38 ms·

Train burglaries in LA

568 points by r721 5y ago

scollet 5y ago
The backing track to this post is Delicate Tendrils.
Ansil849 5y ago
I don't really understand what is happening here. Why is the ground completely covered in packages? Do thieves just break into the passing train compartments and start throwing out packages?
- vondur 5y ago
  They open things up, take what they want, and dispose of the rest.
  - ohCh6zos 5y ago
    This seems like a problem that armed guards would fix pretty quickly.
    - mnd999 5y ago
      Maybe. Or you just up the stakes and now you have thieves with automatic weapons having a gunfight with the train guards.
      - CrispinS 5y ago
        The stakes remain unchanged, because the stakes are the packages. Since there can't be that much profit in this activity, I think it's reasonable to assume that a lot of the people responsible are doing it just because it's easy.
- avalys 5y ago
  Yeah, that's exactly what they do, and they open the packages right there on the side of the tracks and take anything that's valuable inside.
- codemac 5y ago
  The trains come to a stop from time to time. They break in to a container and throw as much as they can to the ground before the train continues. Once the train is moving again, they go through all the packages on the ground looking for things of value.
  - Ansil849 5y ago
    So the thieves just lurk around the area, waiting for trains to come to a pause, and then break open the containers, I guess the containers are not very secure? And there's minimal patrols? It just seems like extraordinary 'easy pickings'.
    - Doxin 5y ago
      Turns out it's pretty tricky to make a padlock secure against bolt cutters. Of course improving the security of the lock would soon lead to thieves cutting off the locking bars on the container instead.
      - Ansil849 5y ago
        It doesn't have to be the lock that's secured. What about a hinge mechanism which takes a programmable amount of time to open the container door? If it takes 10 minutes for the door to open, the lock doesn't matter as much, since the thieves have a very limited amount of time before the trains start moving again, apparently.
        asdff 5y ago
        Way too complicated. Apparently shippers are opting to start just welding the door shut and unwelding it at the destination.
        dkdbejwi383 5y ago
        That sounds like it could be quite error prone. If it's electronic, what about power failures? If mechanical, sounds like lots of intricate machined parts which will wear down over time.
- blamazon 5y ago
  The trains are forced to stop at this accessible location sometimes, just outside the rail yard. They don’t stop for long, so the strategy is to hop on, cut a container open, and throw as much stuff to the ground as you can before the train starts moving again. Then you hop down and look through your spoils for items of value. Hint: look for “lithium ion battery device inside” warning labels.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - alkonaut 5y ago
    So if the train cars, or the containers thee packages are kept in within the train cars, were at least so secure that they prevented access for say an hour or two, then this likely wouldn't happen? What is this, open crates or sacks of packages, in traincars locked with a small padlock?
    - blamazon 5y ago
      > What is this, open crates or sacks of packages, in traincars locked with a small padlock? Yes, pretty much. Although in many cases it’s not even a padlock, just a tamper-evident seal device with a serial number matching the paperwork for that container: https://shipped.com/img-parts/server/php/files/containers/shipping-container-bolt-seal.jpg https://shipped.com/img-parts/server/php/files/containers/sh... For huge cargo firms handling tens of thousands of containers daily, padlocks can be problematic operationally and quite expensive.
    - wongarsu 5y ago
      Padlocks are easy to cut, a bigger padlock just needs a bigger tool. Some companies apparently start welding their containers shut, which raises the bar for thieves significantly (now they need a grinder and more time).
      - wrycoder 5y ago
        Battery powered grinders being the hot new thing.
- bostonsre 5y ago
  Don't think you would want to be walking around with someone else's package. Taking just the item gives some plausible deniability and there is probably no way to find the actual package that an item was taken from at that scale.
w_t_payne 5y ago
Why is there not CCTV there? CCTV + police follow-up and arrests made seems like a good way to combat this (serious, economically damaging) situation.
- slig 5y ago
  It's LA, they don't care.
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  You need a District Attorney willing to actively go after these kinds of suspects. In my experience the police don't really do anything about thefts unless they happen to catch the perpetrator in the act. My family had our car stolen from our driveway and they did virtually nothing to try and recover it. In fact, the only reason why we got it back was because the tweaker who stole it managed to park it in a reserved stall on private property and it was towed. The police said they swept the car for evidence, but we found multiple prescription bottles with the suspect's name on it in easy to reach places. The cops obviously missed this and refused to accept it as evidence. We did a LexisNexus search of the name on the bottle and lo-and-behold, multiple priors for armed robbery and auto theft. No charges were ever filed against the person. So I have virtually no faith in security cameras. They do their jobs, but the DA certainly doesn't.
  - swearwolf 5y ago
    I don’t necessarily disagree with you about the DA, but it seems like in your specific case the problem is more that the police themselves are acting indifferently.
- MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
  If you want video, here is one from the Chicago trainyard: https://twitter.com/ronmilnerboodle/status/1481777403252944896 https://twitter.com/ronmilnerboodle/status/14817774032529448... Its not that this is hard or impossible to solve.
- icelancer 5y ago
  CCTV in an age of universal and accepted mask-wearing is pretty ineffective. I have video of people breaking into my business and stealing five figures worth of goods a few years back with specific identification of them, forwarded to the police, who have done nothing with it. Non-violent crimes (specifically property damage or theft) just aren't prosecuted, especially on the west coast.
dheera 5y ago
Serious question: Have they not thought of mounting Mark Rober-style devices on each freight car that releases some combination of {glitter, fart spray, honey, glue, itch powder, pepper spray, ink}? It might sound funny but I think the sheer discomfort would deter thieves in an instant, and they would be easy to identify for several days. A device of this sort would be super useful for car thieves as well.
- somethoughts 5y ago
  At the risk of sounding like a Reddit comment - I came here for this comment!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
wmf 5y ago
I see a lot of people talking about "packages", but UPS/Fedex/USPS don't use trains because they're too slow, right? I assume we're talking about wholesale shipping here.
- coolspot 5y ago
  Anything with lithium-ion battery can’t be shipped via air due to FAA regulations. So, laptops and phones all travel on trains and trucks. Will big helpful warning labels as well.
- kayfox 5y ago
  Ground shipping in the US often goes by train when it has to cross the country, its cheap and fuel efficient.
friendlydog 5y ago
They are looking at 20 years if they get caught: 18 U.S. Code section 1991 Additionally they are releasing hazardous materials by breaking open boxes: 18 U.S. Code section 1992
- gruez 5y ago
  > They are looking at 20 years if they get caught: 18 U.S. Code section 1991 likely not, see https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence-eleventy-million-years/ https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc...
  - friendlydog 5y ago
    It leaves out the important information, what does whale sushi taste like. Interesting to know, though these inconsistencies between cases, and time seem rife for popularity and crony "justice". We like group X so they get 6 months we hate group Y so 20 years for them. There is a reason I became a programmer not a lawyer. Deterministic code is easier than subjective rulings at least for me.
    - gruez 5y ago
      >these inconsistencies between cases, and time seem rife for popularity and crony "justice". The sentencing guidelines I mentioned seems specifically designed to mitigate this issue? >We like group X so they get 6 months we hate group Y so 20 years for them. There is a reason I became a programmer not a lawyer. Deterministic code is easier than subjective rulings at least for me. The sentencing guidelines seem pretty deterministic to me. There's a bunch of factors. The factors add up to a certain amount of points, and the amount of points determines your sentence to within a fairly narrow band. It's certainly not the "6 months for one group and 20 years for another group" that you talk about.
cracker_jacks 5y ago
"Air tag" like trackers on decoy packages mixed in might be a cheap solution to this issue.
- Jochim 5y ago
  They don't really disincentive the behaviour though. Dye packs are a thing, people still rob banks. People who feel they have nothing to lose don't care if they get caught either. The solution is to provide people with a decent life by default. They can then contribute to society comfortably.
  - buscoquadnary 5y ago
    But if we simply take away consequence now no one has any reason not to steal, and then more people will steal. It may not deter all people but fewer people will be willing to gamble if the odds of facing consequences go up. The alternative is to view it as inevitable and therefore don't do anything, but then those not doing it fall behind those doing it and suddenly those who weren't stealing before now feel like losers for not doing it because no one was facing any consequences and because they held back they are now worse off.
screye 5y ago
Kind of related : America Is Falling Apart at the Seams https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/opinion/america-falling-apart.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/opinion/america-falling-a... A loss of civic sense and cultural criminality are incredibly hard to weed out of a population, once it has taken root. I worry that the a mix of pessimism and a loss of civic sense is sending non-elite America into a death spiral. Opponents of return-to-normalcy claim that these are temporary and anomalous circumstances as a result of covid. However, a 2 year period of cultural erosion can lead to this regression getting cemented as a modern cultural identity of non-elite US. Cost-benefit analyses have been ignored in favor of tunnel-visioning on viral outcomes and short term political gain. At the end of this, we might just find ourselves asking "We made it out of this, but at what cost?". p.s: I am not advocating for any particular policy, just pointing to the absence of any holistic response. That being said, the complete failure of the American response in terms of 'viral outcomes' despite tunnel visioning on it, doesn't inspire confidence in it.
- JimBlackwood 5y ago
  Do you have a source for this? We’re seeing similar things in my country and I’d love to understand why (and how we can make it go away) a little more
- y4mi 5y ago
  And that ... Theory about the lockdowns supposedly not being because of the virus but to hide a larger financial crisis/weath reallocation is spreading quite quickly at least at far as I can tell. That's not going to reduce tensions in that regard, that's for sure. There is only circumstantial evidence but the story sounds plausible. If things continue like this, I'd wager that trump will return in 24
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    - y4mi 5y ago
      I'm not sure how good your reading comprehension generally is, but at least in this case you've clearly misinterpreted what I've written there.
Axsuul 5y ago
Yes LA is a third world country, please leave.
RspecMAuthortah 5y ago
Yeah but it is the domestic extremist terrorism that is the real threat to its citizen. Got it.
adrianmonk 5y ago
