5 ms·

It's wild that someone has the gall to threaten the poster infront of the police and show him signs that he'll get shot. That would've seriously messed him up.

by websap 5y ago

It's wild that someone has the gall to threaten the poster infront of the police and show him signs that he'll get shot. That would've seriously messed him up. So glad this guy recovered his bike and hope they identify the thief and crack down on these stores.

someguydave 5y ago
yes, it shows the degree to which criminals are allowed to run free while the government focuses increasing resources on telling the non-criminals what to do
- paulpauper 5y ago
  hmmm...the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Some of it for drugs (only 15% of state and 40% federal) but you have to compare to the rest of the world. I doubt the German or UK police would be bothered to care much either. At least in the US criminals eventually get caught and arrested if they persist. the system works, but it sometimes takes longer than it should. In this case ,it's hard to make an arrest when there is no evidence but some video footage which may or may not exist or even identity the thief.
  - SilverRed 5y ago
    > but it sometimes takes longer than it should. I'm convinced that the solution to crime is not to increase punishments, but to make the speed and likelihood of being punished fast and almost certain. If theft had a 100% detection rate and a punishment greater than the value of the item, you would never steal anything because it would be pointless. The problem is we let people get away with it multiple times and then eventually destroy their lives over it. Airtags and other anti theft tech can help here. Make theft extremely difficult to get away with and people will not bother.
    - brayhite 5y ago
      What you just described is far costlier on society (assuming these efforts would be covered with taxes) and likely requires severe invasions of privacy, especially considering theft can be both physical and digital/virtual. All in all, I’d rather not aim for 100% detection + swift punishment as the improvement metrics for deterring theft.
      - SilverRed 5y ago
        Several technologies like the airtags and account locks on electronics have done much for stopping theft. The iphone can now act as an airtag while turned off. The thing is, even if you spend more initially on stopping crime, it will eventually drop off as people work out you can no longer get away with it. Spend the extra cash collecting all the security video and know it will teach one person that they can not get away with theft and that person will likely communicate it with their peers. I would personally rather spend $600 extra in tax for police over having the negative feelings of a $500 item being stolen. I don't believe much in terms of privacy has to be lost as most of the time we already have the data, we just don't have the human resources to do anything with it.
        dzhiurgis 5y ago
        I'm amazed that whenever there's mention of using data to solve crimes HN thinks it's invasion of privacy, yet majority work in tech companies that collect and sell massive amounts of personal data to sell ads.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
      > I'm convinced that the solution to crime is not to increase punishments, but to make the speed and likelihood of being punished fast and almost certain. This is the orthodox view among experts in the subject, so yes https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180514-do-long-prison-sentences-deter-crime https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180514-do-long-prison-s... https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jan/27/prison-experts-longer-sentences-will-not-cut-crime https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jan/27/prison-exper... https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/business-law/do-harsher-punishments-deter-crime https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/business-law/do-harsher-pu...
  - watwut 5y ago
    > I doubt the German or UK police would be bothered to care much either. At least in the US criminals eventually get caught and arrested if they persist. Do US really has higher clearance rates and lower criminality as your comment implies or is that just a guess?
    - adventured 5y ago
      The US does not have a special high clearance rate. It's not better than typical for the OECD. Its general crime rates are also roughly typical - median - for the OECD (including for most types of violent crime), except for murder of course as everyone knows.
  - rich_sasha 5y ago
    > I doubt the German or UK police would be bothered to care much either. I have as close as it gets to a perfect comparison. My now-wife was working on a summer school in the UK, shepherding American teenagers around. A few had their iPhones stolen, but with exact location information via “find my phone”. Police did nothing. It’s a bit sad when mostly they just had to turn up.
    - dkdbejwi383 5y ago
      Likely because as the Twitter thread demonstrates, most non-geeks don’t know what Find My is or how it works, and they don’t care to learn about it.
