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> On average, over 90 containers compromised per day. > 160% increase in criminal rail theft Combining these statistics indicates that UP was experiencing ove

• DantesKite 5y ago
  The US justice system is the best in the world and one of the reason's why capitalism has flourished so well here. It is by no means perfect, but a free market only works when the rules are enforced. Giving up on crime doesn't strike me as a sensible solution for any community. See San Francisco et al.
  • throwaway946513 5y ago
    > The U.S. justice system is the best in the world, and one of the reasons... I'm sorry, but this is the first time I've heard such a statement, and would like to know more.
  • gunfighthacksaw 5y ago
    The shariah justice system is the best in the world and one of the reason's why Islam has flourished so well there. It is by no means perfect, but a pious society only works when the rules are enforced.
    • solumos 5y ago
      I'd rather live under sharia law than anarchy
      • AdrianB1 5y ago
        Or better, read again and get the sarcasm in that comment.
        • google234123 5y ago
          How does that change the OP’s point?
      • fmajid 5y ago
        That's what the Islamic Courts Union were doing in Somalia after the government collapsed into anarchy, and they were reasonably effective at stamping out lawlessness, but they were taken down by Ethiopia and the US and the vacuum was replaced by the Shebab, who are far, far worse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Courts_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Courts_Union
• akersten 5y ago
  By your math, how many containers per day were being compromised were they to have said only a 100% increase in criminal rail theft?
• codekansas 5y ago
  Personally I'd rather not have big businesses carrying out vigilante justice to secure their property
  • thrill 5y ago
    You only own what you can and will defend.
    • ajmurmann 5y ago
      That's why nobody in any developed country other than the US owns anything.
      • gunfighthacksaw 5y ago
        Technically, no one owns property. True ownership is in allodium (by virtue of you being there and keeping others off) but there are no allodial land titles left except in certain US states (Arizona and Texas?) but the Federal government kind of supersedes them by virtue of having the most and biggest guns and controlling all of the surrounding land.
  • version_five 5y ago
    Some jurisdictions have the concept of "railway police" who are sworn officers protecting the railway land. See the US section for example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_police https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_police They still work for the railway so there is some conflict but I don't know that they'd by any more vigilante than regular police, and they have a special status with the states compared to security guards
  • chasd00 5y ago
    > Personally I'd rather not have big businesses carrying out vigilante justice to secure their property you mean like a security guard? That is very common everywhere, at least in the US.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• leephillips 5y ago
  When I lived in DC and called around for contractors to do things to my house, I encountered some who would not take jobs in that city. It wasn’t worth it to them, because tools were routinely stolen from their trucks. Of course they could have invested in guards and armored trucks. But it made more sense to only do business in VA and MD, which had more effective law enforcement. Toward the end of the letter UP warns of the same outcome: unless the government starts doing its job they’ll just avoid LA. The end result of more businesses making this choice will lead to LA becoming another Detroit.
  • jdavis703 5y ago
    > The end result of more businesses making this choice will lead to LA becoming another Detroit. That’s not the only possible future. Another is that contractors charge more for working in a high-risk area. For example urban grocery stores tend to have several security guards, some which might be armed. And they charge higher prices than their suburban counterparts (of course higher rents, taxes, local minimum wages and what not also contribute.)