Comment from someone on Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/s2sjxj/los_angeles_thieves_have_recently_taken_on_cargo/hsgt0s2/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/s2sjxj/los_angeles_th...): > It’s not just in LA, theft and vandalism have gone way up on all the rail networks. My company is experiencing some of the worst loss numbers while in rail transit. We just announced that all transport carts will be welded shut and unwelded when it gets to the destination. Even locks aren’t enough.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  Just the next iteration of bike theft. Same tools, bigger rewards. Of course, we did nothing when it was just bikes being stolen because it was just hippy car-free bike riders impacted.
soheil 5y ago
This is probably one of the most civilized ways to steal something. It hurts no one and is just a non-discriminatory tax on pretty much everyone in LA since most people order Amazon packages. I think of this like click fraud, a while ago Google decided to stop combatting it and just "let it happen" [1]. It turned out to be a winning strategy. [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-ceo-on-click-fraud-let-it-happen-is-perfect-economic-solution/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-ceo-on-click-fraud-let-...
- buscoquadnary 5y ago
  > It hurts no one Unless of course one of the boxes had something like epi-pens or insulin or some other medical supplies of course.
  - soheil 5y ago
    By that logic carrying a bag of nails should be a crime since you might inadvertently drop one on a public road where a UPS truck might get a flat tire and as a result not be able to deliver someone's insulin.
    - hnfong 5y ago
      If you're carrying a bag of nails around for the sole purpose of "accidentally" drop on a public road to cause damage to passing vehicles... ... you're not seriously trying to argue that it shouldn't be a crime right?
      - soheil 5y ago
        Of course not, what an absurd interpretation..
tamaharbor 5y ago
Over the past several months I have had more delivery problems with Amazon than ever. Things scheduled, out for delivery, and sometimes ten spots away on a map, just seem to disappear. I wonder if these (and similar) thefts have anything to do with it.
dredmorbius 5y ago
I'm reminded of recent realisations in the evolution of whales. The great size and efficiency of whales came about due to increased ocean productivity --- more available food, though often at widely-separated distances, an efficient feeding mechansism (lunge feeding), which could onboard vast quantities of krill in a single act, and the lack of any credible predators, allowing great whales to focus their evolutionary specialisation on long-distance speed and efficiency. See: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-are-blue-whales-so-gigantic/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-are-blue-whal... Similar principles apply to human transportation modes. In particular, safety of routes, for passengers and cargo, is absolutely paramount, and there's little that kills traffic, whether terminal or through-passage, than increased risk. For rail, the equivalents are continent-spanning cargo operations, efficient freight loading and unloading (particularly via intermodal containerised traffic), and a lack of effective theft or crime operations against the trains and their cargo itself. The Twitter thread here is strong evidence of a failure of that "no effective predators" requirement. Various supply-chain issues may be changing the calculus on long-distance freight operations and efficiency --- whether cargos decrease in quantity, in value, or in predictability, each of these would decrease operating efficiencies and opportunities. Containerisation is proving to be both a boon and a risk as well, by facilitating theft. How challenging this might prove for railroads isn't clear, but I see a potentially large risk here. As John Schreiber's thread notes, law enforcement for railroads is provided by the railroad companies themselves, in one of the first multi-jurisdictional police forces. Historically, railroad cops were more the scourge of hoboes and patrolled freight yards, but they might have to extend operations further if attacks such as these are increasing in frequency. For those frustrated by Twitter's interface, Threadreader and Nitter links: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1481770722271760384.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1481770722271760384.html https://nitter.kavin.rocks/johnschreiber/status/1481770722271760384 https://nitter.kavin.rocks/johnschreiber/status/148177072227...
- q1w2 5y ago
  It also reminds me of certain episodes of the The History of Rome and The History of Byzantium podcasts where they depict the collapse of complex systems when the breakdown of security occurred. During times when Roman security was good - the economy could develop complex systems of trade, which developed coinage, mathematics, architecture, and all sorts of specialists and artisans. When security was no longer reliable due to the influx of raiders, piracy, and hoards of barbarians, all of those complex activities ceased. The most complex aspects of society are always the first to collapse when security disappears. ...and eventually a "fend for yourself" attitude permeates society - which becomes a feedback loop, and it's no longer the externalities that are destroying security - but internal actors. We were lucky to have a safe and stable society for so long that we are shocked to see mass looting. Once it's gone though, it is takes generations to rebuild that.
rdtsc 5y ago
Wonder how organized that looting is. Is just individuals over many months or years, or a large gang over a few weeks time. On the one hand it’s shocking to see it in LA in US. On the other I am surprised it’s not happening more often. In large cities, some of my acquaintances had to get PO boxes as their packages kept getting stolen. But why bother wasting time going house to house, when you can hit a whole train car at once.
- siruncledrew 5y ago
  I was wondering the same thing about seeing the aerial footage in the Twitter thread. I don’t even know that amount of stuff could be opened, filtered for valuables, and transported within a few hours time without dozens of people and some mid-size cargo trucks. This seems like enough organized logistic planning that a bunch of homeless people or youth gangs would not be able to pull off at this level.
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    It’s minimally above bike theft. Same tools. If the train goes slow enough/stops, start cracking open containers and throw as much on the ground as you can while you can. Then sift through it for the next hours.
- JPKab 5y ago
  There is almost certainly an organized crime element interacting with the individuals performing the looting. Typically, the organized elements are at the "fencing" level, where they are paying the individuals (almost certainly mostly drug addicts) small fractions of the resale value for various items in cash/drugs. This is a standard pattern in areas with lax law enforcement, which these days is all of California, and also places like Manhattan. Political leaders in the LA, SF, Manhattan areas have bought into the Bolshevik era explanation of crime being caused by social injustice, and therefore see criminals as victims of a corrupt society rife with inequality. This kind of chaos is an inevitable result. Treating criminals like hapless victims acting out of desperation ignores the fact that many have agency, are intelligent, and make cost/benefit calculations that completely change when they know they won't get prosecuted if they are caught.
reustle 5y ago
What's old is new again https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_robbery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_robbery
- labrador 5y ago
  Also: 22 Are Arrested in Thefts Of Kennedy Airport Cargo https://archive.is/F6QPf https://archive.is/F6QPf Those trains must be stalled there for long periods of time. I can't imagine they're robbing moving trains, but I could be wrong as thieves often prove to be very resourceful
  - Liquix 5y ago
    > I can't imagine they're robbing moving trains WE NEED EVERY LAST DROP, JESSE
    - scollet 5y ago
      Just rewatched this. Probably the best scene of the season.
fblp 5y ago
Sigh - Any resourced and competent police or security force should be able to catch or deter thieves that are stealing packages from the same location. Additionally, mail theft laws which include prison as a consequence should be extended to package thefts if they don't already cover them.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  > Any resourced I thought we all rooted here to defund the police? Should we backtrack that idea? Edit: I seem to have broken a nerve in some people here. Sorry, for being snarky. I just think that you can't reduce funding for a gov agency but also then expect it to be resourced. Just using sterile logic to make this conclusion.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - nightsd01 5y ago
    Very few people want to actually defund the police. But try being a black friend of mine, who got thrown out of his car without resisting and beaten so bad he had to go to an ICU, purely because he was driving a car that “matched the description” (that didn’t even match the color) of a crime in the area, and perhaps you can begin to understand why the “other side” is frustrated… And let me guess. You think these train robberies happen because they defunded the police in their area…?
    - systemvoltage 5y ago
      I am well aware of the colloquial term "Defund the police" which is often met by "No, not literally defund it". But the reality is that there is a strong support to reduce resources and move towards soft-policing. Have you been to the Bay Area? Apartment complexes and condominiums are hardened like castles while their kids play in the safe courtyards and the outside is rotting to the point of unsafe for male padestrians, let alone women and kids. These are the same people voting for these policies. Completely deranged.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
acchow 5y ago
How long before Amazon has their own containers with cameras and defense mechanisms?
- wmf 5y ago
  As soon as the shrinkage exceeds the cost of those security measures. Security is a business problem.
- shortlived 5y ago
  Made me think of this horrible vision: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalhead_(Black_Mirror) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalhead_(Black_Mirror)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nightsd01 5y ago
  I can imagine automatically aimed and fired machine guns, all powered by Alexa of course :)
  - siva7 5y ago
    Yeah, sounds like a failed state if you ask me
    - acchow 5y ago
      Absolutely; failed in maintaining a monopoly on violence.
offmycloud 5y ago
Huh, I just had a lost Amazon package last week, shipped by UPS. It disappeared somewhere on the way from Nebraska to California.
throwawaysea 5y ago
Soft on crime policies like restorative justice simply attract crime. No consequences means no deterrent. It’s not surprising this happens in LA - George Gascon is the DA and he’s facing increasing support for his recall (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/liberal-beverly-hills-votes-to-recall-democratic-district-attorney-george-gascon https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/liberal-beverly-hill...).
- threatofrain 5y ago
  This is not LAPD responsibility, and the HQ of the responsible force is in Omaha Nebraska.
  - onepointsixC 5y ago
    If it isn't LA's responsibility why is Union Pacific asking LA's DA to stop releasing suspects who were arrested for theft? [1] [1]:https://twitter.com/CBSLAKristine/status/1482115852216385538?s=20 https://twitter.com/CBSLAKristine/status/1482115852216385538...
  - zo1 5y ago
    It's still a consequence of general lack of policing or soft policing. Whether this is LAPDs responsibility or not, the overall society and its view on crime like this is a huge component to this occurring. We can't have nice things if people are just going around and stealing because "hey it doesn't hurt anyone".
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - plantain 5y ago
      Are the police notoriously soft in other broken states like South Africa? I don't think so - the intensity of policing seems poorly correlated to outcomes to me. I despair every day at America's descent into a failed state. Is no one watching?
- 5y ago
King-Aaron 5y ago
> Responsibility for policing the railroad right of way falls on Union Pacific Police... not local agencies like LAPD So is 'Union Pacific Police' just a security company, or do you guys in the US actually have private businesses with their own police? Because that sounds pretty dystopian
