15 ms·

In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)

256 points by autokill 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Phylter 6y ago
In present day Los Angeles people that work in banks take their computers off their desks and lock them away because they know they'll be broken in to. I did support for some of them.
- octoberfranklin 6y ago
  You mean like the computer will be stolen or like the Evil Maid attack?
davidgaw 6y ago
Man, I definitely wouldn't want to be a customer at that bank!
- logicchop 6y ago
  That's how I read the title; that's what I'm going with.
- jojohohanon 6y ago
  I have second hand memory of an SNL sketch from the 80s(?) about this phrasing, but for man, mugged, and five minutes. Second hand because it was told/ re-enacted to me in lieu of recorded on vhs or similar.
mhh__ 6y ago
https://youtu.be/yDdnTR7mqKs https://youtu.be/yDdnTR7mqKs
Melting_Harps 6y ago
Yeah, many of us that grew up in SoCal recall the heist that led to the so called 'assault weapon' ban, it was completely legal to have a long barrel rifle with 30 round magazines in CA prior to that--they could be open-carried if not loaded back then if I recall correctly, too. This was around the time of the LA riots in the 90s, too... which in my mind all happened at the same time as I recall being a kid sat in front of the TV not far from it all and being shocked at the level of wanton destruction. California was always a wild place since its inception and before it was ever a part of the US--many who live here don't even realize that California (both alta and baja) pre-dates the existence of the US and British colonialism by a significant margin. LA in the 80s was also Ground Zero for Gang warfare in the US, so us multi-generationals lived through that and adapted and we are am entirely different breed to the transplants and the rest of the US as fires and earthquakes were also taking place alongside those events, as those didn't stop either. And while I personally have no desire to live in CA anytime soon, except the occasional visit, I'm glad so many decided to leave since COVID. In a decade or two it may look like and feel as it did when I was a kid in the 90s and I may be tempted to go back.
- conception 6y ago
  Just a point of clarification for those not familiar with the heist, the weapons used were -not- legal in CA or the US. It was also during the time of the Federal Assault Weapons ban. They were not owned nor able to be owned legally during that time. It was also the inspiration for Heat’s shootout!
  - Melting_Harps 6y ago
    > Just a point of clarification for those not familiar with the heist, the weapons used were -not- legal in CA or the US. It was also during the time of the Federal Assault Weapons ban. They were not owned nor able to be owned legally during that time. Only semi-correct, they had full-auto AK47s and extended mags, all of which at the time could be purchased and legally owned with a special stamp by the ATF [0]. As a child a friend's father had one he would bring out on new years to only short lived amusement in the neighborhood as we all lived in a densely populated suburb near a major freeway. But without them, yes, you couldn't just go to a store and buy one off the shelf. 0: https://legalbeagle.com/8731203-class-three-stamp-through-atf.html https://legalbeagle.com/8731203-class-three-stamp-through-at...
ameliaquining 6y ago
(2019)
CalChris 6y ago
It does remind me of Point Break: HARP This is us. Bank Robbery. And you're in the bank-robbery capital of the world-- UTAH 1322 last year in LA county. Up 26 percent from the year before. HARP That's right. And we nailed over a thousand of them. We did it by crunching data. Good crime-scene work, good lab work, and most importantly good data-base analysis. Special agent Utah. Are you receiving my signal? UTAH Zero distortion, sir.
paulpauper 6y ago
When pundits --on either side of the pollical spectrum--talk about how bad America is or how things are on the verge of collapse societally, show them stats such as this. By almost every metric, as bad as things may seem, they were objectively worse decades ago. Yeah, it feels like people are angrier than ever, especially online, but Twitter is not real life. A combination of increased tech surveillance, longer prison sentences, and bank tellers holding very little cash--all of these factors make bank robbery much less lucrative than it was in the past.
- felipemnoa 6y ago
  Yeah, they now rob you safely from their computers.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  It's not just bank robbery. Every crime category is now much lower than it was in 1990, in every jurisdiction of the USA. Even if you take a city that people think is ridiculously dangerous, like Camden, New Jersey, the homicide rate was triple 25 years ago.
