roseburg 8y ago
      Most departments are understaffed. Turns out all the negative press against police is having long term impacts on how many kids want to grow up and become a police officer. Also property crimes always take a backseat to more violent crimes.
      - chrisdhoover 8y ago
        In many cases the police and sheriffs themselves are not hiring because they are faced with choice of keeping high pension payouts or hiring more people
      - omegaham 8y ago
        Also, the background check process is intense, (and deals with the exact same understaffing problems) and it turns out that most people aren't willing to wait for nine months to get vetted for an entry-level job.
        kristofferR 8y ago
        It's insane that police officer is an entry level job, no wonder you have so many issues with the police in the US.
      - netsharc 8y ago
        Not sure if you're blaming the press for doing their jobs...
    - 0xfeba 8y ago
      Depends wildly on the area, but property crimes rarely go about a 20% clear rate. That is, 80% of the time criminals get away with it. Some areas even murder is 60%. A healthy society keeps people from committing crimes, not a giant police force.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > Robbers and burglers basically have immunity now because the police is busy with... I'm not sure what. Robbers and burglars usually get attention. Petty theft that does not involve robbery or burglary doesn't, but there is a world of difference between the three crimes.
  - rootusrootus 8y ago
    In some areas perhaps. In my neighborhood the police respond to any property crime, and pretty fast at that. But ... maybe we are just boring. Perhaps there are some areas in the US where this is a problem, but I don't know if it's safe to generalize that the US is degrading to third-world status just yet.
    - raverbashing 8y ago
      Well given the police in the US works at city level, if you are in a suburb that's not "the capital city" your police might be bored enough to go for every call, things like "suspicious person walking on street"
      - iamdave 8y ago
        "suspicious person walking on street" My dad used to say "there's few things more dangerous in the suburbs than a bored cop". Been involved in some of those interactions while walking home in my own neighborhood. They're not pleasant. One involved handcuffs and a 30 minute sit on the curb while my backpack was searched. Yes I'm referring to these past incidents in plural for a reason. No, the complaints to the city and precinct didn't do anything.
        rootusrootus 8y ago
        Ha, that's probably true. Though the last time I was walking down the street when a city cop rolled past, he waved. I waved. I have lived some places where the police culture was more toxic, definitely.
        iamdave 8y ago
        It's definitely a YMMV kind of thing. I'm not going to go on some kind of "all cops are bastards" bend here, cause that's not the case and this isn't the forum for it, but I've had more bad experiences with the police than good ones. None of them resulted in an arrest or charges filed (this is excluding moving violations because death, taxes and speeding tickets; I was a 23 year old driving a Mustang lol) since none of the interactions involved me doing anything illegal. After a few experiences like that you learn to keep an eye on a police officer when you see one, but there's no urge to make your presence overtly known to them either.
  - learc83 8y ago
    Itst not really a lack of manpower. It's that most of the time, evidence is grainy security camera footage. What are they going to do with that?
    - yarox 8y ago
      Enhance?
  - jiveturkey 8y ago
    there's enough manpower. there isn't enough budget.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  If the police are not going to mediate property disputes between people, they take a lot of risk those disputes will escalate into violence. They're too busy training on their new hand-me-down military gear. Local cops need tanks to keep you safe, citizen.
- cwkoss 8y ago
  Police inaction is the main reason that I can't get behind political calls to ban guns: cops are not required to protect or defend you.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > If the police are not going to mediate property disputes between people The police exist to maintain order on behalf of the State, the civil justice system exists to mediate property disputes between people. There is sometimes some synergy between the functions, but they are very different.
scarejunba 8y ago
Maybe with ubiquitous accurate facial recognition we could name and shame these individuals. You could then be walking around and identifying criminals as you go, denying them service, food, shelter, or water. We could create isolated communities of criminals, wall off the rest of the world, and deliver ourselves from evil.
- EForEndeavour 8y ago
  Better yet, we could wall in the criminals and declare the inside of their "cells" to be the outside, thus walling them out.
  - scarejunba 8y ago
    Nah, to do that you need to curtail people’s freedom. What I’m proposing is simply that we privatize large parts of society and exclude people from the private areas based on their tendency to be bad actors. It’s not about restricting freedom. It’s about enabling free safe association for everyone who opts in. Like a massive HOA.
    - snazz 8y ago
      I think “denying food, shelter, and water” counts as curtailing people’s freedom.
      - scarejunba 8y ago
        They’re welcome to it elsewhere. I’m not going to give it to them. You also won’t have the situation where you see them in immediate danger because you’re not going to give them access to your area. Obviously, you have to help if they’re right in front of you, but there’s no obligation for me to help feed a starving family in Appalachia now and I don’t think there will be one in the situation I’m describing. So all you have to do is ensure you’re never in a situation where you can help someone in immediate danger.