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  Recall, if you will, that the rail lines are privately owned here. So you have privately owned trains, running on privately owned tracks that are on privately owned land ... it's not entirely clear what the legal framework for government police authority to take effect here is, at least not if you're concerned about the wierdness that would result from just saying "interstate commerce, put the FBI on it".
- JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  Lots of grey areas. But transportation and commerce affect everybody, and because there's big ticket issues at risk it becomes a political and practical priority.
- matt-attack 5y ago
  Funny I thought usually things feel more dystopian when the government is the one exerting the force or control. In this case it’s your perception that government law enforcement is routine where as private security firms are dystopian?
- unityByFreedom 5y ago
  > Railroad police are certified state law enforcement officers with investigative and arrest powers both on and off railroad property in most states. They also have interstate law enforcement authority pursuant to federal law. > The railroad police force dates to the mid-1800s, when the number of U.S. Marshals was insufficient to police America's growing rail network. Members were called Pinkertons, named after their originator, Alan Pinkerton. Today, each Class I railroad employs Special Agents across the country to protect America’s rail network. https://www.up.com/aboutup/community/safety/special_agents/index.htm https://www.up.com/aboutup/community/safety/special_agents/i... It's just police who are probably paid by that business. That makes sense to me for a large business like this. If anything they're not doing a good enough job here.
mngnt 5y ago
I would expect this kind of pictures from a third world country... How come no one is incentivized to fix this - protect the trains, prevent this loss of property? Who pays for the stolen goods? I presume it would be the retailers, is it just a drop in the ocean for them? In some more dystopian movies there were trains crossing vast areas of postapocalyptic hellscape protected by soldiers with machine guns and flamethrowers. In these pictures, the "responsible" just gave up. I find that simiarly dystopic.
- kylehotchkiss 5y ago
  This kind of blantent theft wouldn't happen in a third world country. The contents of the train would be much more meaningful to the sender and recipients and they'd raise hell with the shipping company over the loss, which would cause the shipping company to hire an army of underpaid security guards as deterrents (if you've spent most of your life in an economy with minimum wage/universal education, you haven't fully experienced the way the global south can point an army of people at the most trivial problems). In US, much of the value of these containers could be restored to the shipper or recipient with shipping insurance or credit card chargebacks. Additionally, higher GDP means these packages (even the medical ones) are just too small an expense to the recipients to rile them up. I have a hard time believing developing country shipping companies can insurance their operations and remain as profitable as US companies can Once the trains insurance company/fund (or UPS? Amazons?) starts to take a hit, they will respond swiftly with a solution somehow. It'll probably take a few more months of this to hit their bottom line.
- ngc248 5y ago
  Escape from LA will become a documentary soon.
- unityByFreedom 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure Buffett's company, which invests in both Union Pacific and insurance, is incentivized to resolve this. This photojournalist probably just helped him make a bunch of money by identifying a prime location for an ongoing problem. The fact that we saw it before UP did doesn't mean they aren't incentivized to stop it. It's obviously bad business if their deliveries are missing packages.
Animats 5y ago
Where's E. H. Harriman now that we need him?
metaphor 5y ago
Are other cities that operate major Class I freight rail seeing the same looting issue, or is this just LA/UP "market disruption" that hasn't caught up with the rest of the country? EDIT: To be sure, I wonder because my city is both HQ and a significant hub for one of those F500 major Class I freight rail operators, but I haven't heard of such brazen exploits happening locally...yet?
- pfranz 5y ago
  Its hard to say with just anecdotes, but this random person says it's not just Los Angeles. Another commenter mentioned a conductor-friend out of Louisiana is seeing similar things. https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/s2sjxj/los_angeles_thieves_have_recently_taken_on_cargo/hsgt0s2/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/s2sjxj/los_angeles_th... I wonder if this is an evolution of the security cat & mouse game with shipping switching to have more random items people ordered directly to their home? Similar to porch-pirates being more of an issue today than 30 years ago.
  - mlyle 5y ago
    Containers carrying lots of packages headed directly to homes is new. Before, if you broke into a container, you'd often find weird homogenous B2B stuff. Like a bunch of dog food.
    - gruez 5y ago
      >Before, if you broke into a container, you'd often find weird homogenous B2B stuff. Like a bunch of dog food. but presumably the volume of b2c stuff being shipped over rail hasn't changed? after all, the b2c stuff has to get to customers somehow. Maybe a random assortment makes it a more attractive target due to the skinner box effect (ie. lootboxes).
      - mlyle 5y ago
        If you open up a container going to a Walmart warehouse, it might be filled with massive blocks of bulky items of dubious fence value and can be difficult to dig to anything good. Even if you get something "good", having 30 pairs of Beats headphones isn't so personally useful or easy to unload for cash. And it's probably in a massive box that isn't easy to move and isn't easy to determine the contents of compared to others. If you open up a container of UPS shipments, and you grab one random bag out of there-- there will be valuable consumer goods in it.
suction 5y ago
This seems like a crime that could be very easily stopped.
- blamazon 5y ago
  In USA, railroad police have jurisdiction in this scenario. Uniquely, in USA, railroad police are employed by the railroad. As evidenced by current BNSF strike, USA railroads presently have a tough relationship with their labor force. For an underpaid and overstressed railroad cop, do they want to risk their life to try to stop this? My guess is generally no. They may even desire a cut of the proceeds.
  - ihsw 5y ago
  - SSLy 5y ago
    >Uniquely, in USA, railroad police are employed by the railroad. No, not uniquely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Police_(Poland) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Police_(Poland) It's an unit managed by the rail track operator.
imgabe 5y ago
Amazon has already started doing their own shipping. Maybe they'll hire their own mercenaries to guard the shipments too. Eventually they'll replace the government. United States of Amazon. We won't even have to change all our monogrammed stuff.
- bryans 5y ago
  It will all be Brawndo soon. Prophet Judge foretold it.
  - Jerry2 5y ago
    Idiocracy was not meant to be a documentary.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  Mercenaries? I doubt it. Cheap rent-a-cops to burn in a hire & fire way, like their fulfilment center slaves seems more likely. Which after a while leads to enough people knowing about their ways, and enables easy sabotage :-)
- sterlind 5y ago
  Snow Crash is looking more and more likely.
- buryat 5y ago
  if they do it the way they did AWS it'll be amazing
  - ramoz 5y ago
    I know folks building their data centers around the DC/VA region and I hear funny things.
  - OJFord 5y ago
    Like 'I would like 1 minute of private security while I walk up this alley'? 'How many times can I walk it on the free tier?'
paganel 5y ago
That's one of the main reasons why driverless lorries will never be a thing. Unless you accompany each one of them by a weaponised mini-drone, Robocop-style, that is.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  Nah. Train robberies have been a thing since shortly after trains were invented, no matter if staff or sometimes even armed guards were present on board.
- saberdancer 5y ago
  But it doesn't stop us from using trains that get broken into? I doubt it is an important reason. Plus, driverless lorry can just keep on driving to their destination or a safe refueling yard.
- alkonaut 5y ago
  What difference would a driver do? A driver is instructed to not interefere if robbed. The difference I suppose is that what would otherwise be a robbery could be a mere burglary which could have less legal risk as well as less risk of violence (In the case a driver interferes, against his instructions)
  - dheera 5y ago
    That's more for the driver's own safety, as the burglars could have lethal weapons. If it were autonomous it could defend itself and its contents without risk to humans. At the very least with fart spray, pepper spray, itch powder, and the like.
  - paganel 5y ago
    It won't be just "one" driver, it would more of them, as in the lorries are usually stopped where other lorries are also stopped (at lorry-specific parking spots, for example) and as such it would be harder for the robbers to confront an "united" (for lack of a better word) pack of drivers. Granted, robberies (and even murders [1]) still happen in those circumstances, too, but give the robbers unattended merchandise sitting by the roadside and then see what will happen. [1] https://www.digi24.ro/stiri/externe/mapamond/au-fost-arestati-doi-barbati-care-l-ar-fi-ucis-in-franta-pe-mihai-soferul-roman-de-tir-1564611 https://www.digi24.ro/stiri/externe/mapamond/au-fost-arestat...
dusted 5y ago
My observation from the comment sections to this post-apocalyptic video is the following: People focusing on how to prevent the theft of these cars, funding police, armed guards on trans, better security. I think this is an interesting perspective, it's very "American", it's like it has been accepted by these commenters that rampant thievery is a perfectly natural part of life and so, must be worked around rather than solved. But, protecting a thing from theft, rather than removing the reason thievery is so rampant, just moves the problem to someone else.. Like putting locks and security on your home, "Now they won't break into MY home, because the guy next door has less security, so they'll go at him instead". Come on, the problem is not that it's easy to steal, the problem is that society has constructed situations for some of its citizens where they for one reason or another do it. I walked around last year, in an opera house, public building, no one in sight, empty building, unlocked doors, there were paintings on the walls, and I identified audio equipment for at least $10k, and it was not unlocked by mistake. Then it struck me, that we've done well in society when we can have this.
- 271828182846 5y ago
  > I think this is an interesting perspective, it's very "American", it's like it has been accepted by these commenters that rampant thievery is a perfectly natural part of life and so, must be worked around rather than solved. what do you mean? death penalty ... solved!
  - eloisius 5y ago
    Not solved. Then instead of sneaky thieves who run away, you get armed heists willing to kill cops and civilians to avoid getting busted.
    - 271828182846 5y ago
      to stop a bad guy with a gun it takes a good guy with a gun ... more guns - solved!
- coryfklein 5y ago
  Option 1) Upgrade the security on the containers Option 2) Re-work society from the ground up to eliminate any incentive for burglary It is no wonder why folks are drawn more to Option 1, which is about a bajillion times more approachable, but which doesn't preclude also working on Option 2 at the same time.
koonsolo 5y ago
[flagged]
- ars 5y ago
