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• On average, over 90 containers compromised per day. • In partnership with Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD)

• On average, over 90 containers compromised per day. • In partnership with Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD), and California Highway Patrol (CHP) we estimate over 100 arrests have been made of active criminals vandalizing our trains. UP alone making several dozens of arrests. • With our law enforcement partners we have deterred hundreds of individuals from trespassing and vandalizing our trains. • Of all those arrests, however, UP has not been contacted for any court proceedings. The damning thing here is the lack of prosecution for the arrests that have happened. It's a clear message to offenders that they can continue what they are doing with no serious consequences. However, a figure that's missing from Union Pacific's letter is how much (or how little) UP has invested in security measures since the theft wave began, or relative to another time period.

Symbiote 5y ago
> UP by its own effort and cost enlisted additional and existing Special Agents across the UP system to join our local efforts with LAPD, LASD and CHP to help prevent the ongoing thefts. We have also utilized and are further exploring the use of additional technologies to help us combat these criminals through drones, specialized fencing, trespass detection systems, and other measures.
csdvrx 5y ago
- Ma8ee 5y ago
  /s?
  - csdvrx 5y ago
    - AlexandrB 5y ago
      I agree with you as long as we apply the same standard to "white collar crime". Embezzle money from your company? Off to death row for you. Defraud investors? Death row. Run a Ponzi scheme? Death row. Alternately, give defrauded investors the same rights you suggest for property owners so they can hunt the guilty party themselves.
      - csdvrx 5y ago
        I love of whenever we talk about "theft", people cry "but what about wage theft". There's a clear difference in scope, amount, consequence (...), so much that except having the same letter in the same order, it's not the same thing. "Wage theft" means a small underpayment, which is (1) directly and immediately found, (2) can be put to a stop right after it happens by going to another job, (3) carries legal financial consequences to someone with deeper pocket, the employer (and I'm not even talking about negative press) "Theft" in the case of the attacked trains is for much larger amounts, is apparently unstoppable and carries 0 consequences to the perpetrators - should they even be found, charged and convicted, I don't think their estate would be able to cover even a fraction of the losses. To your favor, you didn't mention "wage theft" (yet), but here, you're doing essentially the same thing with a bunch of similar words. FYI, all that you mention carry heavy consequences: just look at how it went for Holmes or Madoff.
- pempem 5y ago
  !!!
integrii 5y ago
Seems like you're suggesting that private security should be an expected cost because the state will no longer protect you like they have been for many years...
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  I certainly did not expect the libertarian ideal of depending for protection wholly on private security, instead of on the state, to be first implemented in Los Angeles, of all places.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    UPs police force is not private security in the usual sense. Those in CA are California peace officers, and all of them are also specially federally empowered for interstate operations. And this isn't new, major railroads have had these publicly-empowered police forces since the late 19th century.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  UP already has their own police. Why bother investing in more, if none of the arrests result in charges? It's pointless to spend more.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Why bother investing in more, if none of the arrests result in charges? UP is not complaining that none of the arrests result in charges. (They are complaining that the DA is settling for plea deals to lesser charges than they would prefer and not trying to employ cash bail as pre-conviction punishment for disabling [by incarceration of those who can’t afford it] suspects and deterring potential future criminals instead of not using it when it is not necessary to secure appearance of a suspect legally presumed innocent.) Also, it's well known that sufficiently visible security is a deterrent to crime, which is better than after-the-fact arrests, so an eruption in undeterred crime is evidence of a need for more and more visible security.
mc32 5y ago
On face value that’s pretty fanning of the current prosecutorial office. It’s a discouraging dereliction of duty to not follow up and prosecute these criminals. These thefts not only hurt the companies but also hurt each buyer who will have to pay indirectly for the added cost of operations. As I mentioned in the previous thread, we may yet see a Pinkerton service rise to meet this need.
- Miner49er 5y ago
  > These thefts not only hurt the companies but also hurt each buyer who will have to pay indirectly for the added cost of operations. Is this damage more then the cost of prosecuting and punishing the thieves? If not, it's not worth it.