    • hpcjoe 5y ago
      There are very few chain grocery stores, drug stores, etc. in Detroit. There is a Whole Foods down Woodward avenue, near where the city is being rebuilt. Many of the local small mom and pop grocery stores have large pylons preventing you from taking the shopping carts away. All of the buildings have large iron bars on the windows. You can always say "the rich company/people have insurance, so what", but that's missing the point. The point is, the economic core of the city largely left when they got fed up with the unrest, the lack of safety, etc. They left for and built up the suburbs around the city. Now, the city leaders have been working with local investors (Illich and other groups) to turn desolation back into a productive tax base. To attract people to live and work there. From what my wife (Detroit/Michigan native) tells me (escapee from NY), they moved out after the riots/unrest in 1967. Cities get hollowed out when you can't guarantee safety. Businesses leave. Families leave. Your economic base flows elsewhere. The folks at UP (my FIL/BIL worked there for many years) have a reasonable request of LA. Please make it safe for us to do business. The DA of LA appears to be following some other agenda, atypical of what one might expect of a DA. The end result will be (and likely is now), that LA will start slowly bleeding out as businesses and people come to the realization that their interests and concerns are not being addressed by local government. In the case of Detroit, this hollowing out had another side effect, the effective capture of the political class by corrupt pols and other criminals. It took, arguably, 45 years, before they elected someone who actually worked for the people, and wasn't feathering their own nest. Many city council members leave by going to prison, only recently has that trend changed. If you want that outcome for your city, have extreme unrest, coupled with lawlessness, an inability to pursue and prosecute criminals. You provide pressure for businesses to give up on you, as they did in Detroit. People leave when their small businesses move. Large companies close up shop and don't return. I arrived here slightly after the nadir. I love Detroit, the architecture is amazing, the people resilient, the attitude ... one of never giving up. Detroit versus everyone. But the pain that they went through to get there. Take them as an object lesson, of the combination of ethical corruption, failed government, and criminal capture. You don't want to experience this. You really, really don't.
• zthrowaway 5y ago
  “They have insurance” is unfortunately a common phrasing in defense of cities not enforcing the law. You do realize insurance cost will increase the more it’s used. How about the city just doesn’t let criminals run rampant? From what it seems, they are barely trying and they have a DA that refuses to play ball anyways.
  • chasd00 5y ago
    yeah isn't insurance costs based on a risk assessment? Insurers aren't in the business of giving away money. edit: people will only put up with it for so long and then you'll have vigilante squads running around which is a much more dangerous and expensive problem than just enforcing existing law
• cissou 5y ago
  It’s a 160% INCREASE, not a 60% one (you misread as +60%). But even +60% year over year would be no joke. Your comment assumes it’ll stay constant but if the trend holds the required investment in security could become sizable. Not that I even see the case for not prosecuting crime just because « UP has insurance » (you sure their insurer will be happy to pay for that crime and not raise premiums? Why should UP customers pay for security directly when the rest of the country gets it through actual police?)
• fennecfoxen 5y ago
  > UP has insurance, and, I'm sure treats a small percentage of thefts as the cost of doing business. And the revenues from shipping — just revenues, let alone the profits — are a fraction of the value of the cargo. If, say, a container full of new MacBooks gets broken into and looted, that is going eat the profits they'd earn from a lot of other containers. While they have insurance, they pay for that insurance, and unless the insurer is (a) stupid or (b) a charity, they pay at least as much as the amount of the losses, and probably more. UP and their customers seem to be uninterested in simply shrugging, saying "insurance", and eating that cost. Oh, and then there's the risk to employees who may occasionally be attacked or held at gunpoint. It doesn't take a lot of that before the impact on your personnel becomes a drain, too, and hiring is tight enough in this economy even without asking for people to risk life and limb. > UP can increase their investment in securing their trains and property. The alternative is the taxpayer spending a lot of money on police and incarceration. It looks like they propose to secure their trains and property by doing business in places that are not Los Angeles.
  • esyir 5y ago
    Honestly, this "insurance will cover it" rationalision is something I saw directed at the looting that happened in the protests /riots last(?) year. It feels to be that a suitable chunk of people don't understand how insurance works, instead treating it like a magic money bin that pays out when bad things happen.
• ylhert 5y ago
  > UP can increase their investment in securing their trains and property Not sure what more they can do, considering the fact that they go so far as to weld these container shut now.
• MarkLowenstein 5y ago
  This is often the opinion of people who don't see a cost to them. I'm going to guess that (1) You don't live near one of these tracks where violence may occur and violent individuals are congregating. (2) You don't know if anything you buy travels along these tracks. (3) You are wealthy enough that a 0.1% increase in price doesn't bother you. (4) You don't have kids growing up in that area who notice that it's more profitable and easier to rob trains than to go through school and produce something. (5) You aren't on a train crew whose lives are being threatened. How am I doing so far?