  > But still a lot of Republicans seem to believe US is not able to organize fair elections. This is not as true as you are being led to believe. The media in general looks for extreme opinions to make news, so they'll find the rare person who believes this, and then write as if it's a majority belief. I experienced this first hand - I watched a journalist interview tons of people, most had centrist opinions, then the finally found the person with the extreme opinion - and that was what aired that night (I specially made a point of watching). The partisan divide is real, but what's not obvious is that it's being created by media who is desperate for attention, because that's how they get paid. They'll tell Democrats look at those horrible Republicans, and post stories of Republicans behaving badly, then the media on the other side will do it too (not as much - most media outlets are liberal leaning). Democrats don't seem to realize they are being manipulated by stories featuring the worst that media can find, and they think that it's representative of people as a whole, so they'll start saying really nasty things - which is just more fodder for media to publish. I wish they would make it illegal to post a minority opinion without clearly saying that it's a minority.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    Is a majority of a minority allowed under your scheme? After all, a substantial majority of Republicans continue to believe that the 2020 election was "stolen"; Republicans are a minority of Americans. Can the media in your wish-world report on this?
    - ars 5y ago
      > After all, a substantial majority of Republicans continue to believe that the 2020 election was "stolen" And your basis for this "fact" is? The media? Do you actually talk to average Republicans, or only the ones who like media exposure? Out here in the real world only a minority of Republicans believe this, but it's a vocal minority, who love the media exposure. You are a victim of exactly what I'm advocating against. Moderate Republicans greatly outnumber the extreme ones, but the extreme ones are getting all the attention.
Nextgrid 5y ago
It is surreal to see this in a country where the police and “justice” system is extremely trigger happy and wants to lock everyone up for any reason they can get away with.
- gruez 5y ago
  US is a big place. That means it's possible to get a steady stream of stories of innocent people getting arrested/killed by the police, and have jurisdictions that turn a blind eye to property crime.
  - rakejake 5y ago
    It is funny to see comments like these in this thread. After the events of the last few years, I guess Americans are finding out what it is like to be Indian on the internet and having to defend every piece of crazy news about the country. Note, I am not advocating for news like this to not be published, just remember that countries without even a semblance of a free press are going to report a lot fewer of these.
- mindslight 5y ago
  They're two aspects of the exact same problem. Stopping and prosecuting real crime, while preserving the rights of the innocent, is a very difficult job. When police are criticized for failure in one aspect, they respond by closing ranks and doing even less of the other aspect. Criticize the level of crime and they respond by finding some easy targets to round up and pin charges on. Criticize their overreach, and they respond with a working strike and lawless police riots. Succumbing to individual incentives, it's easier to focus on easier-to-handle perps and conduct organized militaryesque "operations"... just like it's easier to run roughshod over the rights of the accused by assuming they're guilty and doling out extrajudicial punishment. Neither one means doing their job better. Ultimately it's a complete failure of accountability. Accountability of police organizations to their employers, the community, to effectively do what they are deputized to do. As well as the failure to bind police under the overarching law, both civil and criminal, like everyone else. The problem is not deep set and everywhere, but rather distributed because we're only seeing the cherry picked worst examples of both sides. But we need to seriously up our systems of accountability if anybody is going to have any faith in our institutions going forward.
SantiagoElf 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tomjakubowski 5y ago
  This is happening all over the United States, so you may want to expand your scope.
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    Only because of all the Californians pouring into the rest of the country. /s
JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
Well this explains where my Amazon packages keep going.
qwertox 5y ago
How about putting something like an electrical fence around those containers, maybe even just one or two wires, focused on the parts where they get opened. They could also signal when a container has been opened if should they get cut.
- Thorentis 5y ago
  Containers are metal. Just electrify the whole thing!
02020202 5y ago
radu_floricica 5y ago
Having the community police its members can only be done with the proper external incentives to that community. The times in history where clans or family managed their own delinquents where also times where the clan or family as a whole was called to pay for the damage. What we have here is not a sudden lapse in morals - it's a result of, rather on purpose, individualism. Since the community has nothing to lose or gain, the community just stands aside and looks. As an aside, this reminds me of gypsy villages in Romania - places where lines of concern between insiders and outsiders are so sharply drawn, that from the outside it looks like complete lawlessness. It's not - it's lawless only if you're an outsider, and that village doesn't care about you. Social mechanisms can be pretty complex (and fascinating). TBH, rather than trying to figure them out, it might be easier in cases like that to just throw manpower (and cameras) at the problem. But long term - this is where it's very much worth it to have cops work with/as social workers and get embedded in their communities. That this got to where it got speaks volumes about police and citizens there being in a purely adversarial context - otherwise the first old lady to meet a cop 6 months ago would have told him what's going on and who's started it.
- wildrhythms 5y ago
  Bingo. 'The community' ultimately does not own what's on the train. There is no communal interest in protecting the goods on the train; there may be an element of self preservation ("If the train is robbed, I can't buy the goods later!"), but there is little sense of communal preservation in a society that promotes individualism. The same thing applies to the thieves- anti-collective behavior is inevitable in a society that does not meet the needs of every individual.
kepler1 5y ago
Do you ever think to yourself that we're gradually headed to some dystopia like in the movie Elysium? Where a growing underclass is relegated to a garbage planet while the elites escape to a satellite world? Or at least parts of our planet? I'm not even faulting the elites for it really -- how are you, in a non-authoritarian society, supposed to handle when basic services are under attack and can't effectively discipline or enforce law, either because you just can't police enough, people refuse to obey law and order any more, or you're not allowed to use force for political reasons? Or a certain level (or $ amount) of crime is just ok? All you can do is create greater moats around the areas you can protect and see if the underclass can sort itself out. I see this kind of creeping / boiling the frog effect happening in lots of developments lately. (although I'm sure people of every generation have decried the end of the world too) Take the Portland (or Oregon?) relaxation of drug penalties, etc. Sure, it only makes sense to stop criminalizing drug use when everyone's doing it and it's loading up your prisons. But you didn't exactly solve the problem. You just found a less bad way to deal with the effects. And you're still on a path where people are using drugs more and more, and the elites flee to their gated communities to let the underclass sort itself out downtown, because it's not "fair" or "equitable" to lock up people for drug use. "We need less policing, more understanding." Eventually you understand yourself all the way into a society that's broken down. The sad thing is that the people who suffer most from crime and belief that having a system with rules is against them, are the poor and vulnerable. I don't think our approaches to these problems is working well.
- uejfiweun 5y ago
  Yes, I think this very often. In fact, I think it is an inevitable future evolution of society. It will likely start out with the oceans - private islands and super yachts are being rapidly built and purchased by elites around the world. If you're a pleb, like me, I think the best bet is to just hunker down, keep your head down, stay away from mentally ill types, and focus on getting very good at a useful skill. The elite will still need software engineers to build out the dystopia.
- eli_gottlieb 5y ago
  I would simply get rid of the political actors telling me it's immoral to maintain social order.
aronpye 5y ago
LA is turning into District 9
schnitzelstoat 5y ago
People robbing rapid testing kits for the global pandemic from cargo trains entering LA sounds like something from a dystopian cyberpunk novel.
- jxramos 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_from_L.A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_from_L.A.
  - Ccecil 5y ago
    Seems like we are closer to "Demolition Man" to me than "Escape from LA"...but the year is just starting :)
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  Lacks autonomous armed drones swarming around the train, "disencouraging" anyone who doesn't belong there to stay off the tracks.
  - nomel 5y ago
    I'm fairly certain the FAA is the only things preventing their use. They're already being deployed in India: https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/western-railways-to-use-surveillance-drones-to-boost-security-2575836 https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/western-railways-to-use-surv...
    - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
      Oh!
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - glenneroo 5y ago
tomohawk 5y ago
Crime requires: means, motive, opportunity The motive for crime is always present, and is mostly held in check by keeping the cost of means and opportunity high. In this case the opportunity cost is very low. The trains are just sitting there unprotected. And the means - will just grab a crow bar. EDIT: This regulation is well intentioned: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/28101 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/28101 The good intention is to allow interstate policing of the railsystem. The bad effect is to prevent local law enforcement 'interference'.
YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
Please wear one-use gloves when rummaging around in trash? Please? For me?
2ion 5y ago
The West is on a way to 2nd world status at best, comprised of 1st world enclaves / gated communities where things are in order and a wild 2nd world west.
- uejfiweun 5y ago
  Neal Stephenson predicted this very accurately in Snow Crash with the concept of Burbclaves.
hownottowrite 5y ago
I wonder how many of these items are being resold on Amazon and Walmart Marketplace.
- q1w2 5y ago
  It's all very well organized. The initial thieves operate in gangs that pull as much off the train as possible and throw it to the ground. The collectors below look for (ie. boxes that have a lithium/ion battery warning on them), and they break open those boxes and remove those goods. Those high value goods are then sold to a fencer who will list them online as new from a 3rd party seller. The remaining lower value goods are then picked over by other community members.
trembonator 5y ago
glenda 5y ago
This is visually shocking, but the sheer amount of money taken from workers by wage theft eclipses this issue completely. Theft is normalized at all levels of American society.
- jpambrun 5y ago
  Two wrongs don't make it right..
  - glenda 5y ago
    I’m not trying to justify any of it, just pointing out that theft is a completely accepted part of culture in the US. Don’t get me started on civil forfeiture…
    - soheil 5y ago
      Three wrongs don't make it right either...
      - glenda 5y ago
        Again, never said it was right, just that theft is deeply embedded in many facets of American society.
        ldiracdelta 5y ago
        Theft is deeply embedded in _human_ societies, and we should fight it everywhere on every level.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
  It only became shocking to people with power and wealth when poor people started doing it. Fixing decades of neglected infrastructure, education, and social services is going to cost way more than treating people decently would’ve costed. I won’t be surprised if the solutions entirely ignore the mass suffering that is responsible for events like this and only address the losses realized by the people with the power to make change.
Cyberthal 5y ago
This is why we can't have nice things.