  - ajmurmann 6y ago
    I keep hearing that crime in rural areas has been going up and that now even cake wrangling is a problem liked in old wild west movies. Your general point that on a lawyer scale we are safer than ever stands Best source short googling could find: https://www.wsj.com/articles/nothing-but-you-and-the-cows-and-the-sirens-crime-tests-small-town-sheriffs-1526122800 https://www.wsj.com/articles/nothing-but-you-and-the-cows-an...
    - ramchip 6y ago
      What's cake wrangling?
      - syntheticcorp 6y ago
        Maybe an autocorrect from cow rustling? I can’t find anything online about cake wrangling, exciting as it sounds.
paulpauper 6y ago
The 80s were a crime paradise.--drug gangs, mafia, wall st white collar crime, informercial scams, televangelist and cult scams --you name it, it all thrived in the 80s.
- nerbert 6y ago
  Then came the police state and the party was over.
  - blackrock 6y ago
    It sounds like the 80s were more fun. We had Miami Vice, MacGyver, The A-Team, Knight Rider, and Battlestar Galactica back then. And homes were still affordable places to live in.
    - SftwreEngnr 6y ago
      I think you're talking about pop culture nostalgia.
    - smnrchrds 6y ago
      I think this was at least partially a result of the high crime rate in the cities.
      - cleansingfire 6y ago
        When I lived in East Palo Alto, it was the murder capital of the US. With a carjacking attempt 75' from my front door (foiled by returning with a pistol before they could restart my car) I miss that time not at all.
        Melting_Harps 6y ago
        > When I lived in East Palo Alto, it was the murder capital of the US. With a carjacking attempt 75' from my front door (foiled by returning with a pistol before they could restart my car) I miss that time not at all. Yeah, I remember the Valley in the 90s... a lof of it looked a lot like downtown LA which I'm was never exactly a fan of. But being in San Jose back then in the 90s looked and smelled like Chinatown when it was buzzing, Sunnyvale and Mountain View had a certain feel that is completely gone now it felt electric for reasons I didn't full understand and would only come to realize how significant what was happening there was a decade or so later. I never went to the East bay until recently, but that feels like a very watered down version of what it was back then to me. I guess it's survivor bias guiding my words, especially since I had close encounters with stuff like that growing up too; but having a choice of which one to deal with I'd stay with 90s CA to raise a family then somewhere like modern Geneva with all its amenities and manicured existence.
mattbgates 6y ago
Traffic nowadays... ain't worth it no more.
- 3131s 6y ago
  It's harder to steal cars now too, which is how Cali's most successful bank robbers got away with it for a long time.
m3kw9 6y ago
Hell or high water is a good movie about that.
arminiusreturns 6y ago
> By 2013, the number was down to 212, one tenth of what it had been in its worst year. For the first time since the early 1960s, L.A. officially lost its title to the San Francisco Bay Area. The real interesting tidbit was at the end I found... I wonder why SF?
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  To quote the great Willie Sutton, 'Because that's where the money is.' SF was and is the financial capital of the west coast.
aaomidi 6y ago
Wonder how much legal abortion and removing lead caused this to decrease.
- tsjq 6y ago
  Freakonomics ! : )
boomboomsubban 6y ago
Not that it drastically improves the statement, but the tagline for the article > a bank was robbed every hour of every day. But the article itself clarifies they mean "each banking day" and the worst year had about seven robberies a day. Still a shocking amount, but not the 24 a day implied.
- BlackFingolfin 6y ago
  Moreover, the worst year was 1992, which isn't in the 80ies last I checked...
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    The 80's still could have averaged one an hour even if the worst year was 92.
    - BlackFingolfin 6y ago
      Except it didn't even average one an hour in the worst year
      - boomboomsubban 6y ago
        *hour the bank was open. Thought my first post made that clear.
momokoko 6y ago
It’s interesting as an older person to realize that Americans born in the 90s and later have no real concept of the amount of crime and violence that was widespread in US.
- pault 6y ago