• solumos 5y ago
  > UP can increase their investment in securing their trains and property. That's exactly what they're proposing/threatening: > As a result of Los Angeles County’s rail theft crisis, customers like UPS and FedEx that utilize our essential rail service during peak holiday season are now seeking to divert rail business away to other areas in the hope of avoiding the organized and opportunistic criminal theft that has impacted their own business and customers. Like our customers, UP is now contemplating serious changes to our operating plans to avoid Los Angeles County. We do not take this effort lightly, particularly during the supply chain crisis, as this drastic change to our operations will create significant impacts and strains throughout the local, state, and national supply chain systems. You'd think it would be common sense to not let repeat offenders get off easy, but it looks like that's exactly what the DA is doing here. Pretty simple case of "show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome" — if you let people rob trains with little to no consequences, they're going to keep doing it.
• newfriend 5y ago
  This blasé attitude toward crime is so infuriating. It's a symbol of the deterioration of trust in modern society where criminals are coddled and law-abiding folks are left to deal with constant nuisance and criminality.
  • giraffe_lady 5y ago
    I just find it alarming and depressing how consistently horny y'all are for carceral violence. You don't ask why we don't trust, only that we act as if we do.
    • swearwolf 5y ago
      It’s reasonable for people to want those who do harm in their community to be removed from it so they can’t continue to perpetuate that harm, isn’t it?
      • giraffe_lady 5y ago
        I don't really think so but I do understand it's the mainstream viewpoint and I'm not trying to have that argument right now. What freaks me out is the tone of all the comments. Just zero understanding that there is a person being talked about. When you "remove them from your community" they go somewhere. Things happen to them. They are harmed, as well. If you're going to demand that I think you the language used should be less euphemistic. "I value these goods and the order their transit represents very highly. I believe a person should be harmed to discourage this behavior" is honest and clear. Stuff like "remove from the community" or "prosecute" hides those details of what will actually be done to the person.
        • nate_meurer 5y ago
          Man, I'm glad to see someone stepping up to police the language in this thread. It's really concerning that people use a word like "prosecute" without adorning it with its full dictionary definition, just in case someone (other than you of course) might get confused.
• Rebelgecko 5y ago
  >UP has insurance, and, I'm sure treats a small percentage of thefts as the cost of doing business. I had a package go missing in LA, how do I go about filing an insurance claim with UP? I haven't found a way, so I think it's more likely that they're just letting recipients (or generous senders) eat the costs.
  • Qub3d 5y ago
    Depends, but unless you are directly contracting with UP (i.e. paying for an entire container on a carriage) you should file a claim with the shipper, the company that sent it. If they won't or can't help you, then talk to the intermediate shipping service, likely FexEx/UPS. With shipping stuff, the general rule of thumb is to start with the org closest to the customer, and then move up. Example: my sister had a new Dell latitude porch-pirated off her front steps. We first contacted Dell, and they sent her a new one. If they hadn't accepted it, we would have talked to FedEx next. Worst-case, you file a small-claims suit. The whole insurance process is then propagated up the organization stack behind the scenes. In the case of rail theft, its likely you may never know about it, you will just see a shipping delay for an indeterminate reason and be mildly annoyed. Think of how in code, you call methods from a class that may pass your call to a superclass, which passes the code to a super-superclass, etc. In aggregate, this will end up making insurance rates go up, which will ultimately get passed to the consumer as price increases (or shipping increases, but its more and more common for shipping to be "free" and instead hidden in the base item retail price), as others have mentioned. Not the greatest, but it is the reality of things.
• hnburnsy 5y ago
  >UP has insurance, and, I'm sure treats a small percentage of thefts as the cost of doing business. Jerry: So we're gonna make the Post Office pay for my new stereo now? Cosmo Kramer: It's a write-off for them. Jerry: How is it a write-off? Cosmo Kramer: They just write it off. Jerry: Write it off what? Cosmo Kramer: Jerry, all these big companies, they write off everything. Jerry: You don't even know what a write-off is. Cosmo Kramer: Do you? Jerry: No, I don't. Cosmo Kramer: But they do. And they're the ones writing it off.