568 points by r721 5y ago

The backing track to this post is Delicate Tendrils.

I don't really understand what is happening here. Why is the ground completely covered in packages? Do thieves just break into the passing train compartments and start throwing out packages?

vondur 5y ago
They open things up, take what they want, and dispose of the rest.
- ohCh6zos 5y ago
  This seems like a problem that armed guards would fix pretty quickly.
  - mnd999 5y ago
    Maybe. Or you just up the stakes and now you have thieves with automatic weapons having a gunfight with the train guards.
    - CrispinS 5y ago
      The stakes remain unchanged, because the stakes are the packages. Since there can't be that much profit in this activity, I think it's reasonable to assume that a lot of the people responsible are doing it just because it's easy.
avalys 5y ago
Yeah, that's exactly what they do, and they open the packages right there on the side of the tracks and take anything that's valuable inside.
codemac 5y ago
The trains come to a stop from time to time. They break in to a container and throw as much as they can to the ground before the train continues. Once the train is moving again, they go through all the packages on the ground looking for things of value.
- Ansil849 5y ago
  So the thieves just lurk around the area, waiting for trains to come to a pause, and then break open the containers, I guess the containers are not very secure? And there's minimal patrols? It just seems like extraordinary 'easy pickings'.
  - Doxin 5y ago
    Turns out it's pretty tricky to make a padlock secure against bolt cutters. Of course improving the security of the lock would soon lead to thieves cutting off the locking bars on the container instead.
    - Ansil849 5y ago
      It doesn't have to be the lock that's secured. What about a hinge mechanism which takes a programmable amount of time to open the container door? If it takes 10 minutes for the door to open, the lock doesn't matter as much, since the thieves have a very limited amount of time before the trains start moving again, apparently.
      - asdff 5y ago
        Way too complicated. Apparently shippers are opting to start just welding the door shut and unwelding it at the destination.
      - dkdbejwi383 5y ago
        That sounds like it could be quite error prone. If it's electronic, what about power failures? If mechanical, sounds like lots of intricate machined parts which will wear down over time.
blamazon 5y ago
The trains are forced to stop at this accessible location sometimes, just outside the rail yard. They don’t stop for long, so the strategy is to hop on, cut a container open, and throw as much stuff to the ground as you can before the train starts moving again. Then you hop down and look through your spoils for items of value. Hint: look for “lithium ion battery device inside” warning labels.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- alkonaut 5y ago
  So if the train cars, or the containers thee packages are kept in within the train cars, were at least so secure that they prevented access for say an hour or two, then this likely wouldn't happen? What is this, open crates or sacks of packages, in traincars locked with a small padlock?
  - blamazon 5y ago
    > What is this, open crates or sacks of packages, in traincars locked with a small padlock? Yes, pretty much. Although in many cases it’s not even a padlock, just a tamper-evident seal device with a serial number matching the paperwork for that container: https://shipped.com/img-parts/server/php/files/containers/shipping-container-bolt-seal.jpg https://shipped.com/img-parts/server/php/files/containers/sh... For huge cargo firms handling tens of thousands of containers daily, padlocks can be problematic operationally and quite expensive.
  - wongarsu 5y ago
    Padlocks are easy to cut, a bigger padlock just needs a bigger tool. Some companies apparently start welding their containers shut, which raises the bar for thieves significantly (now they need a grinder and more time).
    - wrycoder 5y ago
      Battery powered grinders being the hot new thing.
bostonsre 5y ago
Don't think you would want to be walking around with someone else's package. Taking just the item gives some plausible deniability and there is probably no way to find the actual package that an item was taken from at that scale.

w_t_payne 5y ago

Why is there not CCTV there? CCTV + police follow-up and arrests made seems like a good way to combat this (serious, economically damaging) situation.

slig 5y ago
It's LA, they don't care.
BitwiseFool 5y ago
You need a District Attorney willing to actively go after these kinds of suspects. In my experience the police don't really do anything about thefts unless they happen to catch the perpetrator in the act. My family had our car stolen from our driveway and they did virtually nothing to try and recover it. In fact, the only reason why we got it back was because the tweaker who stole it managed to park it in a reserved stall on private property and it was towed. The police said they swept the car for evidence, but we found multiple prescription bottles with the suspect's name on it in easy to reach places. The cops obviously missed this and refused to accept it as evidence. We did a LexisNexus search of the name on the bottle and lo-and-behold, multiple priors for armed robbery and auto theft. No charges were ever filed against the person. So I have virtually no faith in security cameras. They do their jobs, but the DA certainly doesn't.
- swearwolf 5y ago
  I don’t necessarily disagree with you about the DA, but it seems like in your specific case the problem is more that the police themselves are acting indifferently.
MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
If you want video, here is one from the Chicago trainyard: https://twitter.com/ronmilnerboodle/status/1481777403252944896 https://twitter.com/ronmilnerboodle/status/14817774032529448... Its not that this is hard or impossible to solve.
icelancer 5y ago
CCTV in an age of universal and accepted mask-wearing is pretty ineffective. I have video of people breaking into my business and stealing five figures worth of goods a few years back with specific identification of them, forwarded to the police, who have done nothing with it. Non-violent crimes (specifically property damage or theft) just aren't prosecuted, especially on the west coast.

dheera 5y ago

Serious question: Have they not thought of mounting Mark Rober-style devices on each freight car that releases some combination of {glitter, fart spray, honey, glue, itch powder, pepper spray, ink}? It might sound funny but I think the sheer discomfort would deter thieves in an instant, and they would be easy to identify for several days. A device of this sort would be super useful for car thieves as well.

somethoughts 5y ago
At the risk of sounding like a Reddit comment - I came here for this comment!

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

wmf 5y ago

I see a lot of people talking about "packages", but UPS/Fedex/USPS don't use trains because they're too slow, right? I assume we're talking about wholesale shipping here.

coolspot 5y ago
Anything with lithium-ion battery can’t be shipped via air due to FAA regulations. So, laptops and phones all travel on trains and trucks. Will big helpful warning labels as well.
kayfox 5y ago
Ground shipping in the US often goes by train when it has to cross the country, its cheap and fuel efficient.

friendlydog 5y ago

They are looking at 20 years if they get caught: 18 U.S. Code section 1991 Additionally they are releasing hazardous materials by breaking open boxes: 18 U.S. Code section 1992

gruez 5y ago
> They are looking at 20 years if they get caught: 18 U.S. Code section 1991 likely not, see https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence-eleventy-million-years/ https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc...
- friendlydog 5y ago
  It leaves out the important information, what does whale sushi taste like. Interesting to know, though these inconsistencies between cases, and time seem rife for popularity and crony "justice". We like group X so they get 6 months we hate group Y so 20 years for them. There is a reason I became a programmer not a lawyer. Deterministic code is easier than subjective rulings at least for me.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >these inconsistencies between cases, and time seem rife for popularity and crony "justice". The sentencing guidelines I mentioned seems specifically designed to mitigate this issue? >We like group X so they get 6 months we hate group Y so 20 years for them. There is a reason I became a programmer not a lawyer. Deterministic code is easier than subjective rulings at least for me. The sentencing guidelines seem pretty deterministic to me. There's a bunch of factors. The factors add up to a certain amount of points, and the amount of points determines your sentence to within a fairly narrow band. It's certainly not the "6 months for one group and 20 years for another group" that you talk about.

cracker_jacks 5y ago

"Air tag" like trackers on decoy packages mixed in might be a cheap solution to this issue.

Jochim 5y ago
They don't really disincentive the behaviour though. Dye packs are a thing, people still rob banks. People who feel they have nothing to lose don't care if they get caught either. The solution is to provide people with a decent life by default. They can then contribute to society comfortably.
- buscoquadnary 5y ago
  But if we simply take away consequence now no one has any reason not to steal, and then more people will steal. It may not deter all people but fewer people will be willing to gamble if the odds of facing consequences go up. The alternative is to view it as inevitable and therefore don't do anything, but then those not doing it fall behind those doing it and suddenly those who weren't stealing before now feel like losers for not doing it because no one was facing any consequences and because they held back they are now worse off.

screye 5y ago

Kind of related : America Is Falling Apart at the Seams https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/opinion/america-falling-apart.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/opinion/america-falling-a... A loss of civic sense and cultural criminality are incredibly hard to weed out of a population, once it has taken root. I worry that the a mix of pessimism and a loss of civic sense is sending non-elite America into a death spiral. Opponents of return-to-normalcy claim that these are temporary and anomalous circumstances as a result of covid. However, a 2 year period of cultural erosion can lead to this regression getting cemented as a modern cultural identity of non-elite US. Cost-benefit analyses have been ignored in favor of tunnel-visioning on viral outcomes and short term political gain. At the end of this, we might just find ourselves asking "We made it out of this, but at what cost?". p.s: I am not advocating for any particular policy, just pointing to the absence of any holistic response. That being said, the complete failure of the American response in terms of 'viral outcomes' despite tunnel visioning on it, doesn't inspire confidence in it.

JimBlackwood 5y ago
Do you have a source for this? We’re seeing similar things in my country and I’d love to understand why (and how we can make it go away) a little more
y4mi 5y ago
And that ... Theory about the lockdowns supposedly not being because of the virus but to hide a larger financial crisis/weath reallocation is spreading quite quickly at least at far as I can tell. That's not going to reduce tensions in that regard, that's for sure. There is only circumstantial evidence but the story sounds plausible. If things continue like this, I'd wager that trump will return in 24
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  - y4mi 5y ago
    I'm not sure how good your reading comprehension generally is, but at least in this case you've clearly misinterpreted what I've written there.

Axsuul 5y ago

Yes LA is a third world country, please leave.

