4 ms·

A telling contrast with the Mark Rober video and comments. Citizen has video evidence of package being stolen ? Or in the case of the comments GPS of offenders?

• netsharc 8y ago
  Seems like in this case the GPS trap is the police's, maybe they like it better if it's their own idea. In the dystopian near-future, Amazon will start offering police departments these kinds of bait packages so they can reduce package theft...
  • geofft 8y ago
    The dystopian medium-term future is relocation incentives being paid by cities to increase liquidity and therefore facilitate competition in the "better place to live" market. ... I guess we already have those for corporations, so extending it to individuals can't be much worse. But there's currently little meaningful competition to shake out what small-scale policies are better (e.g., the question of how much your police should care about package theft probably has basically the same answer throughout all of American suburbia) and it'd be interesting to see if people make the markets work efficiently (and leave ghost towns in the wake of bad decisions).
  • Kadin 8y ago
    They say in the article that the police department was able to double the number of bait packages due to a grant from an external organization. It would be pretty trivial to donate money to a charity or "Friends of" organization and then have them write a grant to pay for bait package kits. Not saying that's what happened -- lots of people might be pissed about the package-theft epidemic -- but it certainly could.
  • matte_black 8y ago
    Why is that dystopian? That actually sounds pretty awesome and would be great if it reduces package thefts.
  • stale2002 8y ago
    It is distopian for there to be bait packages that help catch thieves?
• manigandham 8y ago
  There's a big difference between apprehending a suspect based on fuzzy phone video vs just driving around a little to drop off some packages. Why would you compare those two actions?
  • rjf72 8y ago
    If you haven't seen the exact video he's referencing it's here [1]. It certainly was nothing like just "fuzzy phone video". He had 360 degree video with fine detail clearly showing the thieves' faces up close, vehicles, and so on. His bait package also had GPS and several of the thieves took the packages home to open them. You can't have more condemning evidence. But this all begs the question. I expect that those thieves were indeed arrested, unlike the ones he caught on his home surveillance system stealing packages where indeed it was just some video snippets of the thieves taken from cameras several meters away. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoxhDk-hwuo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoxhDk-hwuo
    • manigandham 8y ago
      It's just not that simple. I've seen the video but it only starts filming separately after being opened and there's no material loss since the item is retrieved at the end. Even if this was a normal shipment being stolen, you have to weigh all the costs in time, effort and tax-payer dollars being spent to arrest a suspect and prosecute. When most shipments are either insured and/or replaced for free, it's not worth police time on these petty crimes.
      • emiliobumachar 8y ago
        Deterrent is a thing. Even a couple hundred well-publicized arrests (heck, even a couple dozen sufficiently well-publicized arrests and prosecutions) could move the needle on replacement needs, insurance cost, and all of the intangible inconvenience associated.
        • manigandham 8y ago
• jrockway 8y ago
  I assume every locality has their own set of police priorities. In the case of Mark Rober's video, it's clear that his local police don't care about package theft. The thieves know that, and exploit it. Hence it was necessary for him to do his own thing outside of the law to try and deter people (or at least recoup his losses with some YouTube revenue).