7 ms·

UP is making arrests though, even with fewer officers. The problem seems to be the LA Prosecutor not... prosecuting. So would it really matter if UP sent more

by mulmen 5y ago

UP is making arrests though, even with fewer officers. The problem seems to be the LA Prosecutor not... prosecuting. So would it really matter if UP sent more people to the prosecutor? Were the layoffs a response to the lack of effectiveness in the prosecutors office?

User23 5y ago
Isn’t messing with rail a federal crime? Where is the U.S. Attorney?
jeffbee 5y ago
That might be true, or it might be cop propaganda. I mean, a press release from the cops is literally cop propaganda. We know from recent reports in New York that the NYPD is just going around refusing to investigate crimes or make arrests, and telling everyone who will listen it is the DA's fault. Their propaganda campaign is organized by the police union, which is nationally coordinated and not politically neutral. So when you read reports, written by cops, about these issues, unless they come with substantial documented evidence, I think you should treat those claims as skeptically as you treat press releases from the CIA, or Putin, or whoever. These claims have no inherent credibility.
- cassac 5y ago
  I find it reasonable for the cops not to make arrests if nobody is going to prosecute. I don’t consider that propaganda for the police to say as such. If the DA openly says they won’t prosecute a certain crime why would I expect the police to arrest for it? And of course the cops would have a cop bias, and teachers have a teacher bias, and service works have a service worker bias and on and on. Everyone looks out for their own across all cross sections of their identity. What’s different is it seems cops get no additional cross sections anymore. Once they are a cop their ven diagram shifts to 100% cop and now they are vilified.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    > I find it reasonable for the cops not to make arrests if nobody is going to prosecute. You find it reasonable for people to be paid and not do their jobs? They're not paid to administer justice, they're paid to do what they're told.
    - cassac 5y ago
      I never said they are paid to “administer justice” but I do expect them to prioritize their activities. Making arrests for things that won’t be prosecuted is a waste of time. I’m honestly not even sure what you are advocating for. J walking is a good example of something I expect them not to bother with 99% of the time but it is a law nearly everywhere. To enforce that in a major metro could use all the cops every day. Huge waste of time.
      - pessimizer 5y ago
        I'm advocating for police to accept the priorities we give them. I don't get to set the priorities at my job; I don't get to favor working on features I think are good and to ignore features I don't. I'm given priorities. What happens after people are arrested is not relevant to the police, and they have no training or authority to make decisions about it. We elected different people for that.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        cassac 5y ago
        Isn’t the DA telling, both them and us, what the priority is if they say they won’t prosecute a specific crime? Along that same line of thought is that it is not relevant what the DA thinks about the law. The powers that be created the law and the DA should prosecute it every time there is an arrest and let the courts figure it out. Also in your job you are given priorities and you work on the lowest ones last. And if you always have more priorities than hours in the day then the lower priority ones don’t get done. Based on the laws that are actually on the books there are more law breakers than police officers so they have to pick and choose their priorities. That’s still a reasonable thing to do.
- vgeek 5y ago
  Imagine getting paid to not even try, then have the audacity to blame someone else. I would presume that even a police presence would deter many of the thieves, but that wouldn't help push the "we need more funding, we're the only thing preventing outright chaos" narrative when they're already derelict of their duties of protecting capital's interests. Police unions should be reformed. Maybe they're useful for helping with compensation (which is probably ludicrously high given their skillsets-- most cops would likely be truck drivers if not law enforcement, showing how well unions can work for labor) and benefits, but they're too big of a liability in keeping around too many degenerates. Maybe unions should stick to the private sector, or at least jobs where there aren't so many highly visible bad actors with obvious political motives.
  - danuker 5y ago
    > "we need more funding, we're the only thing preventing outright chaos" We are in the midst of a transportation crisis. Any available vehicle should be rolling. Otherwise, inventories run low, prices creep up, and people have to do with less.
- dls2016 5y ago
  I was downvoted in other threads for suggesting (perhaps in a ham handed fashion) that we shouldn’t rush to trust these one-sided articles about the rail theft in LA and shoplifting in SF. People are surprisingly quick to suggest we throw more tax dollars at these “problems” without questioning that perhaps an alternate explanation for the increased theft is due to years and years exploiting every efficiency possible in the supply and retail chains. A store containing tens of millions of dollars of merchandise and “guarded” by a fewer and fewer underpaid employees eventually becomes a sitting duck. It’s the same explanation for why our supply chains were so brittle in the face of the pandemic: years and years of streamlining. Could there be societal or enforcement issues? Sure! But let’s be at least slightly skeptical when images of a few hundred yards of junk-strewn railway are plastered across every headline and trending list out there. The reality is often much more complicated.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  I was personally the victim of a minor crime which wasn’t investigated properly or prosecuted at all. (License plate, photo of perpetrator, traffic camera, witness, all in hand) Locally politicians run on not prosecuting certain things and there are many news stories about repeat offenders not being prosecuted or getting comically gentle sentences. For example a young man with a history stole a car and then crashed it into a police car before they apprehended him and he got two weeks house arrest. A teenager getting caught smoking a cigarette wouldn’t be surprised to get a worse punishment from their parents.