RspecMAuthortah 5y ago

Yeah but it is the domestic extremist terrorism that is the real threat to its citizen. Got it.

adrianmonk 5y ago

Comment from someone on Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/s2sjxj/los_angeles_thieves_have_recently_taken_on_cargo/hsgt0s2/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/s2sjxj/los_angeles_th...): > It’s not just in LA, theft and vandalism have gone way up on all the rail networks. My company is experiencing some of the worst loss numbers while in rail transit. We just announced that all transport carts will be welded shut and unwelded when it gets to the destination. Even locks aren’t enough.

Scoundreller 5y ago
Just the next iteration of bike theft. Same tools, bigger rewards. Of course, we did nothing when it was just bikes being stolen because it was just hippy car-free bike riders impacted.

soheil 5y ago

This is probably one of the most civilized ways to steal something. It hurts no one and is just a non-discriminatory tax on pretty much everyone in LA since most people order Amazon packages. I think of this like click fraud, a while ago Google decided to stop combatting it and just "let it happen" [1]. It turned out to be a winning strategy. [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-ceo-on-click-fraud-let-it-happen-is-perfect-economic-solution/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-ceo-on-click-fraud-let-...

buscoquadnary 5y ago
> It hurts no one Unless of course one of the boxes had something like epi-pens or insulin or some other medical supplies of course.
- soheil 5y ago
  By that logic carrying a bag of nails should be a crime since you might inadvertently drop one on a public road where a UPS truck might get a flat tire and as a result not be able to deliver someone's insulin.
  - hnfong 5y ago
    If you're carrying a bag of nails around for the sole purpose of "accidentally" drop on a public road to cause damage to passing vehicles... ... you're not seriously trying to argue that it shouldn't be a crime right?
    - soheil 5y ago
      Of course not, what an absurd interpretation..

tamaharbor 5y ago

Over the past several months I have had more delivery problems with Amazon than ever. Things scheduled, out for delivery, and sometimes ten spots away on a map, just seem to disappear. I wonder if these (and similar) thefts have anything to do with it.

dredmorbius 5y ago

I'm reminded of recent realisations in the evolution of whales. The great size and efficiency of whales came about due to increased ocean productivity --- more available food, though often at widely-separated distances, an efficient feeding mechansism (lunge feeding), which could onboard vast quantities of krill in a single act, and the lack of any credible predators, allowing great whales to focus their evolutionary specialisation on long-distance speed and efficiency. See: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-are-blue-whales-so-gigantic/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-are-blue-whal... Similar principles apply to human transportation modes. In particular, safety of routes, for passengers and cargo, is absolutely paramount, and there's little that kills traffic, whether terminal or through-passage, than increased risk. For rail, the equivalents are continent-spanning cargo operations, efficient freight loading and unloading (particularly via intermodal containerised traffic), and a lack of effective theft or crime operations against the trains and their cargo itself. The Twitter thread here is strong evidence of a failure of that "no effective predators" requirement. Various supply-chain issues may be changing the calculus on long-distance freight operations and efficiency --- whether cargos decrease in quantity, in value, or in predictability, each of these would decrease operating efficiencies and opportunities. Containerisation is proving to be both a boon and a risk as well, by facilitating theft. How challenging this might prove for railroads isn't clear, but I see a potentially large risk here. As John Schreiber's thread notes, law enforcement for railroads is provided by the railroad companies themselves, in one of the first multi-jurisdictional police forces. Historically, railroad cops were more the scourge of hoboes and patrolled freight yards, but they might have to extend operations further if attacks such as these are increasing in frequency. For those frustrated by Twitter's interface, Threadreader and Nitter links: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1481770722271760384.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1481770722271760384.html https://nitter.kavin.rocks/johnschreiber/status/1481770722271760384 https://nitter.kavin.rocks/johnschreiber/status/148177072227...

q1w2 5y ago
It also reminds me of certain episodes of the The History of Rome and The History of Byzantium podcasts where they depict the collapse of complex systems when the breakdown of security occurred. During times when Roman security was good - the economy could develop complex systems of trade, which developed coinage, mathematics, architecture, and all sorts of specialists and artisans. When security was no longer reliable due to the influx of raiders, piracy, and hoards of barbarians, all of those complex activities ceased. The most complex aspects of society are always the first to collapse when security disappears. ...and eventually a "fend for yourself" attitude permeates society - which becomes a feedback loop, and it's no longer the externalities that are destroying security - but internal actors. We were lucky to have a safe and stable society for so long that we are shocked to see mass looting. Once it's gone though, it is takes generations to rebuild that.

rdtsc 5y ago

Wonder how organized that looting is. Is just individuals over many months or years, or a large gang over a few weeks time. On the one hand it’s shocking to see it in LA in US. On the other I am surprised it’s not happening more often. In large cities, some of my acquaintances had to get PO boxes as their packages kept getting stolen. But why bother wasting time going house to house, when you can hit a whole train car at once.

siruncledrew 5y ago
I was wondering the same thing about seeing the aerial footage in the Twitter thread. I don’t even know that amount of stuff could be opened, filtered for valuables, and transported within a few hours time without dozens of people and some mid-size cargo trucks. This seems like enough organized logistic planning that a bunch of homeless people or youth gangs would not be able to pull off at this level.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  It’s minimally above bike theft. Same tools. If the train goes slow enough/stops, start cracking open containers and throw as much on the ground as you can while you can. Then sift through it for the next hours.
JPKab 5y ago
There is almost certainly an organized crime element interacting with the individuals performing the looting. Typically, the organized elements are at the "fencing" level, where they are paying the individuals (almost certainly mostly drug addicts) small fractions of the resale value for various items in cash/drugs. This is a standard pattern in areas with lax law enforcement, which these days is all of California, and also places like Manhattan. Political leaders in the LA, SF, Manhattan areas have bought into the Bolshevik era explanation of crime being caused by social injustice, and therefore see criminals as victims of a corrupt society rife with inequality. This kind of chaos is an inevitable result. Treating criminals like hapless victims acting out of desperation ignores the fact that many have agency, are intelligent, and make cost/benefit calculations that completely change when they know they won't get prosecuted if they are caught.

reustle 5y ago

What's old is new again https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_robbery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_robbery

labrador 5y ago
Also: 22 Are Arrested in Thefts Of Kennedy Airport Cargo https://archive.is/F6QPf https://archive.is/F6QPf Those trains must be stalled there for long periods of time. I can't imagine they're robbing moving trains, but I could be wrong as thieves often prove to be very resourceful
- Liquix 5y ago
  > I can't imagine they're robbing moving trains WE NEED EVERY LAST DROP, JESSE
  - scollet 5y ago
    Just rewatched this. Probably the best scene of the season.

fblp 5y ago

Sigh - Any resourced and competent police or security force should be able to catch or deter thieves that are stealing packages from the same location. Additionally, mail theft laws which include prison as a consequence should be extended to package thefts if they don't already cover them.

systemvoltage 5y ago
> Any resourced I thought we all rooted here to defund the police? Should we backtrack that idea? Edit: I seem to have broken a nerve in some people here. Sorry, for being snarky. I just think that you can't reduce funding for a gov agency but also then expect it to be resourced. Just using sterile logic to make this conclusion.
- deleted 5y ago
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- nightsd01 5y ago
  Very few people want to actually defund the police. But try being a black friend of mine, who got thrown out of his car without resisting and beaten so bad he had to go to an ICU, purely because he was driving a car that “matched the description” (that didn’t even match the color) of a crime in the area, and perhaps you can begin to understand why the “other side” is frustrated… And let me guess. You think these train robberies happen because they defunded the police in their area…?
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    I am well aware of the colloquial term "Defund the police" which is often met by "No, not literally defund it". But the reality is that there is a strong support to reduce resources and move towards soft-policing. Have you been to the Bay Area? Apartment complexes and condominiums are hardened like castles while their kids play in the safe courtyards and the outside is rotting to the point of unsafe for male padestrians, let alone women and kids. These are the same people voting for these policies. Completely deranged.

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acchow 5y ago

How long before Amazon has their own containers with cameras and defense mechanisms?

wmf 5y ago
As soon as the shrinkage exceeds the cost of those security measures. Security is a business problem.
shortlived 5y ago
Made me think of this horrible vision: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalhead_(Black_Mirror) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalhead_(Black_Mirror)
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nightsd01 5y ago
I can imagine automatically aimed and fired machine guns, all powered by Alexa of course :)
- siva7 5y ago
  Yeah, sounds like a failed state if you ask me
  - acchow 5y ago
    Absolutely; failed in maintaining a monopoly on violence.

offmycloud 5y ago

Huh, I just had a lost Amazon package last week, shipped by UPS. It disappeared somewhere on the way from Nebraska to California.

throwawaysea 5y ago

Soft on crime policies like restorative justice simply attract crime. No consequences means no deterrent. It’s not surprising this happens in LA - George Gascon is the DA and he’s facing increasing support for his recall (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/liberal-beverly-hills-votes-to-recall-democratic-district-attorney-george-gascon https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/liberal-beverly-hill...).

threatofrain 5y ago
This is not LAPD responsibility, and the HQ of the responsible force is in Omaha Nebraska.
- onepointsixC 5y ago
  If it isn't LA's responsibility why is Union Pacific asking LA's DA to stop releasing suspects who were arrested for theft? [1] [1]:https://twitter.com/CBSLAKristine/status/1482115852216385538?s=20 https://twitter.com/CBSLAKristine/status/1482115852216385538...
- zo1 5y ago
  It's still a consequence of general lack of policing or soft policing. Whether this is LAPDs responsibility or not, the overall society and its view on crime like this is a huge component to this occurring. We can't have nice things if people are just going around and stealing because "hey it doesn't hurt anyone".
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - plantain 5y ago
    Are the police notoriously soft in other broken states like South Africa? I don't think so - the intensity of policing seems poorly correlated to outcomes to me. I despair every day at America's descent into a failed state. Is no one watching?
5y ago

King-Aaron 5y ago

> Responsibility for policing the railroad right of way falls on Union Pacific Police... not local agencies like LAPD So is 'Union Pacific Police' just a security company, or do you guys in the US actually have private businesses with their own police? Because that sounds pretty dystopian

