10 ms·

Move to New York. I was smoking on my fire escape, and saw a dude break a car window and steal a shopping bag out of the back seat. I called the police, they

Move to New York. I was smoking on my fire escape, and saw a dude break a car window and steal a shopping bag out of the back seat. I called the police, they got the description from me over the phone, and the cops showed up in a car in around 90 seconds. They then asked me to get in the car and we drove around looking for the guy, found him, and they arrested him, and returned the car owners stuff. The whole process took less than 10 minutes.

For_Iconoclasm 15y ago
I got robbed in Brooklyn the exact same way a few weeks ago, but nobody was watching over my car. :(
Zak 15y ago
When I had stuff (including a laptop and $800 cash) stolen out of a vehicle in NYC a year and a half ago, it took two hours to even get the police to show up. They made a decent attempt at investigating once they did, but the initial response time was appalling.
- vacri 15y ago
  When someone put a hammer through my car window in an attempt to steal it at 3am, the cops took about half an hour to respond - they know that the one place the criminal isn't is at the site of the crime. Do a drive-around first looking for suspicious activity, then move in. If there is no 'hot pursuit' or current danger, then it doesn't matter much whether they arrive there in half an hour or in four hours. The stuff is gone/damaged/whatever and the police won't gain much by interrupting their current task.
zaidf 15y ago
Second this. I lived in frisco for a year and while it's never as bad as they make it sound, it was pretty bad looking back. There were shootings at the intersection our office was located at. Car breakins were not a big deal and just accepted. I'd see fresh pieces of glass window on my walk to work each morning. And I wasn't even living in the worst part of town aka the tenderlon. I've only moved to NYC few months ago and never felt remotely as threatened as some of my late night walks in SF. Still I keep hearing NYC has its own share of bad hoods but my guess is in proportion to its overall size, they comprise a significantly small % of area than sf.
- yardie 15y ago
  A native pointed this out to me while I was visiting. You do not call San Francisco frisco. Apparently, the people there really, really hate that.
  - mml 15y ago
    Sf denizens are an oh so delicate and precious bunch. Agreed.
  - banjomonster 15y ago
    There's also a real city in CA by that name, so people may assume you mean that, not SF.
    - yardie 15y ago
      According to Google Maps: Frisco, TX, Frisco, NC, Frisco, AL but no Frisco, CA. You have a reference for that one?
  - SeoxyS 15y ago
    Proper names for SF include: San Francisco, SF, the City, and occasionally San Fran. 'frisco will make you lose all credibility around here. Two areas of SF are pretty bad: Hunter's Point / Bayview, and the Tenderloin. Personally I never really go there on foot, and I'm fine. If I must go there, I'll drive of catch a cab.
- arethuza 15y ago
  I remember leaving it very late to book a hotel for JavaOne once and being put in a hotel in what turned out to be a rather "interesting" location. My first hint that something might be up was when the taxi driver at the airport took one look at me and asked "Do you really want to go there?". The second hint that things were going to be interesting was when the guy on the front desk told me how to get to Union Square - the hotel was on Geary St. and I thought I knew SF reasonably well. He proceeded to tell me not to walk directly along the street, but to walk up the hill a bit then walk across in the direction of Union Square. It turned out that during the day this advice wasn't really required but at night it definitely was! I only walked back once and took taxis back after that. This was about 10 years ago - don't know if the area is more civilised now but it was pretty scary then.
omarchowdhury 15y ago
I received the same treatment by the NYPD when a burglar broke into my house. Literally 10 officers arrived within 90 seconds.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
pitdesi 15y ago
That is an awesome experience... but I wouldn't say it's always the case with the NYPD. I got held up at gunpoint in New York a couple of years ago. They got my wallet, phone, and camera. I spent several hours in the police station reporting this... the cops REALLY didn't want me to report it, seemingly going out of their way to tell me how long it would take and how little a chance there was to catch anyone. I had to do it anyway for insurance purposes... it took so long because I had to flip through over a thousand indiscernable photos on a shitty CRT screen to identify a few known perpetrators that it could be. I never heard from the police. Funny because when I was peeing behind a dumpster they found me easily and had no trouble reporting me as publicly indecent (took them about 90 seconds).
hack_edu 15y ago
... and you live in what neighborhood?
- mikecane 15y ago
  There have been documented cases of NYPD not wanting to take reports. Without crime being reported, they can manipulate the figures to make themselves and the city look better. [typo edits] Edited to add: Start here: http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-05-04/news/the-nypd-tapes-inside-bed-stuy-s-81st-precinct/ http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-05-04/news/the-nypd-tapes-i... Or take your pick: http://www.villagevoice.com/related/to/New+York+Crime+Statistics/ http://www.villagevoice.com/related/to/New+York+Crime+Statis...
- jcampbell1 15y ago
  This happened on the LES. Grand and Allen. It is lower manhattan, but that neighborhood is not the upper east side.
  - alnayyir 15y ago