hotpotamus 5y ago
This actually raises all sorts of questions for me about how a private police force with presumably a federal jurisdiction would prosecute criminals in a state court. I'm sure there's a system in place, though part of me is imagining the railroads creating their own private prisons that force inmates to work on the lines. Probably best not to give them any ideas.
- beerandt 5y ago
  As it exists, they arrest and charge based on state law, unless they have something federal to charge. Hypothetically, you could model it off of migratory wildlife enforcement, with dual jurisdiction, where a violation of a relevant state law automatically becomes a federal offense, and vice versa, and agents are typically officers of both the state and federal government. Then the federal judiciary could fulfill the need where locals fall short. No private prison or judicial system needed. But it would be much more ideal if the prosecutors would just do their jobs.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  Private security forces with police powers are a thing in many states. I had some equipment in a data center where the security people were certified officers with automatic weapons. Gated communities in some places also have sworn private security.
mtw 5y ago
Article seems to indicate it's not arrests but patrols that are correlated with theft. Patrols dissuade potential thefts
- bluedino 5y ago
  It says a lot about your citizens when they regularly steal.
  - TrainedMonkey 5y ago
    Totes, people should starve to death before resorting to stealing. /s
    - mardifoufs 5y ago
      You are saying the people who steal from trains would be starving otherwise? That's a ridiculous take, imo. As much as some Americans like to pretend that they are actually living in a 3rd world country & deny how privileged it is to even live there, the reality is that they are absolutely not. Even a minimum wage job in the US can get you above "starving" or even close to that point. Being poor in LA doesn't mean you're starving, and it's weird to assume that poor people just have to commit crimes and steal because they are poor. Regardless, let's assume Los Angeles was such an economically desolate place for the poor. Well, it turns out that train robberies still aren't a common occurrence in even much poorer places so there must be something else going on too.
    - hogepiyo 5y ago
      Because the only people who commit crime are desperate people struggling to survive? That's the level of argument you're on right now
    - bagacrap 5y ago
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  The article also says they're in charge of 36,000 miles of track. Presumably the trains are only in smaller segments, but that's still impossible to patrol it all. There is no reasonable amount of officers that could cover all of the parked trains 24/7 anyway. Without any actual consequences for getting caught, it's basically a minor inconvenience for the thieves. More officers just means slightly more inconvenience.
slg 5y ago
People don't have to be thrown in jail for there to be a deterrent. That is part of the reason why there is a market for those fake plastic security cameras that don't record anything. Simply placing guards in the area will reduce theft. This feels analogous to leaving a laptop unattended in the back seat of a parked car and blaming the government for not stopping it from being stolen. Union Pacific has responsibility to do at least the bare minimum to secure their own property and news of these layoffs seams to indicate they abdicated that responsibility in the hopes they could put political pressure on the government to do that work for them for free.
- filed 5y ago
  What good are security cameras if they still will not prosecute. We all have property rights, even businesses believe it or not. Theft is a violation of property rights. If you don’t believe in property rights then I’ll take the keys to your house- thanks
  - slg 5y ago
    >What good are security cameras if they still will not prosecute. Prosecution is not the only punishment. Getting arrested or getting in a confrontation with security are still negative outcomes that still occur and people will want to avoid. If you allow people to just walk into the area and walk out with the stolen property more people are going to do it. Making the act of stealing more difficult (or even just appear more difficult) will reduce theft regardless of the punishment. >We all have property rights, even businesses believe it or not. >Theft is a violation of property rights. What did I say that makes you think I would disagree with this. >If you don’t believe in property rights then I’ll take the keys to your house- thanks My point is that Union Pacific has a responsibility to lock their house. If I leave my door unlocked and my house gets burgled, I have some responsibility in contributing to that outcome.
    - filed 5y ago
TrainedMonkey 5y ago
> According to the source, the number of patrolling officers has been cut from 50 to 60 agents to eight, which the worker thinks has led to an increase in train robberies. And they deterred several times more than arrested, imagine how much more effective deterring would be with ~10x more officers.
wolverine876 5y ago
> UP is making arrests though, even with fewer officers. The problem seems to be the LA Prosecutor not... prosecuting. That's not what their letter actually said, IIRC?
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  The letter said they made ~100 arrests for vandalism and didn't break out a number for thefts IIRC. This increasingly smells like a company trying to save money by firing their security force and passing sole responsibility for thefts off on publicly funded law enforcement.