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
Recall, if you will, that the rail lines are privately owned here. So you have privately owned trains, running on privately owned tracks that are on privately owned land ... it's not entirely clear what the legal framework for government police authority to take effect here is, at least not if you're concerned about the wierdness that would result from just saying "interstate commerce, put the FBI on it".
JoeAltmaier 5y ago
Lots of grey areas. But transportation and commerce affect everybody, and because there's big ticket issues at risk it becomes a political and practical priority.
matt-attack 5y ago
Funny I thought usually things feel more dystopian when the government is the one exerting the force or control. In this case it’s your perception that government law enforcement is routine where as private security firms are dystopian?
unityByFreedom 5y ago
> Railroad police are certified state law enforcement officers with investigative and arrest powers both on and off railroad property in most states. They also have interstate law enforcement authority pursuant to federal law. > The railroad police force dates to the mid-1800s, when the number of U.S. Marshals was insufficient to police America's growing rail network. Members were called Pinkertons, named after their originator, Alan Pinkerton. Today, each Class I railroad employs Special Agents across the country to protect America’s rail network. https://www.up.com/aboutup/community/safety/special_agents/index.htm https://www.up.com/aboutup/community/safety/special_agents/i... It's just police who are probably paid by that business. That makes sense to me for a large business like this. If anything they're not doing a good enough job here.

mngnt 5y ago

I would expect this kind of pictures from a third world country... How come no one is incentivized to fix this - protect the trains, prevent this loss of property? Who pays for the stolen goods? I presume it would be the retailers, is it just a drop in the ocean for them? In some more dystopian movies there were trains crossing vast areas of postapocalyptic hellscape protected by soldiers with machine guns and flamethrowers. In these pictures, the "responsible" just gave up. I find that simiarly dystopic.

kylehotchkiss 5y ago
This kind of blantent theft wouldn't happen in a third world country. The contents of the train would be much more meaningful to the sender and recipients and they'd raise hell with the shipping company over the loss, which would cause the shipping company to hire an army of underpaid security guards as deterrents (if you've spent most of your life in an economy with minimum wage/universal education, you haven't fully experienced the way the global south can point an army of people at the most trivial problems). In US, much of the value of these containers could be restored to the shipper or recipient with shipping insurance or credit card chargebacks. Additionally, higher GDP means these packages (even the medical ones) are just too small an expense to the recipients to rile them up. I have a hard time believing developing country shipping companies can insurance their operations and remain as profitable as US companies can Once the trains insurance company/fund (or UPS? Amazons?) starts to take a hit, they will respond swiftly with a solution somehow. It'll probably take a few more months of this to hit their bottom line.
ngc248 5y ago
Escape from LA will become a documentary soon.
unityByFreedom 5y ago
I'm pretty sure Buffett's company, which invests in both Union Pacific and insurance, is incentivized to resolve this. This photojournalist probably just helped him make a bunch of money by identifying a prime location for an ongoing problem. The fact that we saw it before UP did doesn't mean they aren't incentivized to stop it. It's obviously bad business if their deliveries are missing packages.

Animats 5y ago

Where's E. H. Harriman now that we need him?

metaphor 5y ago

Are other cities that operate major Class I freight rail seeing the same looting issue, or is this just LA/UP "market disruption" that hasn't caught up with the rest of the country? EDIT: To be sure, I wonder because my city is both HQ and a significant hub for one of those F500 major Class I freight rail operators, but I haven't heard of such brazen exploits happening locally...yet?

pfranz 5y ago
Its hard to say with just anecdotes, but this random person says it's not just Los Angeles. Another commenter mentioned a conductor-friend out of Louisiana is seeing similar things. https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/s2sjxj/los_angeles_thieves_have_recently_taken_on_cargo/hsgt0s2/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/s2sjxj/los_angeles_th... I wonder if this is an evolution of the security cat & mouse game with shipping switching to have more random items people ordered directly to their home? Similar to porch-pirates being more of an issue today than 30 years ago.
- mlyle 5y ago
  Containers carrying lots of packages headed directly to homes is new. Before, if you broke into a container, you'd often find weird homogenous B2B stuff. Like a bunch of dog food.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >Before, if you broke into a container, you'd often find weird homogenous B2B stuff. Like a bunch of dog food. but presumably the volume of b2c stuff being shipped over rail hasn't changed? after all, the b2c stuff has to get to customers somehow. Maybe a random assortment makes it a more attractive target due to the skinner box effect (ie. lootboxes).
    - mlyle 5y ago
      If you open up a container going to a Walmart warehouse, it might be filled with massive blocks of bulky items of dubious fence value and can be difficult to dig to anything good. Even if you get something "good", having 30 pairs of Beats headphones isn't so personally useful or easy to unload for cash. And it's probably in a massive box that isn't easy to move and isn't easy to determine the contents of compared to others. If you open up a container of UPS shipments, and you grab one random bag out of there-- there will be valuable consumer goods in it.

suction 5y ago

This seems like a crime that could be very easily stopped.

blamazon 5y ago
In USA, railroad police have jurisdiction in this scenario. Uniquely, in USA, railroad police are employed by the railroad. As evidenced by current BNSF strike, USA railroads presently have a tough relationship with their labor force. For an underpaid and overstressed railroad cop, do they want to risk their life to try to stop this? My guess is generally no. They may even desire a cut of the proceeds.
- ihsw 5y ago
- SSLy 5y ago
  >Uniquely, in USA, railroad police are employed by the railroad. No, not uniquely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Police_(Poland) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Police_(Poland) It's an unit managed by the rail track operator.

imgabe 5y ago

Amazon has already started doing their own shipping. Maybe they'll hire their own mercenaries to guard the shipments too. Eventually they'll replace the government. United States of Amazon. We won't even have to change all our monogrammed stuff.

bryans 5y ago
It will all be Brawndo soon. Prophet Judge foretold it.
- Jerry2 5y ago
  Idiocracy was not meant to be a documentary.
deleted 5y ago
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LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
Mercenaries? I doubt it. Cheap rent-a-cops to burn in a hire & fire way, like their fulfilment center slaves seems more likely. Which after a while leads to enough people knowing about their ways, and enables easy sabotage :-)
sterlind 5y ago
Snow Crash is looking more and more likely.
buryat 5y ago
if they do it the way they did AWS it'll be amazing
- ramoz 5y ago
  I know folks building their data centers around the DC/VA region and I hear funny things.
- OJFord 5y ago
  Like 'I would like 1 minute of private security while I walk up this alley'? 'How many times can I walk it on the free tier?'

paganel 5y ago

That's one of the main reasons why driverless lorries will never be a thing. Unless you accompany each one of them by a weaponised mini-drone, Robocop-style, that is.

mschuster91 5y ago
Nah. Train robberies have been a thing since shortly after trains were invented, no matter if staff or sometimes even armed guards were present on board.
saberdancer 5y ago
But it doesn't stop us from using trains that get broken into? I doubt it is an important reason. Plus, driverless lorry can just keep on driving to their destination or a safe refueling yard.
alkonaut 5y ago
What difference would a driver do? A driver is instructed to not interefere if robbed. The difference I suppose is that what would otherwise be a robbery could be a mere burglary which could have less legal risk as well as less risk of violence (In the case a driver interferes, against his instructions)
- dheera 5y ago
  That's more for the driver's own safety, as the burglars could have lethal weapons. If it were autonomous it could defend itself and its contents without risk to humans. At the very least with fart spray, pepper spray, itch powder, and the like.
- paganel 5y ago
  It won't be just "one" driver, it would more of them, as in the lorries are usually stopped where other lorries are also stopped (at lorry-specific parking spots, for example) and as such it would be harder for the robbers to confront an "united" (for lack of a better word) pack of drivers. Granted, robberies (and even murders [1]) still happen in those circumstances, too, but give the robbers unattended merchandise sitting by the roadside and then see what will happen. [1] https://www.digi24.ro/stiri/externe/mapamond/au-fost-arestati-doi-barbati-care-l-ar-fi-ucis-in-franta-pe-mihai-soferul-roman-de-tir-1564611 https://www.digi24.ro/stiri/externe/mapamond/au-fost-arestat...

dusted 5y ago

My observation from the comment sections to this post-apocalyptic video is the following: People focusing on how to prevent the theft of these cars, funding police, armed guards on trans, better security. I think this is an interesting perspective, it's very "American", it's like it has been accepted by these commenters that rampant thievery is a perfectly natural part of life and so, must be worked around rather than solved. But, protecting a thing from theft, rather than removing the reason thievery is so rampant, just moves the problem to someone else.. Like putting locks and security on your home, "Now they won't break into MY home, because the guy next door has less security, so they'll go at him instead". Come on, the problem is not that it's easy to steal, the problem is that society has constructed situations for some of its citizens where they for one reason or another do it. I walked around last year, in an opera house, public building, no one in sight, empty building, unlocked doors, there were paintings on the walls, and I identified audio equipment for at least $10k, and it was not unlocked by mistake. Then it struck me, that we've done well in society when we can have this.