      - thirdsun 5y ago
        I doubt that's the issue. I mean, the concept is easy to grasp and explained in half a minute or less even if you never heard of Find My iPhone.
        dkdbejwi383 5y ago
        Sure, but first you have to "sell" the person on the idea, otherwise it's just more "we enhanced the killer's IP address and downloaded their RAM using coding and algorithms"
      - fckthisguy 5y ago
        That's a non-excuse when training the police on the existence of a location tracking feature for loss/theft prevention takes so little time. Since Android and iPhone make up the vast majority of the smartphone market, and modern devices on both sides have "Find My" style features, it feels like something they aught to know about. The police know to look for a serial number on a drone/bicycle/vehicle so why not the equivalent for phones?
  - king_phil 5y ago
    Quite the contrary, at least with austrian police. My pedelec (e-bike, worth around 4.000 €) got stolen at 3am a while ago and it had a GPS tracker. I called the equivalent of 911 and briefly explained. The said: "wait, we pick you up", and in the same moment I hear sirens a few streets later heading in my direction. What followed was out of a movie. We raced with emergency lights to the current location, constantly updading other units on the current position. We must have missed the thief only by seconds and found construction containers where the signal was coming from. The police said they would call the construction companys 24h contact and open the containers with them, but I could go home for now. One hour later the GPS tracker said the bike was moving again. I called again and the operator of emergency services said "didn't you call before?" and they picked me up again. When we arrived at the - now outdoor - location of the bike, there were 5 police cars and 15 police around it, but no thief, it was locked to a regular bike stand. They called in the equivalent of SWAT to open the lock and I got my bike back. They took fingerprints of the lock and luckily the thief stopped at an residential address for a minute or two, so we figured that might be the home address. Investigation is ongoing. I could more or less prove that I was the owner by having the dealers invoice, serial number and pictures on my phone btw.
    - hythyt 5y ago
      wow! here they would say they can do nothing while eating some donuts
      - georgeecollins 5y ago
        I was really shocked by a friend in Los Angeles that was mugged at gun point from their car and the police did essentially nothing. The audience here on Hacker News has a pretty realistic idea of how quickly you can track down the location of people using a set of credit cards that are known-- not to mention two phones which were also stolen and shockingly not powered down. I am not saying that the process is infallible, but there are companies I have worked for where you could have given the known information (phones, credit cards) and they could have tracked down the location in real time with a 70-80% certainty. Catching car jackers with a 70% certainty (or 33% even) will shut down a car jacking ring pretty quick. This sort of crime is exploding in Los Angeles this year. That the police don't try as hard to track a person down as a mobile ad server would, makes me wonder about the incentives to curb crime.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    If "high incarceration rate in large part due to micromanagement of what people do to their bodies" doesn't support the point of the person you're replying to I don't know what does.
  - someguydave 5y ago
    The US has a very large criminal underclass compared to many parts of Europe
junon 5y ago
Yeah, some of it leads me to question if the exciting story has been embellished a tad. But it's still an exciting story of vigilance and good life lessons. Who doesn't like that?
inglor_cz 5y ago
It is my understanding that the aggressive guy did not threaten him directly in front of the officers, but when they were both outside (and the cops still inside). That is something I would definitely expect from brazen fencers, yes.
wil421 5y ago
I’ve come to the conclusion that it might be better to just record every aspect of my life as a CYA measure. In my state it would be legal. Not sure I could do it with a GoPro. Something small and hidden with a 128gb SD card would be best.
- voakbasda 5y ago
  Be careful with this. Laws about recording people can be strict. And you can expect to be stopped and questioned by the police when they notice your rig. At least, that’s what happened to me.
  - wil421 5y ago
    Yes you can be trespassed for doing it in places that ban it but I don’t think you’d be arrested unless they asked you to stop previously. It should be allowed in ALL public places, especially if it’s visible.
rasz 5y ago
Predators easily sense weakness. Why wouldnt he? There were no repercussions. Assertive person would walk back in and report to Police receiving a death threat - this immediately elevates potential theft misdemeanor to a straight up felony charges.
bufferoverflow 5y ago
It's NYC. They release violent criminals all the time.