by mulmen 5y ago

User23 5y ago

Isn’t messing with rail a federal crime? Where is the U.S. Attorney?

jeffbee 5y ago

That might be true, or it might be cop propaganda. I mean, a press release from the cops is literally cop propaganda. We know from recent reports in New York that the NYPD is just going around refusing to investigate crimes or make arrests, and telling everyone who will listen it is the DA's fault. Their propaganda campaign is organized by the police union, which is nationally coordinated and not politically neutral. So when you read reports, written by cops, about these issues, unless they come with substantial documented evidence, I think you should treat those claims as skeptically as you treat press releases from the CIA, or Putin, or whoever. These claims have no inherent credibility.

cassac 5y ago
I find it reasonable for the cops not to make arrests if nobody is going to prosecute. I don’t consider that propaganda for the police to say as such. If the DA openly says they won’t prosecute a certain crime why would I expect the police to arrest for it? And of course the cops would have a cop bias, and teachers have a teacher bias, and service works have a service worker bias and on and on. Everyone looks out for their own across all cross sections of their identity. What’s different is it seems cops get no additional cross sections anymore. Once they are a cop their ven diagram shifts to 100% cop and now they are vilified.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  > I find it reasonable for the cops not to make arrests if nobody is going to prosecute. You find it reasonable for people to be paid and not do their jobs? They're not paid to administer justice, they're paid to do what they're told.
  - cassac 5y ago
    I never said they are paid to “administer justice” but I do expect them to prioritize their activities. Making arrests for things that won’t be prosecuted is a waste of time. I’m honestly not even sure what you are advocating for. J walking is a good example of something I expect them not to bother with 99% of the time but it is a law nearly everywhere. To enforce that in a major metro could use all the cops every day. Huge waste of time.
    - pessimizer 5y ago
      I'm advocating for police to accept the priorities we give them. I don't get to set the priorities at my job; I don't get to favor working on features I think are good and to ignore features I don't. I'm given priorities. What happens after people are arrested is not relevant to the police, and they have no training or authority to make decisions about it. We elected different people for that.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - cassac 5y ago
        Isn’t the DA telling, both them and us, what the priority is if they say they won’t prosecute a specific crime? Along that same line of thought is that it is not relevant what the DA thinks about the law. The powers that be created the law and the DA should prosecute it every time there is an arrest and let the courts figure it out. Also in your job you are given priorities and you work on the lowest ones last. And if you always have more priorities than hours in the day then the lower priority ones don’t get done. Based on the laws that are actually on the books there are more law breakers than police officers so they have to pick and choose their priorities. That’s still a reasonable thing to do.
vgeek 5y ago
Imagine getting paid to not even try, then have the audacity to blame someone else. I would presume that even a police presence would deter many of the thieves, but that wouldn't help push the "we need more funding, we're the only thing preventing outright chaos" narrative when they're already derelict of their duties of protecting capital's interests. Police unions should be reformed. Maybe they're useful for helping with compensation (which is probably ludicrously high given their skillsets-- most cops would likely be truck drivers if not law enforcement, showing how well unions can work for labor) and benefits, but they're too big of a liability in keeping around too many degenerates. Maybe unions should stick to the private sector, or at least jobs where there aren't so many highly visible bad actors with obvious political motives.
- danuker 5y ago