271828182846 5y ago
> I think this is an interesting perspective, it's very "American", it's like it has been accepted by these commenters that rampant thievery is a perfectly natural part of life and so, must be worked around rather than solved. what do you mean? death penalty ... solved!
- eloisius 5y ago
  Not solved. Then instead of sneaky thieves who run away, you get armed heists willing to kill cops and civilians to avoid getting busted.
  - 271828182846 5y ago
    to stop a bad guy with a gun it takes a good guy with a gun ... more guns - solved!
coryfklein 5y ago
Option 1) Upgrade the security on the containers Option 2) Re-work society from the ground up to eliminate any incentive for burglary It is no wonder why folks are drawn more to Option 1, which is about a bajillion times more approachable, but which doesn't preclude also working on Option 2 at the same time.

koonsolo 5y ago

[flagged]

ars 5y ago
> But still a lot of Republicans seem to believe US is not able to organize fair elections. This is not as true as you are being led to believe. The media in general looks for extreme opinions to make news, so they'll find the rare person who believes this, and then write as if it's a majority belief. I experienced this first hand - I watched a journalist interview tons of people, most had centrist opinions, then the finally found the person with the extreme opinion - and that was what aired that night (I specially made a point of watching). The partisan divide is real, but what's not obvious is that it's being created by media who is desperate for attention, because that's how they get paid. They'll tell Democrats look at those horrible Republicans, and post stories of Republicans behaving badly, then the media on the other side will do it too (not as much - most media outlets are liberal leaning). Democrats don't seem to realize they are being manipulated by stories featuring the worst that media can find, and they think that it's representative of people as a whole, so they'll start saying really nasty things - which is just more fodder for media to publish. I wish they would make it illegal to post a minority opinion without clearly saying that it's a minority.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  Is a majority of a minority allowed under your scheme? After all, a substantial majority of Republicans continue to believe that the 2020 election was "stolen"; Republicans are a minority of Americans. Can the media in your wish-world report on this?
  - ars 5y ago
    > After all, a substantial majority of Republicans continue to believe that the 2020 election was "stolen" And your basis for this "fact" is? The media? Do you actually talk to average Republicans, or only the ones who like media exposure? Out here in the real world only a minority of Republicans believe this, but it's a vocal minority, who love the media exposure. You are a victim of exactly what I'm advocating against. Moderate Republicans greatly outnumber the extreme ones, but the extreme ones are getting all the attention.

Nextgrid 5y ago

It is surreal to see this in a country where the police and “justice” system is extremely trigger happy and wants to lock everyone up for any reason they can get away with.

gruez 5y ago
US is a big place. That means it's possible to get a steady stream of stories of innocent people getting arrested/killed by the police, and have jurisdictions that turn a blind eye to property crime.
- rakejake 5y ago
  It is funny to see comments like these in this thread. After the events of the last few years, I guess Americans are finding out what it is like to be Indian on the internet and having to defend every piece of crazy news about the country. Note, I am not advocating for news like this to not be published, just remember that countries without even a semblance of a free press are going to report a lot fewer of these.
mindslight 5y ago
They're two aspects of the exact same problem. Stopping and prosecuting real crime, while preserving the rights of the innocent, is a very difficult job. When police are criticized for failure in one aspect, they respond by closing ranks and doing even less of the other aspect. Criticize the level of crime and they respond by finding some easy targets to round up and pin charges on. Criticize their overreach, and they respond with a working strike and lawless police riots. Succumbing to individual incentives, it's easier to focus on easier-to-handle perps and conduct organized militaryesque "operations"... just like it's easier to run roughshod over the rights of the accused by assuming they're guilty and doling out extrajudicial punishment. Neither one means doing their job better. Ultimately it's a complete failure of accountability. Accountability of police organizations to their employers, the community, to effectively do what they are deputized to do. As well as the failure to bind police under the overarching law, both civil and criminal, like everyone else. The problem is not deep set and everywhere, but rather distributed because we're only seeing the cherry picked worst examples of both sides. But we need to seriously up our systems of accountability if anybody is going to have any faith in our institutions going forward.

SantiagoElf 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
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tomjakubowski 5y ago
This is happening all over the United States, so you may want to expand your scope.
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  Only because of all the Californians pouring into the rest of the country. /s

JohnJamesRambo 5y ago

Well this explains where my Amazon packages keep going.

qwertox 5y ago

How about putting something like an electrical fence around those containers, maybe even just one or two wires, focused on the parts where they get opened. They could also signal when a container has been opened if should they get cut.

Thorentis 5y ago
Containers are metal. Just electrify the whole thing!

02020202 5y ago

radu_floricica 5y ago

Having the community police its members can only be done with the proper external incentives to that community. The times in history where clans or family managed their own delinquents where also times where the clan or family as a whole was called to pay for the damage. What we have here is not a sudden lapse in morals - it's a result of, rather on purpose, individualism. Since the community has nothing to lose or gain, the community just stands aside and looks. As an aside, this reminds me of gypsy villages in Romania - places where lines of concern between insiders and outsiders are so sharply drawn, that from the outside it looks like complete lawlessness. It's not - it's lawless only if you're an outsider, and that village doesn't care about you. Social mechanisms can be pretty complex (and fascinating). TBH, rather than trying to figure them out, it might be easier in cases like that to just throw manpower (and cameras) at the problem. But long term - this is where it's very much worth it to have cops work with/as social workers and get embedded in their communities. That this got to where it got speaks volumes about police and citizens there being in a purely adversarial context - otherwise the first old lady to meet a cop 6 months ago would have told him what's going on and who's started it.

wildrhythms 5y ago
Bingo. 'The community' ultimately does not own what's on the train. There is no communal interest in protecting the goods on the train; there may be an element of self preservation ("If the train is robbed, I can't buy the goods later!"), but there is little sense of communal preservation in a society that promotes individualism. The same thing applies to the thieves- anti-collective behavior is inevitable in a society that does not meet the needs of every individual.

kepler1 5y ago

Do you ever think to yourself that we're gradually headed to some dystopia like in the movie Elysium? Where a growing underclass is relegated to a garbage planet while the elites escape to a satellite world? Or at least parts of our planet? I'm not even faulting the elites for it really -- how are you, in a non-authoritarian society, supposed to handle when basic services are under attack and can't effectively discipline or enforce law, either because you just can't police enough, people refuse to obey law and order any more, or you're not allowed to use force for political reasons? Or a certain level (or $ amount) of crime is just ok? All you can do is create greater moats around the areas you can protect and see if the underclass can sort itself out. I see this kind of creeping / boiling the frog effect happening in lots of developments lately. (although I'm sure people of every generation have decried the end of the world too) Take the Portland (or Oregon?) relaxation of drug penalties, etc. Sure, it only makes sense to stop criminalizing drug use when everyone's doing it and it's loading up your prisons. But you didn't exactly solve the problem. You just found a less bad way to deal with the effects. And you're still on a path where people are using drugs more and more, and the elites flee to their gated communities to let the underclass sort itself out downtown, because it's not "fair" or "equitable" to lock up people for drug use. "We need less policing, more understanding." Eventually you understand yourself all the way into a society that's broken down. The sad thing is that the people who suffer most from crime and belief that having a system with rules is against them, are the poor and vulnerable. I don't think our approaches to these problems is working well.

uejfiweun 5y ago
Yes, I think this very often. In fact, I think it is an inevitable future evolution of society. It will likely start out with the oceans - private islands and super yachts are being rapidly built and purchased by elites around the world. If you're a pleb, like me, I think the best bet is to just hunker down, keep your head down, stay away from mentally ill types, and focus on getting very good at a useful skill. The elite will still need software engineers to build out the dystopia.
eli_gottlieb 5y ago
I would simply get rid of the political actors telling me it's immoral to maintain social order.

aronpye 5y ago

LA is turning into District 9

schnitzelstoat 5y ago

People robbing rapid testing kits for the global pandemic from cargo trains entering LA sounds like something from a dystopian cyberpunk novel.

jxramos 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_from_L.A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_from_L.A.
- Ccecil 5y ago
  Seems like we are closer to "Demolition Man" to me than "Escape from LA"...but the year is just starting :)
LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
Lacks autonomous armed drones swarming around the train, "disencouraging" anyone who doesn't belong there to stay off the tracks.
- nomel 5y ago
  I'm fairly certain the FAA is the only things preventing their use. They're already being deployed in India: https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/western-railways-to-use-surveillance-drones-to-boost-security-2575836 https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/western-railways-to-use-surv...
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    Oh!
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  - glenneroo 5y ago

tomohawk 5y ago

Crime requires: means, motive, opportunity The motive for crime is always present, and is mostly held in check by keeping the cost of means and opportunity high. In this case the opportunity cost is very low. The trains are just sitting there unprotected. And the means - will just grab a crow bar. EDIT: This regulation is well intentioned: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/28101 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/28101 The good intention is to allow interstate policing of the railsystem. The bad effect is to prevent local law enforcement 'interference'.

YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago

Please wear one-use gloves when rummaging around in trash? Please? For me?

2ion 5y ago

The West is on a way to 2nd world status at best, comprised of 1st world enclaves / gated communities where things are in order and a wild 2nd world west.

uejfiweun 5y ago
Neal Stephenson predicted this very accurately in Snow Crash with the concept of Burbclaves.

hownottowrite 5y ago

I wonder how many of these items are being resold on Amazon and Walmart Marketplace.

q1w2 5y ago
It's all very well organized. The initial thieves operate in gangs that pull as much off the train as possible and throw it to the ground. The collectors below look for (ie. boxes that have a lithium/ion battery warning on them), and they break open those boxes and remove those goods. Those high value goods are then sold to a fencer who will list them online as new from a 3rd party seller. The remaining lower value goods are then picked over by other community members.

trembonator 5y ago

glenda 5y ago

This is visually shocking, but the sheer amount of money taken from workers by wage theft eclipses this issue completely. Theft is normalized at all levels of American society.

jpambrun 5y ago
Two wrongs don't make it right..
- glenda 5y ago
  I’m not trying to justify any of it, just pointing out that theft is a completely accepted part of culture in the US. Don’t get me started on civil forfeiture…
  - soheil 5y ago
    Three wrongs don't make it right either...
    - glenda 5y ago
      Again, never said it was right, just that theft is deeply embedded in many facets of American society.
      - ldiracdelta 5y ago
        Theft is deeply embedded in _human_ societies, and we should fight it everywhere on every level.
Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
It only became shocking to people with power and wealth when poor people started doing it. Fixing decades of neglected infrastructure, education, and social services is going to cost way more than treating people decently would’ve costed. I won’t be surprised if the solutions entirely ignore the mass suffering that is responsible for events like this and only address the losses realized by the people with the power to make change.

Cyberthal 5y ago

This is why we can't have nice things.