by websap 5y ago

someguydave 5y ago

yes, it shows the degree to which criminals are allowed to run free while the government focuses increasing resources on telling the non-criminals what to do

paulpauper 5y ago
hmmm...the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Some of it for drugs (only 15% of state and 40% federal) but you have to compare to the rest of the world. I doubt the German or UK police would be bothered to care much either. At least in the US criminals eventually get caught and arrested if they persist. the system works, but it sometimes takes longer than it should. In this case ,it's hard to make an arrest when there is no evidence but some video footage which may or may not exist or even identity the thief.
- SilverRed 5y ago
  > but it sometimes takes longer than it should. I'm convinced that the solution to crime is not to increase punishments, but to make the speed and likelihood of being punished fast and almost certain. If theft had a 100% detection rate and a punishment greater than the value of the item, you would never steal anything because it would be pointless. The problem is we let people get away with it multiple times and then eventually destroy their lives over it. Airtags and other anti theft tech can help here. Make theft extremely difficult to get away with and people will not bother.
  - brayhite 5y ago
    What you just described is far costlier on society (assuming these efforts would be covered with taxes) and likely requires severe invasions of privacy, especially considering theft can be both physical and digital/virtual. All in all, I’d rather not aim for 100% detection + swift punishment as the improvement metrics for deterring theft.
    - SilverRed 5y ago
      Several technologies like the airtags and account locks on electronics have done much for stopping theft. The iphone can now act as an airtag while turned off. The thing is, even if you spend more initially on stopping crime, it will eventually drop off as people work out you can no longer get away with it. Spend the extra cash collecting all the security video and know it will teach one person that they can not get away with theft and that person will likely communicate it with their peers. I would personally rather spend $600 extra in tax for police over having the negative feelings of a $500 item being stolen. I don't believe much in terms of privacy has to be lost as most of the time we already have the data, we just don't have the human resources to do anything with it.
      - dzhiurgis 5y ago
        I'm amazed that whenever there's mention of using data to solve crimes HN thinks it's invasion of privacy, yet majority work in tech companies that collect and sell massive amounts of personal data to sell ads.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
    > I'm convinced that the solution to crime is not to increase punishments, but to make the speed and likelihood of being punished fast and almost certain. This is the orthodox view among experts in the subject, so yes https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180514-do-long-prison-sentences-deter-crime https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180514-do-long-prison-s... https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jan/27/prison-experts-longer-sentences-will-not-cut-crime https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jan/27/prison-exper... https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/business-law/do-harsher-punishments-deter-crime https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/business-law/do-harsher-pu...
- watwut 5y ago
  > I doubt the German or UK police would be bothered to care much either. At least in the US criminals eventually get caught and arrested if they persist. Do US really has higher clearance rates and lower criminality as your comment implies or is that just a guess?
  - adventured 5y ago
    The US does not have a special high clearance rate. It's not better than typical for the OECD. Its general crime rates are also roughly typical - median - for the OECD (including for most types of violent crime), except for murder of course as everyone knows.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  > I doubt the German or UK police would be bothered to care much either. I have as close as it gets to a perfect comparison. My now-wife was working on a summer school in the UK, shepherding American teenagers around. A few had their iPhones stolen, but with exact location information via “find my phone”. Police did nothing. It’s a bit sad when mostly they just had to turn up.
  - dkdbejwi383 5y ago
    Likely because as the Twitter thread demonstrates, most non-geeks don’t know what Find My is or how it works, and they don’t care to learn about it.
    - thirdsun 5y ago
      I doubt that's the issue. I mean, the concept is easy to grasp and explained in half a minute or less even if you never heard of Find My iPhone.