  Also interesting that as a kid born in 1980 at the start of the drug violence epidemic, we were allowed to roam as we pleased as long as we were home for dinner. Contrast that to today's vastly safer world, and kids are not allowed to walk the neighborhood unsupervised.
  - varjag 6y ago
    Is there a chance for causal relationship?
    - redis_mlc 6y ago
      No. The leash put on US children was because of the 1981 Adam Walsh kidnapping/murder, and his dad (a cop) inadvertently instilling morbid fear in the American public by being on TV daily about it for over a decade. Hard to believe, but one TV reality celebrity infantilized all later generations of US children over one kid. This has delayed childhood maturity by about 5 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Adam_Walsh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Adam_Walsh A similar example is Dr. Fauci, who has admitted that the only thing he cares about is corona stats, and doesn't look at related lockdown considerations like DV, delayed surgeries, school closures, etc. Basically two thoughtless simps have used the power of mass media to nearly destroy American civilization. I haven't read this book yet, but it discusses similar issues that are (gravely) endangering Western society: https://www.amazon.com/Parasitic-Mind-Infectious-Killing-Common-ebook/dp/B0853DW4TM https://www.amazon.com/Parasitic-Mind-Infectious-Killing-Com...
    - TruthHurts44 6y ago
      No, you are a Russian retard.
    - 6y ago
dymax78 6y ago
Imagined myself injected into a Michael Mann film while reading that.
akandiah 6y ago
I think this aspect is also worth considering: https://www.thebillfold.com/2012/05/only-an-idiot-would-rob-a-bank-how-inflation-deflated-the-stick-up/ https://www.thebillfold.com/2012/05/only-an-idiot-would-rob-...
darren0 6y ago
I grew up (in the 80s) by a bank that was routinely robbed. It was conveniently located by a freeway on ramp and had a drive thru. Over time they closed the drive thru and eventually removed direct street access to the bank to try to discourage robbers. Ah the good old days.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
npunt 6y ago
Whenever the high crime rates in the 70s-90s is brought up I like to remind folks this was likely an aberration with a specific environmental cause (lead), rather than representative of human nature. This [1] is an eye-opening roundup of ~25 major studies that support the lead-crime hypothesis, including comparisons across countries & cultures. The evidence is pretty overwhelming and certainly changed my perspective on human nature, which for me had previously been influenced by both growing up around the violence in CA in the 80s-90s and the media culture that depicted and sensationalized it. If you walk away from this thinking 'oh, humans are a lot less violent than I thought they were', you might find other beliefs built on top of that assumption also follow. These types of perspective shifts in life are rare, and very powerful. [1] https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-lead-crime-roundup-for-2018/ https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-le...
- dionidium 6y ago
  Unfortunately, homicide rates in some U.S. cities are nearing (and in some cases eclipsing) their early 90s highs. As I often do, I’ll use St. Louis as an example here, because it’s the city I happen to be most familiar with, but this is happening all over. I completely bought the story you’re telling and never thought we’d ever see homicide rates matching the gang-war carnage of early 90s St. Louis, but we’re blowing past those rates, in fact. That’s not to say the lead story is bunk, but, sadly, I don’t think you can draw the conclusion that those earlier rates were uniquely aberrant. https://www.officer.com/command-hq/technology/computers-software/crime-analytics/news/21155413/st-louis-homicide-rate-reaches-historic-levels https://www.officer.com/command-hq/technology/computers-soft... Edit to add this link: https://www.vox.com/2020/8/3/21334149/murders-crime-shootings-protests-riots-trump-biden https://www.vox.com/2020/8/3/21334149/murders-crime-shooting... Don’t get too focused on St. Louis, in other words; as I said, homicide rates are up all over the country.
  - oblio 6y ago
    > Unfortunately, homicide rates in some U.S. cities are nearing (and in some cases eclipsing) their early 90s highs. In 2020. Year of infamy.
jedberg 6y ago
> 1992, the worst year of all, there was an almost unimaginable 2,641 heists, one every 45 minutes of each banking day. Point Break came out in 1991. I wonder if that inspired some people. For those that don't know, the plot is that a bunch of LA surfers knock off banks so they can spend the rest of their time surfing, and get away with it for a long time.