    That would be why it went that well. Try the Bronx where they never came to help me after 4 hours of waiting. Oakland is more similar to the Bronx in policing than it is the rest of the bay area.
rsuttongee 15y ago
Yeah, I had a very similar experience when a friend of mine got mugged in Chicago (next to wicker park). We were able to call the police within a couple of minutes, and within the next 5 minutes a special response unit got to us, took a description, and then drove around my friend to look for the mugger. We didn't catch him (right then at least), but I was still impressed with the quick response.
- smokey_the_bear 15y ago
  I bought a stolen laptop on ebay, and got in contact with the true owner. The Chicago police wouldn't do anything given an address, a po box, a name, paypal and ebay account details, and photos of the laptop inside their apartment. So it varies.
regomodo 15y ago
Not US but Exeter, England. Long, rambling, poorly structured story ahead. TL/DR, bike gets thieved a couple times and police were useless. Vigilantism sometimes works. My motorbike was stolen the 12hrs before I went sitting in a hedge in a field where I found some tyre tracks in some mud (nobody sensible would have a trials tire on a chicken chaser) of my bike earlier that day ( skipped classes at my EE uni course). After ~4hrs sitting in the cold and dark I hear the bike near to the field and set after it and try to pull the thief off as he goes around a roundabout (he just wobbled into the curb and goes off and I get flung to the ground). I phone the police telling them where my bike is ( I had reported the theft hours ago). I chase after the guy and he drops it somewhere (it went quiet) so I phone for my housemates only for 1 to drive home because he "doesn't like this one bit". I spent 20minutes waiting for the police only for me and a friend to fail at tackling the guy off the bike when he comes back and rides off. I go looking for the bike with a friend (I hear it stop a long way off somewhere in a council estate) and interrogate one of the thief's friend who tried to follow the thief. Waste of time, it turned out the friend had put fake plates on his scooter. My friend miraculously spots my bike in a dark alley and we push it home. Then 3 fucking police cars turn up almost an hour after I tell them and I convince them I phoned them but I have nothing on me (I was certain I was at least going to get beaten up that night) so I get put in the cop car and taken home to get ID. Then they are happy that I wasn't the thief. That was the 2nd time my bike got stolen. 1st time it was in a locked garage blocked by a locked car (smashed the window of the car to release handbrake and crowbarred the garage door and cut the lock. A few years later they torched the both and my bike along with my stuff stored in it [i was at uni]). Usual stuff first, police come down, take info and tell me they wont be able to find it. I bunk off school and go riding around on my mountainbike checking out all the council estates and woods near my home (Plymouth, England). Sure enough I hear it come down a path and see 2 people on it. I throw my mountainbike in front of them and they came crashing down and I banzai charge at them screaming. One of them runs for his life and the other just hung around claiming he didn't nick it (was offered a "go") and wanted compensation for damaging his "trackies". I believe him though as I had an inkling as to who knicked it. I ride out of the woods away from home with the mangled bicycle on my lap and I get my dad to come by to pick it up(http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonnobleuk/5783020123/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonnobleuk/5783020123/), clear the woods between me and home and then I ride back. Police's response when I tell them I retrieved my bike back "oh, good for you." For some unknown reason this heap of a bike got stolen 3 times. The 3rd time I gave up only for the police find it dragged 50meters away from my home where someone tried to use bolt-cutters on it. The police then tried to charge me £250 for retrieval fees. I slipped off from work to avoid that scam.
notyourwork 15y ago
There is hope in some cities. Or more likely there is hope with cops that actually care and believe in what they do. These cops are scattered in various cities but hard to find because they are probably helping someone else out and there are not enough of them.
stretchwithme 15y ago
Great job. Citizens like you will get involved when the cops pay attention. New York used to be very, very bad. People thought that was just life in the big city. Then they decided to maintain order, even painting over graffiti as soon as they found it, and enforced even minor laws. The criminal element perceived that bad behavior would not be tolerated. Malcolm Gladwell describes it in Tipping Point.
- hugh3 15y ago
  The second most remarkable thing about New York's zero-tolerance policing is how well it worked. The most remarkable thing about it is how few other places have tried it since.
  - light3 15y ago
    Is it really expensive to implement?
    - stretchwithme 15y ago
      I don't know how expensive enforcing laws is, but crime is really expensive. It destroys lives, property values, tourism and quality of life. When people have control over whether laws are enforced where they live, they usually choose to enforce them rather than let everything go to hell.
    - Joeri 15y ago
      They did it without a budget increase. The book "The Blue Ocean" describes the strategy. IIRC, they shifted resources from other kinds of crime-fighting to combat visible crime.
    - adolph 15y ago
      Sometimes expense is a matter of resource allocation (my apologies for bringing the "drug war" into this thread).
      - 15y ago