      - dkdbejwi383 5y ago
        Sure, but first you have to "sell" the person on the idea, otherwise it's just more "we enhanced the killer's IP address and downloaded their RAM using coding and algorithms"
    - fckthisguy 5y ago
      That's a non-excuse when training the police on the existence of a location tracking feature for loss/theft prevention takes so little time. Since Android and iPhone make up the vast majority of the smartphone market, and modern devices on both sides have "Find My" style features, it feels like something they aught to know about. The police know to look for a serial number on a drone/bicycle/vehicle so why not the equivalent for phones?
- king_phil 5y ago
  Quite the contrary, at least with austrian police. My pedelec (e-bike, worth around 4.000 €) got stolen at 3am a while ago and it had a GPS tracker. I called the equivalent of 911 and briefly explained. The said: "wait, we pick you up", and in the same moment I hear sirens a few streets later heading in my direction. What followed was out of a movie. We raced with emergency lights to the current location, constantly updading other units on the current position. We must have missed the thief only by seconds and found construction containers where the signal was coming from. The police said they would call the construction companys 24h contact and open the containers with them, but I could go home for now. One hour later the GPS tracker said the bike was moving again. I called again and the operator of emergency services said "didn't you call before?" and they picked me up again. When we arrived at the - now outdoor - location of the bike, there were 5 police cars and 15 police around it, but no thief, it was locked to a regular bike stand. They called in the equivalent of SWAT to open the lock and I got my bike back. They took fingerprints of the lock and luckily the thief stopped at an residential address for a minute or two, so we figured that might be the home address. Investigation is ongoing. I could more or less prove that I was the owner by having the dealers invoice, serial number and pictures on my phone btw.
  - hythyt 5y ago
    wow! here they would say they can do nothing while eating some donuts
    - georgeecollins 5y ago
      I was really shocked by a friend in Los Angeles that was mugged at gun point from their car and the police did essentially nothing. The audience here on Hacker News has a pretty realistic idea of how quickly you can track down the location of people using a set of credit cards that are known-- not to mention two phones which were also stolen and shockingly not powered down. I am not saying that the process is infallible, but there are companies I have worked for where you could have given the known information (phones, credit cards) and they could have tracked down the location in real time with a 70-80% certainty. Catching car jackers with a 70% certainty (or 33% even) will shut down a car jacking ring pretty quick. This sort of crime is exploding in Los Angeles this year. That the police don't try as hard to track a person down as a mobile ad server would, makes me wonder about the incentives to curb crime.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  If "high incarceration rate in large part due to micromanagement of what people do to their bodies" doesn't support the point of the person you're replying to I don't know what does.
- someguydave 5y ago
  The US has a very large criminal underclass compared to many parts of Europe

junon 5y ago

Yeah, some of it leads me to question if the exciting story has been embellished a tad. But it's still an exciting story of vigilance and good life lessons. Who doesn't like that?

inglor_cz 5y ago

It is my understanding that the aggressive guy did not threaten him directly in front of the officers, but when they were both outside (and the cops still inside). That is something I would definitely expect from brazen fencers, yes.

wil421 5y ago

I’ve come to the conclusion that it might be better to just record every aspect of my life as a CYA measure. In my state it would be legal. Not sure I could do it with a GoPro. Something small and hidden with a 128gb SD card would be best.

voakbasda 5y ago
Be careful with this. Laws about recording people can be strict. And you can expect to be stopped and questioned by the police when they notice your rig. At least, that’s what happened to me.
- wil421 5y ago
  Yes you can be trespassed for doing it in places that ban it but I don’t think you’d be arrested unless they asked you to stop previously. It should be allowed in ALL public places, especially if it’s visible.

rasz 5y ago

Predators easily sense weakness. Why wouldnt he? There were no repercussions. Assertive person would walk back in and report to Police receiving a death threat - this immediately elevates potential theft misdemeanor to a straight up felony charges.

bufferoverflow 5y ago

It's NYC. They release violent criminals all the time.