6 ms·

San Jose, 2010 Me to cop: That's him you can see him breaking into the car here at 10:15, then at 12:05 we have a perfect clear view of his face. Cop: We can'

San Jose, 2010 Me to cop: That's him you can see him breaking into the car here at 10:15, then at 12:05 we have a perfect clear view of his face. Cop: We can't really do anything with this, I mean we can take the copy of the video but we don't have any way to identify him. Me: So we can't really do anything? Cop: Yep sorry

justinclift 7y ago
Still have that video? Statute of limitations not run out yet? :)
vinbreau 7y ago
You must not own capital then. If you had they would have worked hard to help you. If you had been a big box store showing the footage to the police they would have helped. But as an individual, they are not there for you.
- nerdponx 7y ago
  The point is that the police wouldn't have the "it's too hard" excuse with a face database.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- swebs 7y ago
  Do you have evidence, or is this just a conspiracy theory?
  - Nuzzerino 7y ago
    Are you really implying that the police apply protection equally? That's a naive worldview imo. Do you have evidence for the contrary?
    - swebs 7y ago
      No, I don't have any evidence either way.
  - Falling3 7y ago
    It's neither a theory nor conspiracy. This is how the American justice system (and in particular the police) is structured.
SN76477 7y ago
I hate to say this, but I believe that petty crime has to be accepted as a cost of a truly free society. I would not want to be in your situation, but the needs of the many outweighs the needs of the few.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  In a way, isn't this kind of what insurance against theft should be for? I.e. you can't eliminate all petty crime, as there's diminishing returns on efforts put into preventing it, but insurance can ensure the occasional victim can get compensation.
- unreal37 7y ago
  Um, no thank you. I've seen a mugging in Brazil. They are so frequent there that everyone I talked to has been mugged on the street. Friends of mine have been carjacked and kidnapped for 8 hours. The police won't investigate a mugging. You're wasting your time to report it. Let's not "accept" crimes that we think are not serious. All crime needs to be investigated and appropriate punishment given. Living in a society where some crime is OK is not a great place to live.
  - rootoor 7y ago
    I don’t think that increasing police presence and surveillance is the answer to stopping petty crime, it just punishes people who need help and or creates a corrupt police dept, exasperating the problem further. If we provide avenues for people to provide for themselves, crime will drop, and we avoid all of the chilling side effects of total surveillance.
  - sixothree 7y ago
    I wouldn't consider mugging a petty crime.
    - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      I wouldn't consider anything violent or premeditated "petty"
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
> Me: So we can't really do anything? > Cop: Yep sorry So let's add a face recognition database. Now, two possibilities. One is they've got the DMV database or some other mass database with photos of millions of people. They run your video through and it comes back with 117 matches. They all look like your guy, because that's what facial recognition is, so which one is it? Still no way to tell. And that's assuming the perpetrator was actually in the database. The other possibility is that they're only using something like mugshot photos. Now it's only thousands of people in the database, so they only get one match. Hurray, we've caught him! Except that it could still have been any of the other 116 people who weren't in the smaller database. Or any of thousands of people from out of state or other countries who aren't even in the bigger database. So now we're going to go convict this guy because he's the only suspect and we've got a video of somebody who looks like him, even though he probably wasn't even the perpetrator. Notice that this is only a problem for justice systems that want to be justice systems. If all you want is a pound of flesh from some random schmoe to demonstrate that you're catching bad guys even though you're not, it works great. Same if you're an authoritarian dictatorship, because then you can murder all 117 matches and to heck with all this hard work of making sure we found the right person. Which is why mass surveillance does more harm than good.
- toss1 7y ago
  Or, more properly, they use the 117 matches as a starting point in an investigation to eliminate most of them, i.e., they weren't in the area at the time, and identify the others who were in the area at the time. Probably not worth it for a petty crime, but for something more serious... Or, they just store the info, and when the same petty criminal pops up again with a similar crime, as is often the case, also track the particulars of this one to see if they get a match and add that to the prosecution list. Kind of like cell phone tracking. There's hundreds of phones in the vicinity of any one bank robbery, but when you get one that is in the vicinity of all three, probably a good idea to investigate the owner of that one...
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    >Or, more properly, they use the 117 matches as a starting point in an investigation to eliminate most of them, i Maybe if you're a local politician, a cop or rich enough for them to know who you are you'll get that kind of service. For everyone else they'll just do nothing or nearly nothing and go back to playing with that APC they don't need. If they find your car as part of some other crime they'll add another page to the book they're throwing but you don't need a database to do that.
autoexec 7y ago
To me going around with some photos of the guy and looking for him, maybe asking folks around the neighborhood if they know him, searching through mugshots of known criminals in the area for a possible match, maybe posting his picture on their website or on posters seems like exactly the sort of thing police should be doing. Good old fashioned honest police work. I know they have quotas to meet and they could bring in more revenue by ignoring it and just ticketing people for minor shit like traffic offenses but it just seems lazy to say that because a computer can't do all the work for them they have no way to ID someone. Frankly, just by having video you've already done part of their job for them.