For_Iconoclasm 15y ago

I got robbed in Brooklyn the exact same way a few weeks ago, but nobody was watching over my car. :(

Zak 15y ago

When I had stuff (including a laptop and $800 cash) stolen out of a vehicle in NYC a year and a half ago, it took two hours to even get the police to show up. They made a decent attempt at investigating once they did, but the initial response time was appalling.

vacri 15y ago
When someone put a hammer through my car window in an attempt to steal it at 3am, the cops took about half an hour to respond - they know that the one place the criminal isn't is at the site of the crime. Do a drive-around first looking for suspicious activity, then move in. If there is no 'hot pursuit' or current danger, then it doesn't matter much whether they arrive there in half an hour or in four hours. The stuff is gone/damaged/whatever and the police won't gain much by interrupting their current task.

zaidf 15y ago

Second this. I lived in frisco for a year and while it's never as bad as they make it sound, it was pretty bad looking back. There were shootings at the intersection our office was located at. Car breakins were not a big deal and just accepted. I'd see fresh pieces of glass window on my walk to work each morning. And I wasn't even living in the worst part of town aka the tenderlon. I've only moved to NYC few months ago and never felt remotely as threatened as some of my late night walks in SF. Still I keep hearing NYC has its own share of bad hoods but my guess is in proportion to its overall size, they comprise a significantly small % of area than sf.

yardie 15y ago
A native pointed this out to me while I was visiting. You do not call San Francisco frisco. Apparently, the people there really, really hate that.
- mml 15y ago
  Sf denizens are an oh so delicate and precious bunch. Agreed.
- banjomonster 15y ago
  There's also a real city in CA by that name, so people may assume you mean that, not SF.
  - yardie 15y ago
    According to Google Maps: Frisco, TX, Frisco, NC, Frisco, AL but no Frisco, CA. You have a reference for that one?
- SeoxyS 15y ago
  Proper names for SF include: San Francisco, SF, the City, and occasionally San Fran. 'frisco will make you lose all credibility around here. Two areas of SF are pretty bad: Hunter's Point / Bayview, and the Tenderloin. Personally I never really go there on foot, and I'm fine. If I must go there, I'll drive of catch a cab.
arethuza 15y ago
I remember leaving it very late to book a hotel for JavaOne once and being put in a hotel in what turned out to be a rather "interesting" location. My first hint that something might be up was when the taxi driver at the airport took one look at me and asked "Do you really want to go there?". The second hint that things were going to be interesting was when the guy on the front desk told me how to get to Union Square - the hotel was on Geary St. and I thought I knew SF reasonably well. He proceeded to tell me not to walk directly along the street, but to walk up the hill a bit then walk across in the direction of Union Square. It turned out that during the day this advice wasn't really required but at night it definitely was! I only walked back once and took taxis back after that. This was about 10 years ago - don't know if the area is more civilised now but it was pretty scary then.

omarchowdhury 15y ago

I received the same treatment by the NYPD when a burglar broke into my house. Literally 10 officers arrived within 90 seconds.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

pitdesi 15y ago

That is an awesome experience... but I wouldn't say it's always the case with the NYPD. I got held up at gunpoint in New York a couple of years ago. They got my wallet, phone, and camera. I spent several hours in the police station reporting this... the cops REALLY didn't want me to report it, seemingly going out of their way to tell me how long it would take and how little a chance there was to catch anyone. I had to do it anyway for insurance purposes... it took so long because I had to flip through over a thousand indiscernable photos on a shitty CRT screen to identify a few known perpetrators that it could be. I never heard from the police. Funny because when I was peeing behind a dumpster they found me easily and had no trouble reporting me as publicly indecent (took them about 90 seconds).

hack_edu 15y ago

... and you live in what neighborhood?

mikecane 15y ago
There have been documented cases of NYPD not wanting to take reports. Without crime being reported, they can manipulate the figures to make themselves and the city look better. [typo edits] Edited to add: Start here: http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-05-04/news/the-nypd-tapes-inside-bed-stuy-s-81st-precinct/ http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-05-04/news/the-nypd-tapes-i... Or take your pick: http://www.villagevoice.com/related/to/New+York+Crime+Statistics/ http://www.villagevoice.com/related/to/New+York+Crime+Statis...
jcampbell1 15y ago
This happened on the LES. Grand and Allen. It is lower manhattan, but that neighborhood is not the upper east side.
- alnayyir 15y ago
  That would be why it went that well. Try the Bronx where they never came to help me after 4 hours of waiting. Oakland is more similar to the Bronx in policing than it is the rest of the bay area.