    - deadmetheny 8y ago
beached_whale 8y ago
I wonder if this would make a good startup. Allow people to share footage of thieves stealing goods. Allow varying levels of geolocation and let people suggest identities. Not sure what other precautions would be needed to protect from misidentification.
- cwkoss 8y ago
  How does it make money?
  - technofiend 8y ago
    Rental fees from people who want to put out exactly these kind of packages to deter theft. You'd need a high deposit to cover loss of the device. On the other hand mass-producing it would certainly allow both economy of scale and substituting lower cost parts than (for example) an off-the-shelf cellphone for video capture and streaming.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago
    You can pay to remove videos of you off the platform, revenge porn site style.
    - cwkoss 8y ago
      Ooh, this is clever.
  - Pxtl 8y ago
    Offer cash rewards. The system takes a cut. Crowd-sourced bounty-hunting. Of course, once it becomes a cash transaction you're dealing with dispute resolution. "I said it was Fred" "It wasn't Fred" "Yes it was! Pay me!".
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  > let people suggest identities Have we learned nothing from Reddit circa 2013?
baldfat 8y ago
Have your neighbor contact her State Representative or State Senator. Police know their budgets will get screwed if they piss off these people. Twice I have emailed the police and CC the Mayor of my city. I got a sorry can we meet in person response in an hour. The Sargent on Call was eating humble pie when he was called in and got chewed out by the Mayor and the Police. (Story a neighbor I don't know was physically assaulted by his girlfriend and she ripped his shirt and scratched him up. I stopped him from destroying her and going to jail. I called the police and no one came. We walked over to the station with 3 police cars sitting outside and were turned away.)
- kawfey 8y ago
  I forgot to mention this is in the city of St Louis. They all know they've got far bigger fish to fry.
SheinhardtWigCo 8y ago
> there's still a ways to go before security camera footage can be sent to the PD and automatically identify the offender via facial analysis. Be careful what you wish for. I don't want the police to be able to perform accurate facial recognition at the kind of scale you're talking about, even if that would make it harder for thieves to steal packages.
- apricot 8y ago
  What we want is immaterial in this case. The police will be able to do just that, very soon.
- cronix 8y ago
  > I don't want the police to be able to perform accurate facial recognition at the kind of scale you're talking about Amazon is helping cities and counties implement Rekognition systems fairly cheap with cameras tied to criminal databases. It's happening. They've done it in Washington County, OR, Orlando, FL, and others [1]. Amazon is also teaming up with law enforcement to install Ring doorbells with cameras (Amazon owns them) hooked up to the same type of system.[2] Palantir Systems (CIA backed) have done similar in NYC[3] and even doing PREDICTIVE crime analysis in New Orleans[4] and Chicago [5]. In the case of New Orleans, the public and city counsel was not even made aware. Only the mayor knew. Yes, be very, very careful what you wish for. [1] https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/customers/ https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/customers/ [2] https://qz.com/1495241/amazon-has-a-clever-way-to-catch-package-stealing-thieves/ https://qz.com/1495241/amazon-has-a-clever-way-to-catch-pack... [3] https://gizmodo.com/how-palantir-is-taking-over-new-york-city-1786738085 https://gizmodo.com/how-palantir-is-taking-over-new-york-cit... [4] https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17054740/palantir-predictive-policing-tool-new-orleans-nopd https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17054740/palantir-predict... [5] https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/19/12552384/chicago-heat-list-tool-failed-rand-test https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/19/12552384/chicago-heat-lis...
  - irrational 8y ago
    This is weird. I live in Washington County Oregon. There are stories everyday on nextdoor.com from neighbors trying to get the Sheriff's office to look at their surveillance video of crimes being committed, but the police aren't interested. They usually post the video clips on nextdoor and these aren't grainy videos but super clear recordings that should make it easy to identify the perpetrators if they really are using the Amazon system.
dwighttk 8y ago
>but there's still a ways to go before security camera footage can be sent to the PD and automatically identify the offender via facial analysis. Good. I'm against theft, and also against Police and facial analysis mixing.
efreak 8y ago
If you're having stuff delivered by USPS, you can also use General Delivery service [0][1] to have items held for you at the post office. It doesn't seem like something that should be used too frequently, though, and not all post offices will do it, and some might charge for it. [1][2] [0]: https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_033.htm https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_033.htm [1]: https://www.techjunkie.com/how-to-use-usps-general-delivery-when-online-retailers-wont-ship-to-a-po-box/ https://www.techjunkie.com/how-to-use-usps-general-delivery-... [2]: https://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/508.htm#ep1052038 https://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/508.htm#ep1052038

