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Seriously. Anyone that worked up about the events is obviously running a fence operation out of the shop. As I commented on the Twitter thread, we used to have
by glangdale 5y ago
Seriously. Anyone that worked up about the events is obviously running a fence operation out of the shop.
As I commented on the Twitter thread, we used to have tons of break-ins in our area. Miraculously, when they closed down all the pawn shops in the area with a "relaxed" attitude to the provenance of where stuff came from, we saw almost an order of magnitude reduction in b-and-e and theft from vehicle type events.
For this type of crime, you can have about as much of it as you're willing to tolerate. And closing down the operations that make it profitable to steal stuff is way simpler than chasing around perps as it's much more centralized.
- dhosek 5y agoYou're assuming that the cops actually care about solving or preventing crimes. Look how much effort it took to get them to manage what should have been an open and shut case. There have been plenty of similar cases. I have little doubt that one or more police officers are well aware of the nature of the shop and get their own cut of the profits.
- aerosmile 5y agoOccam's razor: 1. The police don't know and don't care. No surprise there. 2. The police do know (holy shit!) and also are directly involved in a criminal operation (holy double shit!).
- runarberg 5y agoOff course they know, they work (and perhaps live) in the neighborhood. They know people that have had stuff stolen from them, they might have had stuff stolen from them them selfs. Now caring, that is another issue.
- cwilkes 5y agoI wouldn’t say “not caring” but rather “there’s 1000 other things to do and the cop doesn’t set their own agenda”
- dhosek 5y agoI've been shaken down by a cop for a bribe. I've had cops threaten me with arrest for photographing them in a 7-Eleven maskless in the middle of the pandemic. I have no trouble believing that there are plenty of cops directly involved in criminal operations. Real life cops aren't like the ones on TV.
- bradlys 5y ago> I have little doubt that one or more police officers are well aware of the nature of the shop and get their own cut of the profits. I'd agree they're aware (and don't do anything for whatever reason) but I disagree your run of mill LEO is getting a cut of profits. If anyone is getting a cut, it's not your regular officers. It's whatever title you want to appoint to the person running the police force.
- glangdale 5y agoI would imagine 'line' police officers are unused to the technological aspects of what's going on and are rewarded/punished for shallow productivity numbers ("arrests per day"). I don't think it's necessary to posit a 'dark movie thriller' thing where cops are on the take - from a freakin' e-bike chop shop ffs. Both Occam's Razor and Hanlon's Razor suggest that the effort involved here is a combination of laziness, unfamiliarity and institutional disincentives. That said, a higher level commander may be judged by area crime stats and frankly those guys have rocks in their heads if they aren't cleaning up the fences. A lot of jurisdictions have pretty strict laws about this sort of place being meant to know where their stock is from. If you've got the will to deal with this stuff, you roll in every few days, ask the same questions and shut the doors when the staff don't have good answers.