justinclift 7y ago

Still have that video? Statute of limitations not run out yet? :)

vinbreau 7y ago

You must not own capital then. If you had they would have worked hard to help you. If you had been a big box store showing the footage to the police they would have helped. But as an individual, they are not there for you.

nerdponx 7y ago
The point is that the police wouldn't have the "it's too hard" excuse with a face database.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
swebs 7y ago
Do you have evidence, or is this just a conspiracy theory?
- Nuzzerino 7y ago
  Are you really implying that the police apply protection equally? That's a naive worldview imo. Do you have evidence for the contrary?
  - swebs 7y ago
    No, I don't have any evidence either way.
- Falling3 7y ago
  It's neither a theory nor conspiracy. This is how the American justice system (and in particular the police) is structured.

SN76477 7y ago

I hate to say this, but I believe that petty crime has to be accepted as a cost of a truly free society. I would not want to be in your situation, but the needs of the many outweighs the needs of the few.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
In a way, isn't this kind of what insurance against theft should be for? I.e. you can't eliminate all petty crime, as there's diminishing returns on efforts put into preventing it, but insurance can ensure the occasional victim can get compensation.
unreal37 7y ago
Um, no thank you. I've seen a mugging in Brazil. They are so frequent there that everyone I talked to has been mugged on the street. Friends of mine have been carjacked and kidnapped for 8 hours. The police won't investigate a mugging. You're wasting your time to report it. Let's not "accept" crimes that we think are not serious. All crime needs to be investigated and appropriate punishment given. Living in a society where some crime is OK is not a great place to live.
- rootoor 7y ago
  I don’t think that increasing police presence and surveillance is the answer to stopping petty crime, it just punishes people who need help and or creates a corrupt police dept, exasperating the problem further. If we provide avenues for people to provide for themselves, crime will drop, and we avoid all of the chilling side effects of total surveillance.
- sixothree 7y ago
  I wouldn't consider mugging a petty crime.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    I wouldn't consider anything violent or premeditated "petty"

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

> Me: So we can't really do anything? > Cop: Yep sorry So let's add a face recognition database. Now, two possibilities. One is they've got the DMV database or some other mass database with photos of millions of people. They run your video through and it comes back with 117 matches. They all look like your guy, because that's what facial recognition is, so which one is it? Still no way to tell. And that's assuming the perpetrator was actually in the database. The other possibility is that they're only using something like mugshot photos. Now it's only thousands of people in the database, so they only get one match. Hurray, we've caught him! Except that it could still have been any of the other 116 people who weren't in the smaller database. Or any of thousands of people from out of state or other countries who aren't even in the bigger database. So now we're going to go convict this guy because he's the only suspect and we've got a video of somebody who looks like him, even though he probably wasn't even the perpetrator. Notice that this is only a problem for justice systems that want to be justice systems. If all you want is a pound of flesh from some random schmoe to demonstrate that you're catching bad guys even though you're not, it works great. Same if you're an authoritarian dictatorship, because then you can murder all 117 matches and to heck with all this hard work of making sure we found the right person. Which is why mass surveillance does more harm than good.

toss1 7y ago
Or, more properly, they use the 117 matches as a starting point in an investigation to eliminate most of them, i.e., they weren't in the area at the time, and identify the others who were in the area at the time. Probably not worth it for a petty crime, but for something more serious... Or, they just store the info, and when the same petty criminal pops up again with a similar crime, as is often the case, also track the particulars of this one to see if they get a match and add that to the prosecution list. Kind of like cell phone tracking. There's hundreds of phones in the vicinity of any one bank robbery, but when you get one that is in the vicinity of all three, probably a good idea to investigate the owner of that one...
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  >Or, more properly, they use the 117 matches as a starting point in an investigation to eliminate most of them, i Maybe if you're a local politician, a cop or rich enough for them to know who you are you'll get that kind of service. For everyone else they'll just do nothing or nearly nothing and go back to playing with that APC they don't need. If they find your car as part of some other crime they'll add another page to the book they're throwing but you don't need a database to do that.

autoexec 7y ago

To me going around with some photos of the guy and looking for him, maybe asking folks around the neighborhood if they know him, searching through mugshots of known criminals in the area for a possible match, maybe posting his picture on their website or on posters seems like exactly the sort of thing police should be doing. Good old fashioned honest police work. I know they have quotas to meet and they could bring in more revenue by ignoring it and just ticketing people for minor shit like traffic offenses but it just seems lazy to say that because a computer can't do all the work for them they have no way to ID someone. Frankly, just by having video you've already done part of their job for them.