- freeflight 6y ago
  It's interesting how the Werther-effect has been a topic for speculation, and even governmental action, for literally centuries, yet we don't seem to be any closer to acknowledging it, if it's actually a thing, or coming to any solid conclusions as what to do about if it actually is a thing. It's also kind of weird how in the English-language sphere it's apparently only known/relevant for "copycat suicide" [0], when the implications for such a dynamic being true would be far more wide-reaching. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide
  - DanBC 6y ago
    You could look to the UK for examples of action being taken specifically around suicide. Broadcasters have self-imposed guidelines that they follow. The regulators are aware of these guidelines and the need for them. Journalist unions have created a set of guidelines that attempt to balance freedom to report with the need to protect the public. (For something more specific: when you report someone has died in a public place do not give detail information about where they died. If they jumped off a particular bridge do not name the bridge. (We have a little bit of research from survivors about how they pick locations and some of them say they're influenced by news reporting)). On your wider point, all our broadcasters are aware of "imitative acts" and so they're very careful when showing children doing violent or dangerous things. Our advertising regulator will also ban some ads that show these things. There was an example from some time ago of a soft drink called "Tango". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Man_(advertisement) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Man_(advertisement) > Nonetheless, Orange Man soon sparked large controversy in the media and in public after it was discovered children had copied the events of the advertisement in playgrounds and injured themselves; Rupert Howell, a Tango advertisement executive, stated in 2000 that Orange Man "sparked a playground craze" where "people used to go round sort of slapping each other and saying 'You've Been Tango'd', and it was all very entertaining and great fun. There were no problems until we got a phone call once from a surgeon who said 'look, I'm not the complaining type but I thought you'd like to know that I did an operation on a child this morning with a damaged ear drum, and I was wheeling him in to the operating table, and said to him 'what happened to you then?' and replied 'I got Tango'd.'"[6] As a result, Howell pulled the advertisement from television that afternoon,[6] although other reports erroneously state that the advertisement was banned https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhOeG-uTJxw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhOeG-uTJxw
awinter-py 6y ago
> In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour of every day. > 1992, the worst year of all, there was an almost unimaginable 2,641 heists, one every 45 minutes of each banking day. On a particularly bad day for the FBI that year, bandits committed 28 bank licks these are not the same statement. 'average ~1 per hour while banks are open' isn't the same as 'minimum 1 per hour', nor is it the same as 'every hour of every day'
asciident 6y ago
With the massive unemployment and SBA fraud these days [1,2,3], the "banks" are being robbed every minute just in a quieter way. [1] https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/05/u-s-secret-service-massive-fraud-against-state-unemployment-insurance-programs/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/05/u-s-secret-service-massi... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-10-29/small-business-administration-10-000-grant-fraud-went-viral-hurting-program https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-10-29/small-bus... [3] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-21/california-precautions-ignored-employment-development-department https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-21/californ...
bzb6 6y ago
Reading this reminded me of the Clint Eastwood monologue in Dirty Harry. Do you feel lucky, punk?
TwoBit 6y ago
Reminds me of the Somalian pirates of five-ten years ago, who were also eventually stopped by defending the targets.
jeffreyrogers 6y ago
I'm in the middle of the book Days of Rage, which is about some of the violent protest movements in the 70s. Really amazing how many bombings there were back then too. Thousands per year in some cases IIRC. Most were small and did not do much damage or kill anyone however.
RickJWagner 6y ago
Ah, makes me think of "Point Break".