by kawfey 8y ago

DickingAround 8y ago

That is a real shame. If the police are not going to mediate property disputes between people, they take a lot of risk those disputes will escalate into violence. Perhaps really-good passive defense is enough (e.g. package lock boxes) but I also hope the police understand the deeper reasoning around their position and role.

netsharc 8y ago
Having lived in a "3rd world" country, I know the police there is useless, but it's interesting how things like resource issues (not enough manpower) is slowly turning living standards of rich countries like the US and UK towards "3rd world" levels.
- Jyaif 8y ago
  Robbers and burglers basically have immunity now because the police is busy with... I'm not sure what.
  - roseburg 8y ago
    Most departments are understaffed. Turns out all the negative press against police is having long term impacts on how many kids want to grow up and become a police officer. Also property crimes always take a backseat to more violent crimes.
    - chrisdhoover 8y ago
      In many cases the police and sheriffs themselves are not hiring because they are faced with choice of keeping high pension payouts or hiring more people
    - omegaham 8y ago
      Also, the background check process is intense, (and deals with the exact same understaffing problems) and it turns out that most people aren't willing to wait for nine months to get vetted for an entry-level job.
      - kristofferR 8y ago
        It's insane that police officer is an entry level job, no wonder you have so many issues with the police in the US.
    - netsharc 8y ago
      Not sure if you're blaming the press for doing their jobs...
  - 0xfeba 8y ago
    Depends wildly on the area, but property crimes rarely go about a 20% clear rate. That is, 80% of the time criminals get away with it. Some areas even murder is 60%. A healthy society keeps people from committing crimes, not a giant police force.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Robbers and burglers basically have immunity now because the police is busy with... I'm not sure what. Robbers and burglars usually get attention. Petty theft that does not involve robbery or burglary doesn't, but there is a world of difference between the three crimes.
- rootusrootus 8y ago
  In some areas perhaps. In my neighborhood the police respond to any property crime, and pretty fast at that. But ... maybe we are just boring. Perhaps there are some areas in the US where this is a problem, but I don't know if it's safe to generalize that the US is degrading to third-world status just yet.
  - raverbashing 8y ago
    Well given the police in the US works at city level, if you are in a suburb that's not "the capital city" your police might be bored enough to go for every call, things like "suspicious person walking on street"
    - iamdave 8y ago
      "suspicious person walking on street" My dad used to say "there's few things more dangerous in the suburbs than a bored cop". Been involved in some of those interactions while walking home in my own neighborhood. They're not pleasant. One involved handcuffs and a 30 minute sit on the curb while my backpack was searched. Yes I'm referring to these past incidents in plural for a reason. No, the complaints to the city and precinct didn't do anything.
      - rootusrootus 8y ago
        Ha, that's probably true. Though the last time I was walking down the street when a city cop rolled past, he waved. I waved. I have lived some places where the police culture was more toxic, definitely.
        iamdave 8y ago
        It's definitely a YMMV kind of thing. I'm not going to go on some kind of "all cops are bastards" bend here, cause that's not the case and this isn't the forum for it, but I've had more bad experiences with the police than good ones. None of them resulted in an arrest or charges filed (this is excluding moving violations because death, taxes and speeding tickets; I was a 23 year old driving a Mustang lol) since none of the interactions involved me doing anything illegal. After a few experiences like that you learn to keep an eye on a police officer when you see one, but there's no urge to make your presence overtly known to them either.
- learc83 8y ago
  Itst not really a lack of manpower. It's that most of the time, evidence is grainy security camera footage. What are they going to do with that?
  - yarox 8y ago
    Enhance?
- jiveturkey 8y ago
  there's enough manpower. there isn't enough budget.
reaperducer 8y ago
If the police are not going to mediate property disputes between people, they take a lot of risk those disputes will escalate into violence. They're too busy training on their new hand-me-down military gear. Local cops need tanks to keep you safe, citizen.
cwkoss 8y ago
Police inaction is the main reason that I can't get behind political calls to ban guns: cops are not required to protect or defend you.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> If the police are not going to mediate property disputes between people The police exist to maintain order on behalf of the State, the civil justice system exists to mediate property disputes between people. There is sometimes some synergy between the functions, but they are very different.