  - pempem 5y ago
    Well, first they need to be caught and brought up on charges. Then they can be prosecuted. The bigger question is where even is the LAPD?
    - fennecfoxen 5y ago
      Per the letter, the question is NOT, "where even is the LAPD." It is, "where are the Los Angeles County prosecutors?" And the answer Union Pacific provides is, "letting these people who are arrested go free with a plea deal for simple trespassing."
    - zaroth 5y ago
      They are being caught and arrested. Then the DA lets them go, so they go back and steal more, and spread the word that nothing happens even when you do get caught.
  - mc32 5y ago
    Non-prosecution sends a signal "it's okay, we will not prosecute you". Less scrupulous people learn there is no prosecution and this becomes a routine drag on rail commerce. In Nigeria you get people who hijack petrol transportation --often times they lead to fiery explosions. It's not a path we should want to devolve to. The middle ages had highway men. We want to avoid going backwards.
pempem 5y ago
Maybe its because the LAPD has such a little budget? /s.
- Rebelgecko 5y ago
  Even though LAPD's budget is drastically lower per-capita and per-area than other major cities, it sounds like a bigger problem is that even when someone is arrested they can be let out of jail same day with no bail for even repeat offenders.
millzlane 5y ago
>The damning thing here is the lack of prosecution for the arrests that have happened. It's a clear message to offenders that they can continue what they are doing with no serious consequences. Also missing, is the figure of number of arrests that haven't been prosecuted. That data should be out there somewhere. It's interesting that no data to prove the theory has surfaced.
- nathanvanfleet 5y ago
  That's what they are saying, the government isn't supplying them with that data.
  - lazyasciiart 5y ago
    All prosecutions are public data. So the government may not be serving it up on a plate, but they also must not be trying to find out.
- pmorici 5y ago
  UP implies they believe there have been zero prosecutions. If there were any resulting from the arrests they made they would have had to be involved as witnesses and they say they haven’t been contacted in that capacity.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > UP implies they believe there have been zero prosecutions Under the California Victim's Bill of Rights they have a right to information on this on request (but they don't have to be provided with it proactively), so if they merely “believe” this but can point to neither concrete information or a failure to respond to inquiries, it means they have chosen not to ask to avoid their belief being proven wrong. But, anyway, they don't say that, so its immaterial: they specifically acknowledge prosecutions and convictions, they are just upset that the DA is taking plea deals to charges they feel are insufficiently serious rather than expending more resources seeking convictions (and risking acquittals) on more serious charges. (They also specifically are validating the argument of anti-cash-bail advocates by portraying cash bail as a punitive and disabling measure against unconvicted suspects rather than a means of securing appearance.)
mikewarot 5y ago
almost_usual 5y ago
Interesting they choose the word vandalism here. I hope they’re distinguishing between someone doing graffiti and someone breaking into a container and stealing what’s inside it. Before anyone jumps to “well broken window” freight graffiti has been a thing for like 40 years and has no correlation to container robberies.
- mleo 5y ago
  The use of “vandalism” vs theft seems to be perspective. The container was vandalized to access. The actual theft of items within is secondary. Related use. I had a storage space where the company said there was vandalism in the area of my locker and I should come check. Sure enough it was broken into and items had been taken. As far as storage company was concerned, it was vandalism of their property and theft of mine.
  - lazyasciiart 5y ago
    It's at best accidental lack of precision. It is inarguable that graffiti is vandalization: it is possible but unlikely that they are using it here only to describe a subset of the activities it means.
- beerandt 5y ago
  Theft before the actual thing is taken would require at minimum a proof of intent, and could still be problematic. So vandalism is the "easiest" charge for those caught in the act. And gets around one potential argument from prosecutors that charges should be dropped.
- mc32 5y ago
  They forgot destruction of property. They had to break in to get to the goods.
AlexandrB 5y ago
Am I missing something or is the first bullet point completely orthogonal to the second. They talk about train thefts on the rise but then cite a statistic about "over 100 arrests" for vandalism? How are these related? What are the stats for arrests for theft?
- greggman3 5y ago
  As pointed out on other comments. From the train's POV the train was vandalized but nothing that belongs the the train company was stolen. The stuff that was stolen belong to other entities. But yes, it would be good to know stats for both