256 points by autokill 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

In present day Los Angeles people that work in banks take their computers off their desks and lock them away because they know they'll be broken in to. I did support for some of them.

octoberfranklin 6y ago
You mean like the computer will be stolen or like the Evil Maid attack?

davidgaw 6y ago

Man, I definitely wouldn't want to be a customer at that bank!

logicchop 6y ago
That's how I read the title; that's what I'm going with.
jojohohanon 6y ago
I have second hand memory of an SNL sketch from the 80s(?) about this phrasing, but for man, mugged, and five minutes. Second hand because it was told/ re-enacted to me in lieu of recorded on vhs or similar.

mhh__ 6y ago

https://youtu.be/yDdnTR7mqKs https://youtu.be/yDdnTR7mqKs

Melting_Harps 6y ago

Yeah, many of us that grew up in SoCal recall the heist that led to the so called 'assault weapon' ban, it was completely legal to have a long barrel rifle with 30 round magazines in CA prior to that--they could be open-carried if not loaded back then if I recall correctly, too. This was around the time of the LA riots in the 90s, too... which in my mind all happened at the same time as I recall being a kid sat in front of the TV not far from it all and being shocked at the level of wanton destruction. California was always a wild place since its inception and before it was ever a part of the US--many who live here don't even realize that California (both alta and baja) pre-dates the existence of the US and British colonialism by a significant margin. LA in the 80s was also Ground Zero for Gang warfare in the US, so us multi-generationals lived through that and adapted and we are am entirely different breed to the transplants and the rest of the US as fires and earthquakes were also taking place alongside those events, as those didn't stop either. And while I personally have no desire to live in CA anytime soon, except the occasional visit, I'm glad so many decided to leave since COVID. In a decade or two it may look like and feel as it did when I was a kid in the 90s and I may be tempted to go back.

conception 6y ago
Just a point of clarification for those not familiar with the heist, the weapons used were -not- legal in CA or the US. It was also during the time of the Federal Assault Weapons ban. They were not owned nor able to be owned legally during that time. It was also the inspiration for Heat’s shootout!
- Melting_Harps 6y ago
  > Just a point of clarification for those not familiar with the heist, the weapons used were -not- legal in CA or the US. It was also during the time of the Federal Assault Weapons ban. They were not owned nor able to be owned legally during that time. Only semi-correct, they had full-auto AK47s and extended mags, all of which at the time could be purchased and legally owned with a special stamp by the ATF [0]. As a child a friend's father had one he would bring out on new years to only short lived amusement in the neighborhood as we all lived in a densely populated suburb near a major freeway. But without them, yes, you couldn't just go to a store and buy one off the shelf. 0: https://legalbeagle.com/8731203-class-three-stamp-through-atf.html https://legalbeagle.com/8731203-class-three-stamp-through-at...

ameliaquining 6y ago

(2019)

CalChris 6y ago

It does remind me of Point Break: HARP This is us. Bank Robbery. And you're in the bank-robbery capital of the world-- UTAH 1322 last year in LA county. Up 26 percent from the year before. HARP That's right. And we nailed over a thousand of them. We did it by crunching data. Good crime-scene work, good lab work, and most importantly good data-base analysis. Special agent Utah. Are you receiving my signal? UTAH Zero distortion, sir.

paulpauper 6y ago

When pundits --on either side of the pollical spectrum--talk about how bad America is or how things are on the verge of collapse societally, show them stats such as this. By almost every metric, as bad as things may seem, they were objectively worse decades ago. Yeah, it feels like people are angrier than ever, especially online, but Twitter is not real life. A combination of increased tech surveillance, longer prison sentences, and bank tellers holding very little cash--all of these factors make bank robbery much less lucrative than it was in the past.