rsuttongee 15y ago

Yeah, I had a very similar experience when a friend of mine got mugged in Chicago (next to wicker park). We were able to call the police within a couple of minutes, and within the next 5 minutes a special response unit got to us, took a description, and then drove around my friend to look for the mugger. We didn't catch him (right then at least), but I was still impressed with the quick response.

smokey_the_bear 15y ago
I bought a stolen laptop on ebay, and got in contact with the true owner. The Chicago police wouldn't do anything given an address, a po box, a name, paypal and ebay account details, and photos of the laptop inside their apartment. So it varies.

regomodo 15y ago

Not US but Exeter, England. Long, rambling, poorly structured story ahead. TL/DR, bike gets thieved a couple times and police were useless. Vigilantism sometimes works. My motorbike was stolen the 12hrs before I went sitting in a hedge in a field where I found some tyre tracks in some mud (nobody sensible would have a trials tire on a chicken chaser) of my bike earlier that day ( skipped classes at my EE uni course). After ~4hrs sitting in the cold and dark I hear the bike near to the field and set after it and try to pull the thief off as he goes around a roundabout (he just wobbled into the curb and goes off and I get flung to the ground). I phone the police telling them where my bike is ( I had reported the theft hours ago). I chase after the guy and he drops it somewhere (it went quiet) so I phone for my housemates only for 1 to drive home because he "doesn't like this one bit". I spent 20minutes waiting for the police only for me and a friend to fail at tackling the guy off the bike when he comes back and rides off. I go looking for the bike with a friend (I hear it stop a long way off somewhere in a council estate) and interrogate one of the thief's friend who tried to follow the thief. Waste of time, it turned out the friend had put fake plates on his scooter. My friend miraculously spots my bike in a dark alley and we push it home. Then 3 fucking police cars turn up almost an hour after I tell them and I convince them I phoned them but I have nothing on me (I was certain I was at least going to get beaten up that night) so I get put in the cop car and taken home to get ID. Then they are happy that I wasn't the thief. That was the 2nd time my bike got stolen. 1st time it was in a locked garage blocked by a locked car (smashed the window of the car to release handbrake and crowbarred the garage door and cut the lock. A few years later they torched the both and my bike along with my stuff stored in it [i was at uni]). Usual stuff first, police come down, take info and tell me they wont be able to find it. I bunk off school and go riding around on my mountainbike checking out all the council estates and woods near my home (Plymouth, England). Sure enough I hear it come down a path and see 2 people on it. I throw my mountainbike in front of them and they came crashing down and I banzai charge at them screaming. One of them runs for his life and the other just hung around claiming he didn't nick it (was offered a "go") and wanted compensation for damaging his "trackies". I believe him though as I had an inkling as to who knicked it. I ride out of the woods away from home with the mangled bicycle on my lap and I get my dad to come by to pick it up(http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonnobleuk/5783020123/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonnobleuk/5783020123/), clear the woods between me and home and then I ride back. Police's response when I tell them I retrieved my bike back "oh, good for you." For some unknown reason this heap of a bike got stolen 3 times. The 3rd time I gave up only for the police find it dragged 50meters away from my home where someone tried to use bolt-cutters on it. The police then tried to charge me £250 for retrieval fees. I slipped off from work to avoid that scam.

notyourwork 15y ago

There is hope in some cities. Or more likely there is hope with cops that actually care and believe in what they do. These cops are scattered in various cities but hard to find because they are probably helping someone else out and there are not enough of them.

stretchwithme 15y ago

Great job. Citizens like you will get involved when the cops pay attention. New York used to be very, very bad. People thought that was just life in the big city. Then they decided to maintain order, even painting over graffiti as soon as they found it, and enforced even minor laws. The criminal element perceived that bad behavior would not be tolerated. Malcolm Gladwell describes it in Tipping Point.

hugh3 15y ago
The second most remarkable thing about New York's zero-tolerance policing is how well it worked. The most remarkable thing about it is how few other places have tried it since.
- light3 15y ago
  Is it really expensive to implement?
  - stretchwithme 15y ago
    I don't know how expensive enforcing laws is, but crime is really expensive. It destroys lives, property values, tourism and quality of life. When people have control over whether laws are enforced where they live, they usually choose to enforce them rather than let everything go to hell.
  - Joeri 15y ago
    They did it without a budget increase. The book "The Blue Ocean" describes the strategy. IIRC, they shifted resources from other kinds of crime-fighting to combat visible crime.
  - adolph 15y ago
    Sometimes expense is a matter of resource allocation (my apologies for bringing the "drug war" into this thread).
    - 15y ago