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > From the train's POV the train was vandalized but nothing that belongs the the train company was stolen. Trains are inanimate and don't have a POV, and from the perspective of UP (which has a police force notionally charged with addressing crimes on railway property, not merely crimes against the railway), that’s not correct if an actual theft occurred.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ethbr0 5y ago
> But even with these expanded resources and closer partnerships with local law enforcement, we find ourselves coming back to the same results with the Los Angeles County criminal justice system. Criminals are caught and arrested, turned over to local authorities for booking, arraigned before the local courts, charges are reduced to a misdemeanor or petty offense, and the criminal is released after paying a nominal fine. These individuals are generally caught and released back onto the streets in less than twenty-four hours. From experience inside a major retail chain at the national level, this is the story of retail theft in general. The interface between private security and public law enforcement is... inefficient. (To put it nicely) "Not caught here" is a real thing. Private security lays a theft case in law enforcement's lap, oftentimes better documented than police cases, and the collective response is a yawn and inaction. And while I'm a proponent of justice reform, theft is theft. We're not talking about busting someone for personal amounts of marijuana. This is forcefully choosing to break into a secure container, for purposes of stealing items of value for sale. With the resulting costs being borne by everyone who uses the system.
- chris11 5y ago
  > From experience inside a major retail chain at the national level, this is the story of retail theft in general. I thought it was common at some places, like Target, to track but not report shoplifting until it qualified for a felony. Then once the shoplifter had stolen enough to be charged for a felony they were prosecuted.
  - pkaeding 5y ago
    Years ago, I worked for a regional discount retail chain, in the Loss Prevention department (my job was installing cameras and other low-voltage systems). The focus of LP there (and probably at most retail places) was internal theft. They would try to discourage shoplifting, but employees stealing represented much bigger losses. I remember hearing one of the guys reviewing video tape saying that they were tallying up a bunch of thefts (in this case, the subject was a cashier, and he was pretending to ring up items for his friends and family, but not really scanning it). The kid was 17, going to turn 18 in a couple weeks. The guy reviewing the tape joked about how the tally would be $1000 shortly after his birthday, when he would be an adult: "Happy birthday, you're under arrest for grand larceny". It was sickening. I enjoyed my job, and I didn't mind if criminals were caught and prosecuted, but the attitude that led to jokes like that didn't sit well with me.
prawn 5y ago
I wondered if some of the issue is how people are caught? Are they getting caught with obvious evidence breaking into the containers, or are most getting caught scrounging through packages on the ground?
kingcharles 5y ago
From someone who has extensive experience in the criminal justice system, I wonder how much of this is because they have no evidence of theft by the persons they arrest? It's one thing to arrest someone who is clearly on your property* and the officer can testify they found Person X where they shouldn't be, but unless the officer sees X pulling a package out of a railcar and can specifically identify them, it gets tricky to find them guilty of the larger crime at trial. Almost certainly though, multiple misdemeanour convictions for trespassing are eventually going to elevate to a felony. It is possibly still worth it though. Having been locked up I know many people who would commit what most people would consider petty robberies and just suck up the months and years of being locked up. People become inured to incarceration. The first time you're locked up you're scared and you don't know what's going on. The second time: you walk in like a boss and all your friends are already there. A lot of the people doing this have been programmed by their peers to see regular jobs as something suckers do, and that crime is the "cool" way to make money. Most of them are not doing it because jobs are unavailable, just that they don't want a job. A lot of them would work for themselves though if they could find the right industry and were given appropriate help to see it through and stay on the correct path. * trespass isn't always a crime the first time you are caught somewhere you should not be - often it requires the property owner to tell you that you are not welcome to return before the statute activates
bluedino 5y ago
Remember all the smash and grab retail lootings? The Target store that was burned down? It was all on video. Hundreds participating. How many prosecutions came out of that?
- jrockway 5y ago
  It takes time and money. The idiots that wrecked up the Capitol and tried to kill a sitting Vice President (all while recording thousands of hours of video footage) are just now being prosecuted, a year later.