felipemnoa 6y ago
Yeah, they now rob you safely from their computers.
jeffbee 6y ago
It's not just bank robbery. Every crime category is now much lower than it was in 1990, in every jurisdiction of the USA. Even if you take a city that people think is ridiculously dangerous, like Camden, New Jersey, the homicide rate was triple 25 years ago.
- ajmurmann 6y ago
  I keep hearing that crime in rural areas has been going up and that now even cake wrangling is a problem liked in old wild west movies. Your general point that on a lawyer scale we are safer than ever stands Best source short googling could find: https://www.wsj.com/articles/nothing-but-you-and-the-cows-and-the-sirens-crime-tests-small-town-sheriffs-1526122800 https://www.wsj.com/articles/nothing-but-you-and-the-cows-an...
  - ramchip 6y ago
    What's cake wrangling?
    - syntheticcorp 6y ago
      Maybe an autocorrect from cow rustling? I can’t find anything online about cake wrangling, exciting as it sounds.

paulpauper 6y ago

The 80s were a crime paradise.--drug gangs, mafia, wall st white collar crime, informercial scams, televangelist and cult scams --you name it, it all thrived in the 80s.

nerbert 6y ago
Then came the police state and the party was over.
- blackrock 6y ago
  It sounds like the 80s were more fun. We had Miami Vice, MacGyver, The A-Team, Knight Rider, and Battlestar Galactica back then. And homes were still affordable places to live in.
  - SftwreEngnr 6y ago
    I think you're talking about pop culture nostalgia.
  - smnrchrds 6y ago
    I think this was at least partially a result of the high crime rate in the cities.
    - cleansingfire 6y ago
      When I lived in East Palo Alto, it was the murder capital of the US. With a carjacking attempt 75' from my front door (foiled by returning with a pistol before they could restart my car) I miss that time not at all.
      - Melting_Harps 6y ago
        > When I lived in East Palo Alto, it was the murder capital of the US. With a carjacking attempt 75' from my front door (foiled by returning with a pistol before they could restart my car) I miss that time not at all. Yeah, I remember the Valley in the 90s... a lof of it looked a lot like downtown LA which I'm was never exactly a fan of. But being in San Jose back then in the 90s looked and smelled like Chinatown when it was buzzing, Sunnyvale and Mountain View had a certain feel that is completely gone now it felt electric for reasons I didn't full understand and would only come to realize how significant what was happening there was a decade or so later. I never went to the East bay until recently, but that feels like a very watered down version of what it was back then to me. I guess it's survivor bias guiding my words, especially since I had close encounters with stuff like that growing up too; but having a choice of which one to deal with I'd stay with 90s CA to raise a family then somewhere like modern Geneva with all its amenities and manicured existence.

mattbgates 6y ago

Traffic nowadays... ain't worth it no more.

3131s 6y ago
It's harder to steal cars now too, which is how Cali's most successful bank robbers got away with it for a long time.

m3kw9 6y ago

Hell or high water is a good movie about that.

arminiusreturns 6y ago

> By 2013, the number was down to 212, one tenth of what it had been in its worst year. For the first time since the early 1960s, L.A. officially lost its title to the San Francisco Bay Area. The real interesting tidbit was at the end I found... I wonder why SF?

anigbrowl 6y ago
To quote the great Willie Sutton, 'Because that's where the money is.' SF was and is the financial capital of the west coast.

aaomidi 6y ago

Wonder how much legal abortion and removing lead caused this to decrease.

tsjq 6y ago
Freakonomics ! : )

boomboomsubban 6y ago

Not that it drastically improves the statement, but the tagline for the article > a bank was robbed every hour of every day. But the article itself clarifies they mean "each banking day" and the worst year had about seven robberies a day. Still a shocking amount, but not the 24 a day implied.