scarejunba 8y ago

Maybe with ubiquitous accurate facial recognition we could name and shame these individuals. You could then be walking around and identifying criminals as you go, denying them service, food, shelter, or water. We could create isolated communities of criminals, wall off the rest of the world, and deliver ourselves from evil.

EForEndeavour 8y ago
Better yet, we could wall in the criminals and declare the inside of their "cells" to be the outside, thus walling them out.
- scarejunba 8y ago
  Nah, to do that you need to curtail people’s freedom. What I’m proposing is simply that we privatize large parts of society and exclude people from the private areas based on their tendency to be bad actors. It’s not about restricting freedom. It’s about enabling free safe association for everyone who opts in. Like a massive HOA.
  - snazz 8y ago
    I think “denying food, shelter, and water” counts as curtailing people’s freedom.
    - scarejunba 8y ago
      They’re welcome to it elsewhere. I’m not going to give it to them. You also won’t have the situation where you see them in immediate danger because you’re not going to give them access to your area. Obviously, you have to help if they’re right in front of you, but there’s no obligation for me to help feed a starving family in Appalachia now and I don’t think there will be one in the situation I’m describing. So all you have to do is ensure you’re never in a situation where you can help someone in immediate danger.
  - deadmetheny 8y ago

beached_whale 8y ago

I wonder if this would make a good startup. Allow people to share footage of thieves stealing goods. Allow varying levels of geolocation and let people suggest identities. Not sure what other precautions would be needed to protect from misidentification.

cwkoss 8y ago
How does it make money?
- technofiend 8y ago
  Rental fees from people who want to put out exactly these kind of packages to deter theft. You'd need a high deposit to cover loss of the device. On the other hand mass-producing it would certainly allow both economy of scale and substituting lower cost parts than (for example) an off-the-shelf cellphone for video capture and streaming.
- WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago
  You can pay to remove videos of you off the platform, revenge porn site style.
  - cwkoss 8y ago
    Ooh, this is clever.
- Pxtl 8y ago
  Offer cash rewards. The system takes a cut. Crowd-sourced bounty-hunting. Of course, once it becomes a cash transaction you're dealing with dispute resolution. "I said it was Fred" "It wasn't Fred" "Yes it was! Pay me!".
AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
> let people suggest identities Have we learned nothing from Reddit circa 2013?