Symbiote 5y ago

> UP by its own effort and cost enlisted additional and existing Special Agents across the UP system to join our local efforts with LAPD, LASD and CHP to help prevent the ongoing thefts. We have also utilized and are further exploring the use of additional technologies to help us combat these criminals through drones, specialized fencing, trespass detection systems, and other measures.

csdvrx 5y ago

Ma8ee 5y ago
/s?
- csdvrx 5y ago
  - AlexandrB 5y ago
    I agree with you as long as we apply the same standard to "white collar crime". Embezzle money from your company? Off to death row for you. Defraud investors? Death row. Run a Ponzi scheme? Death row. Alternately, give defrauded investors the same rights you suggest for property owners so they can hunt the guilty party themselves.
    - csdvrx 5y ago
      I love of whenever we talk about "theft", people cry "but what about wage theft". There's a clear difference in scope, amount, consequence (...), so much that except having the same letter in the same order, it's not the same thing. "Wage theft" means a small underpayment, which is (1) directly and immediately found, (2) can be put to a stop right after it happens by going to another job, (3) carries legal financial consequences to someone with deeper pocket, the employer (and I'm not even talking about negative press) "Theft" in the case of the attacked trains is for much larger amounts, is apparently unstoppable and carries 0 consequences to the perpetrators - should they even be found, charged and convicted, I don't think their estate would be able to cover even a fraction of the losses. To your favor, you didn't mention "wage theft" (yet), but here, you're doing essentially the same thing with a bunch of similar words. FYI, all that you mention carry heavy consequences: just look at how it went for Holmes or Madoff.
pempem 5y ago
!!!

integrii 5y ago

Seems like you're suggesting that private security should be an expected cost because the state will no longer protect you like they have been for many years...

xyzzyz 5y ago
I certainly did not expect the libertarian ideal of depending for protection wholly on private security, instead of on the state, to be first implemented in Los Angeles, of all places.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  UPs police force is not private security in the usual sense. Those in CA are California peace officers, and all of them are also specially federally empowered for interstate operations. And this isn't new, major railroads have had these publicly-empowered police forces since the late 19th century.
bpodgursky 5y ago
UP already has their own police. Why bother investing in more, if none of the arrests result in charges? It's pointless to spend more.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Why bother investing in more, if none of the arrests result in charges? UP is not complaining that none of the arrests result in charges. (They are complaining that the DA is settling for plea deals to lesser charges than they would prefer and not trying to employ cash bail as pre-conviction punishment for disabling [by incarceration of those who can’t afford it] suspects and deterring potential future criminals instead of not using it when it is not necessary to secure appearance of a suspect legally presumed innocent.) Also, it's well known that sufficiently visible security is a deterrent to crime, which is better than after-the-fact arrests, so an eruption in undeterred crime is evidence of a need for more and more visible security.

mc32 5y ago

On face value that’s pretty fanning of the current prosecutorial office. It’s a discouraging dereliction of duty to not follow up and prosecute these criminals. These thefts not only hurt the companies but also hurt each buyer who will have to pay indirectly for the added cost of operations. As I mentioned in the previous thread, we may yet see a Pinkerton service rise to meet this need.