BlackFingolfin 6y ago
Moreover, the worst year was 1992, which isn't in the 80ies last I checked...
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  The 80's still could have averaged one an hour even if the worst year was 92.
  - BlackFingolfin 6y ago
    Except it didn't even average one an hour in the worst year
    - boomboomsubban 6y ago
      *hour the bank was open. Thought my first post made that clear.

momokoko 6y ago

It’s interesting as an older person to realize that Americans born in the 90s and later have no real concept of the amount of crime and violence that was widespread in US.

pault 6y ago
Also interesting that as a kid born in 1980 at the start of the drug violence epidemic, we were allowed to roam as we pleased as long as we were home for dinner. Contrast that to today's vastly safer world, and kids are not allowed to walk the neighborhood unsupervised.
- varjag 6y ago
  Is there a chance for causal relationship?
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    No. The leash put on US children was because of the 1981 Adam Walsh kidnapping/murder, and his dad (a cop) inadvertently instilling morbid fear in the American public by being on TV daily about it for over a decade. Hard to believe, but one TV reality celebrity infantilized all later generations of US children over one kid. This has delayed childhood maturity by about 5 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Adam_Walsh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Adam_Walsh A similar example is Dr. Fauci, who has admitted that the only thing he cares about is corona stats, and doesn't look at related lockdown considerations like DV, delayed surgeries, school closures, etc. Basically two thoughtless simps have used the power of mass media to nearly destroy American civilization. I haven't read this book yet, but it discusses similar issues that are (gravely) endangering Western society: https://www.amazon.com/Parasitic-Mind-Infectious-Killing-Common-ebook/dp/B0853DW4TM https://www.amazon.com/Parasitic-Mind-Infectious-Killing-Com...
  - TruthHurts44 6y ago
    No, you are a Russian retard.
  - 6y ago

dymax78 6y ago

Imagined myself injected into a Michael Mann film while reading that.

akandiah 6y ago

I think this aspect is also worth considering: https://www.thebillfold.com/2012/05/only-an-idiot-would-rob-a-bank-how-inflation-deflated-the-stick-up/ https://www.thebillfold.com/2012/05/only-an-idiot-would-rob-...

darren0 6y ago

I grew up (in the 80s) by a bank that was routinely robbed. It was conveniently located by a freeway on ramp and had a drive thru. Over time they closed the drive thru and eventually removed direct street access to the bank to try to discourage robbers. Ah the good old days.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

npunt 6y ago

Whenever the high crime rates in the 70s-90s is brought up I like to remind folks this was likely an aberration with a specific environmental cause (lead), rather than representative of human nature. This [1] is an eye-opening roundup of ~25 major studies that support the lead-crime hypothesis, including comparisons across countries & cultures. The evidence is pretty overwhelming and certainly changed my perspective on human nature, which for me had previously been influenced by both growing up around the violence in CA in the 80s-90s and the media culture that depicted and sensationalized it. If you walk away from this thinking 'oh, humans are a lot less violent than I thought they were', you might find other beliefs built on top of that assumption also follow. These types of perspective shifts in life are rare, and very powerful. [1] https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-lead-crime-roundup-for-2018/ https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-le...

dionidium 6y ago
Unfortunately, homicide rates in some U.S. cities are nearing (and in some cases eclipsing) their early 90s highs. As I often do, I’ll use St. Louis as an example here, because it’s the city I happen to be most familiar with, but this is happening all over. I completely bought the story you’re telling and never thought we’d ever see homicide rates matching the gang-war carnage of early 90s St. Louis, but we’re blowing past those rates, in fact. That’s not to say the lead story is bunk, but, sadly, I don’t think you can draw the conclusion that those earlier rates were uniquely aberrant. https://www.officer.com/command-hq/technology/computers-software/crime-analytics/news/21155413/st-louis-homicide-rate-reaches-historic-levels https://www.officer.com/command-hq/technology/computers-soft... Edit to add this link: https://www.vox.com/2020/8/3/21334149/murders-crime-shootings-protests-riots-trump-biden https://www.vox.com/2020/8/3/21334149/murders-crime-shooting... Don’t get too focused on St. Louis, in other words; as I said, homicide rates are up all over the country.
- oblio 6y ago
  > Unfortunately, homicide rates in some U.S. cities are nearing (and in some cases eclipsing) their early 90s highs. In 2020. Year of infamy.