baldfat 8y ago

Have your neighbor contact her State Representative or State Senator. Police know their budgets will get screwed if they piss off these people. Twice I have emailed the police and CC the Mayor of my city. I got a sorry can we meet in person response in an hour. The Sargent on Call was eating humble pie when he was called in and got chewed out by the Mayor and the Police. (Story a neighbor I don't know was physically assaulted by his girlfriend and she ripped his shirt and scratched him up. I stopped him from destroying her and going to jail. I called the police and no one came. We walked over to the station with 3 police cars sitting outside and were turned away.)

kawfey 8y ago
I forgot to mention this is in the city of St Louis. They all know they've got far bigger fish to fry.

SheinhardtWigCo 8y ago

> there's still a ways to go before security camera footage can be sent to the PD and automatically identify the offender via facial analysis. Be careful what you wish for. I don't want the police to be able to perform accurate facial recognition at the kind of scale you're talking about, even if that would make it harder for thieves to steal packages.

apricot 8y ago
What we want is immaterial in this case. The police will be able to do just that, very soon.
cronix 8y ago
> I don't want the police to be able to perform accurate facial recognition at the kind of scale you're talking about Amazon is helping cities and counties implement Rekognition systems fairly cheap with cameras tied to criminal databases. It's happening. They've done it in Washington County, OR, Orlando, FL, and others [1]. Amazon is also teaming up with law enforcement to install Ring doorbells with cameras (Amazon owns them) hooked up to the same type of system.[2] Palantir Systems (CIA backed) have done similar in NYC[3] and even doing PREDICTIVE crime analysis in New Orleans[4] and Chicago [5]. In the case of New Orleans, the public and city counsel was not even made aware. Only the mayor knew. Yes, be very, very careful what you wish for. [1] https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/customers/ https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/customers/ [2] https://qz.com/1495241/amazon-has-a-clever-way-to-catch-package-stealing-thieves/ https://qz.com/1495241/amazon-has-a-clever-way-to-catch-pack... [3] https://gizmodo.com/how-palantir-is-taking-over-new-york-city-1786738085 https://gizmodo.com/how-palantir-is-taking-over-new-york-cit... [4] https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17054740/palantir-predictive-policing-tool-new-orleans-nopd https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17054740/palantir-predict... [5] https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/19/12552384/chicago-heat-list-tool-failed-rand-test https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/19/12552384/chicago-heat-lis...
- irrational 8y ago
  This is weird. I live in Washington County Oregon. There are stories everyday on nextdoor.com from neighbors trying to get the Sheriff's office to look at their surveillance video of crimes being committed, but the police aren't interested. They usually post the video clips on nextdoor and these aren't grainy videos but super clear recordings that should make it easy to identify the perpetrators if they really are using the Amazon system.

dwighttk 8y ago

>but there's still a ways to go before security camera footage can be sent to the PD and automatically identify the offender via facial analysis. Good. I'm against theft, and also against Police and facial analysis mixing.

efreak 8y ago

If you're having stuff delivered by USPS, you can also use General Delivery service [0][1] to have items held for you at the post office. It doesn't seem like something that should be used too frequently, though, and not all post offices will do it, and some might charge for it. [1][2] [0]: https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_033.htm https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_033.htm [1]: https://www.techjunkie.com/how-to-use-usps-general-delivery-when-online-retailers-wont-ship-to-a-po-box/ https://www.techjunkie.com/how-to-use-usps-general-delivery-... [2]: https://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/508.htm#ep1052038 https://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/508.htm#ep1052038