Miner49er 5y ago
> These thefts not only hurt the companies but also hurt each buyer who will have to pay indirectly for the added cost of operations. Is this damage more then the cost of prosecuting and punishing the thieves? If not, it's not worth it.
- pempem 5y ago
  Well, first they need to be caught and brought up on charges. Then they can be prosecuted. The bigger question is where even is the LAPD?
  - fennecfoxen 5y ago
    Per the letter, the question is NOT, "where even is the LAPD." It is, "where are the Los Angeles County prosecutors?" And the answer Union Pacific provides is, "letting these people who are arrested go free with a plea deal for simple trespassing."
  - zaroth 5y ago
    They are being caught and arrested. Then the DA lets them go, so they go back and steal more, and spread the word that nothing happens even when you do get caught.
- mc32 5y ago
  Non-prosecution sends a signal "it's okay, we will not prosecute you". Less scrupulous people learn there is no prosecution and this becomes a routine drag on rail commerce. In Nigeria you get people who hijack petrol transportation --often times they lead to fiery explosions. It's not a path we should want to devolve to. The middle ages had highway men. We want to avoid going backwards.

pempem 5y ago

Maybe its because the LAPD has such a little budget? /s.

Rebelgecko 5y ago
Even though LAPD's budget is drastically lower per-capita and per-area than other major cities, it sounds like a bigger problem is that even when someone is arrested they can be let out of jail same day with no bail for even repeat offenders.

millzlane 5y ago

>The damning thing here is the lack of prosecution for the arrests that have happened. It's a clear message to offenders that they can continue what they are doing with no serious consequences. Also missing, is the figure of number of arrests that haven't been prosecuted. That data should be out there somewhere. It's interesting that no data to prove the theory has surfaced.

nathanvanfleet 5y ago
That's what they are saying, the government isn't supplying them with that data.
- lazyasciiart 5y ago
  All prosecutions are public data. So the government may not be serving it up on a plate, but they also must not be trying to find out.
pmorici 5y ago
UP implies they believe there have been zero prosecutions. If there were any resulting from the arrests they made they would have had to be involved as witnesses and they say they haven’t been contacted in that capacity.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > UP implies they believe there have been zero prosecutions Under the California Victim's Bill of Rights they have a right to information on this on request (but they don't have to be provided with it proactively), so if they merely “believe” this but can point to neither concrete information or a failure to respond to inquiries, it means they have chosen not to ask to avoid their belief being proven wrong. But, anyway, they don't say that, so its immaterial: they specifically acknowledge prosecutions and convictions, they are just upset that the DA is taking plea deals to charges they feel are insufficiently serious rather than expending more resources seeking convictions (and risking acquittals) on more serious charges. (They also specifically are validating the argument of anti-cash-bail advocates by portraying cash bail as a punitive and disabling measure against unconvicted suspects rather than a means of securing appearance.)

mikewarot 5y ago

almost_usual 5y ago

Interesting they choose the word vandalism here. I hope they’re distinguishing between someone doing graffiti and someone breaking into a container and stealing what’s inside it. Before anyone jumps to “well broken window” freight graffiti has been a thing for like 40 years and has no correlation to container robberies.

mleo 5y ago
The use of “vandalism” vs theft seems to be perspective. The container was vandalized to access. The actual theft of items within is secondary. Related use. I had a storage space where the company said there was vandalism in the area of my locker and I should come check. Sure enough it was broken into and items had been taken. As far as storage company was concerned, it was vandalism of their property and theft of mine.
- lazyasciiart 5y ago
  It's at best accidental lack of precision. It is inarguable that graffiti is vandalization: it is possible but unlikely that they are using it here only to describe a subset of the activities it means.
beerandt 5y ago
Theft before the actual thing is taken would require at minimum a proof of intent, and could still be problematic. So vandalism is the "easiest" charge for those caught in the act. And gets around one potential argument from prosecutors that charges should be dropped.
mc32 5y ago
They forgot destruction of property. They had to break in to get to the goods.