jedberg 6y ago

> 1992, the worst year of all, there was an almost unimaginable 2,641 heists, one every 45 minutes of each banking day. Point Break came out in 1991. I wonder if that inspired some people. For those that don't know, the plot is that a bunch of LA surfers knock off banks so they can spend the rest of their time surfing, and get away with it for a long time.

freeflight 6y ago
It's interesting how the Werther-effect has been a topic for speculation, and even governmental action, for literally centuries, yet we don't seem to be any closer to acknowledging it, if it's actually a thing, or coming to any solid conclusions as what to do about if it actually is a thing. It's also kind of weird how in the English-language sphere it's apparently only known/relevant for "copycat suicide" [0], when the implications for such a dynamic being true would be far more wide-reaching. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide
- DanBC 6y ago
  You could look to the UK for examples of action being taken specifically around suicide. Broadcasters have self-imposed guidelines that they follow. The regulators are aware of these guidelines and the need for them. Journalist unions have created a set of guidelines that attempt to balance freedom to report with the need to protect the public. (For something more specific: when you report someone has died in a public place do not give detail information about where they died. If they jumped off a particular bridge do not name the bridge. (We have a little bit of research from survivors about how they pick locations and some of them say they're influenced by news reporting)). On your wider point, all our broadcasters are aware of "imitative acts" and so they're very careful when showing children doing violent or dangerous things. Our advertising regulator will also ban some ads that show these things. There was an example from some time ago of a soft drink called "Tango". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Man_(advertisement) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Man_(advertisement) > Nonetheless, Orange Man soon sparked large controversy in the media and in public after it was discovered children had copied the events of the advertisement in playgrounds and injured themselves; Rupert Howell, a Tango advertisement executive, stated in 2000 that Orange Man "sparked a playground craze" where "people used to go round sort of slapping each other and saying 'You've Been Tango'd', and it was all very entertaining and great fun. There were no problems until we got a phone call once from a surgeon who said 'look, I'm not the complaining type but I thought you'd like to know that I did an operation on a child this morning with a damaged ear drum, and I was wheeling him in to the operating table, and said to him 'what happened to you then?' and replied 'I got Tango'd.'"[6] As a result, Howell pulled the advertisement from television that afternoon,[6] although other reports erroneously state that the advertisement was banned https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhOeG-uTJxw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhOeG-uTJxw

awinter-py 6y ago

> In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour of every day. > 1992, the worst year of all, there was an almost unimaginable 2,641 heists, one every 45 minutes of each banking day. On a particularly bad day for the FBI that year, bandits committed 28 bank licks these are not the same statement. 'average ~1 per hour while banks are open' isn't the same as 'minimum 1 per hour', nor is it the same as 'every hour of every day'

asciident 6y ago

With the massive unemployment and SBA fraud these days [1,2,3], the "banks" are being robbed every minute just in a quieter way. [1] https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/05/u-s-secret-service-massive-fraud-against-state-unemployment-insurance-programs/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/05/u-s-secret-service-massi... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-10-29/small-business-administration-10-000-grant-fraud-went-viral-hurting-program https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-10-29/small-bus... [3] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-21/california-precautions-ignored-employment-development-department https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-21/californ...

bzb6 6y ago

Reading this reminded me of the Clint Eastwood monologue in Dirty Harry. Do you feel lucky, punk?

TwoBit 6y ago

Reminds me of the Somalian pirates of five-ten years ago, who were also eventually stopped by defending the targets.

jeffreyrogers 6y ago

I'm in the middle of the book Days of Rage, which is about some of the violent protest movements in the 70s. Really amazing how many bombings there were back then too. Thousands per year in some cases IIRC. Most were small and did not do much damage or kill anyone however.

RickJWagner 6y ago

Ah, makes me think of "Point Break".