AlexandrB 5y ago

Am I missing something or is the first bullet point completely orthogonal to the second. They talk about train thefts on the rise but then cite a statistic about "over 100 arrests" for vandalism? How are these related? What are the stats for arrests for theft?

greggman3 5y ago
As pointed out on other comments. From the train's POV the train was vandalized but nothing that belongs the the train company was stolen. The stuff that was stolen belong to other entities. But yes, it would be good to know stats for both
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > From the train's POV the train was vandalized but nothing that belongs the the train company was stolen. Trains are inanimate and don't have a POV, and from the perspective of UP (which has a police force notionally charged with addressing crimes on railway property, not merely crimes against the railway), that’s not correct if an actual theft occurred.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ethbr0 5y ago

> But even with these expanded resources and closer partnerships with local law enforcement, we find ourselves coming back to the same results with the Los Angeles County criminal justice system. Criminals are caught and arrested, turned over to local authorities for booking, arraigned before the local courts, charges are reduced to a misdemeanor or petty offense, and the criminal is released after paying a nominal fine. These individuals are generally caught and released back onto the streets in less than twenty-four hours. From experience inside a major retail chain at the national level, this is the story of retail theft in general. The interface between private security and public law enforcement is... inefficient. (To put it nicely) "Not caught here" is a real thing. Private security lays a theft case in law enforcement's lap, oftentimes better documented than police cases, and the collective response is a yawn and inaction. And while I'm a proponent of justice reform, theft is theft. We're not talking about busting someone for personal amounts of marijuana. This is forcefully choosing to break into a secure container, for purposes of stealing items of value for sale. With the resulting costs being borne by everyone who uses the system.

chris11 5y ago
> From experience inside a major retail chain at the national level, this is the story of retail theft in general. I thought it was common at some places, like Target, to track but not report shoplifting until it qualified for a felony. Then once the shoplifter had stolen enough to be charged for a felony they were prosecuted.
- pkaeding 5y ago
  Years ago, I worked for a regional discount retail chain, in the Loss Prevention department (my job was installing cameras and other low-voltage systems). The focus of LP there (and probably at most retail places) was internal theft. They would try to discourage shoplifting, but employees stealing represented much bigger losses. I remember hearing one of the guys reviewing video tape saying that they were tallying up a bunch of thefts (in this case, the subject was a cashier, and he was pretending to ring up items for his friends and family, but not really scanning it). The kid was 17, going to turn 18 in a couple weeks. The guy reviewing the tape joked about how the tally would be $1000 shortly after his birthday, when he would be an adult: "Happy birthday, you're under arrest for grand larceny". It was sickening. I enjoyed my job, and I didn't mind if criminals were caught and prosecuted, but the attitude that led to jokes like that didn't sit well with me.

prawn 5y ago

I wondered if some of the issue is how people are caught? Are they getting caught with obvious evidence breaking into the containers, or are most getting caught scrounging through packages on the ground?

kingcharles 5y ago

From someone who has extensive experience in the criminal justice system, I wonder how much of this is because they have no evidence of theft by the persons they arrest? It's one thing to arrest someone who is clearly on your property* and the officer can testify they found Person X where they shouldn't be, but unless the officer sees X pulling a package out of a railcar and can specifically identify them, it gets tricky to find them guilty of the larger crime at trial. Almost certainly though, multiple misdemeanour convictions for trespassing are eventually going to elevate to a felony. It is possibly still worth it though. Having been locked up I know many people who would commit what most people would consider petty robberies and just suck up the months and years of being locked up. People become inured to incarceration. The first time you're locked up you're scared and you don't know what's going on. The second time: you walk in like a boss and all your friends are already there. A lot of the people doing this have been programmed by their peers to see regular jobs as something suckers do, and that crime is the "cool" way to make money. Most of them are not doing it because jobs are unavailable, just that they don't want a job. A lot of them would work for themselves though if they could find the right industry and were given appropriate help to see it through and stay on the correct path. * trespass isn't always a crime the first time you are caught somewhere you should not be - often it requires the property owner to tell you that you are not welcome to return before the statute activates

bluedino 5y ago

Remember all the smash and grab retail lootings? The Target store that was burned down? It was all on video. Hundreds participating. How many prosecutions came out of that?

jrockway 5y ago
It takes time and money. The idiots that wrecked up the Capitol and tried to kill a sitting Vice President (all while recording thousands of hours of video footage) are just now being prosecuted, a year later.