  > "we need more funding, we're the only thing preventing outright chaos" We are in the midst of a transportation crisis. Any available vehicle should be rolling. Otherwise, inventories run low, prices creep up, and people have to do with less.
dls2016 5y ago
I was downvoted in other threads for suggesting (perhaps in a ham handed fashion) that we shouldn’t rush to trust these one-sided articles about the rail theft in LA and shoplifting in SF. People are surprisingly quick to suggest we throw more tax dollars at these “problems” without questioning that perhaps an alternate explanation for the increased theft is due to years and years exploiting every efficiency possible in the supply and retail chains. A store containing tens of millions of dollars of merchandise and “guarded” by a fewer and fewer underpaid employees eventually becomes a sitting duck. It’s the same explanation for why our supply chains were so brittle in the face of the pandemic: years and years of streamlining. Could there be societal or enforcement issues? Sure! But let’s be at least slightly skeptical when images of a few hundred yards of junk-strewn railway are plastered across every headline and trending list out there. The reality is often much more complicated.
colechristensen 5y ago
I was personally the victim of a minor crime which wasn’t investigated properly or prosecuted at all. (License plate, photo of perpetrator, traffic camera, witness, all in hand) Locally politicians run on not prosecuting certain things and there are many news stories about repeat offenders not being prosecuted or getting comically gentle sentences. For example a young man with a history stole a car and then crashed it into a police car before they apprehended him and he got two weeks house arrest. A teenager getting caught smoking a cigarette wouldn’t be surprised to get a worse punishment from their parents.

hotpotamus 5y ago

This actually raises all sorts of questions for me about how a private police force with presumably a federal jurisdiction would prosecute criminals in a state court. I'm sure there's a system in place, though part of me is imagining the railroads creating their own private prisons that force inmates to work on the lines. Probably best not to give them any ideas.

beerandt 5y ago
As it exists, they arrest and charge based on state law, unless they have something federal to charge. Hypothetically, you could model it off of migratory wildlife enforcement, with dual jurisdiction, where a violation of a relevant state law automatically becomes a federal offense, and vice versa, and agents are typically officers of both the state and federal government. Then the federal judiciary could fulfill the need where locals fall short. No private prison or judicial system needed. But it would be much more ideal if the prosecutors would just do their jobs.
Spooky23 5y ago
Private security forces with police powers are a thing in many states. I had some equipment in a data center where the security people were certified officers with automatic weapons. Gated communities in some places also have sworn private security.

mtw 5y ago

Article seems to indicate it's not arrests but patrols that are correlated with theft. Patrols dissuade potential thefts

bluedino 5y ago
It says a lot about your citizens when they regularly steal.
- TrainedMonkey 5y ago
  Totes, people should starve to death before resorting to stealing. /s
  - mardifoufs 5y ago
    You are saying the people who steal from trains would be starving otherwise? That's a ridiculous take, imo. As much as some Americans like to pretend that they are actually living in a 3rd world country & deny how privileged it is to even live there, the reality is that they are absolutely not. Even a minimum wage job in the US can get you above "starving" or even close to that point. Being poor in LA doesn't mean you're starving, and it's weird to assume that poor people just have to commit crimes and steal because they are poor. Regardless, let's assume Los Angeles was such an economically desolate place for the poor. Well, it turns out that train robberies still aren't a common occurrence in even much poorer places so there must be something else going on too.
  - hogepiyo 5y ago
    Because the only people who commit crime are desperate people struggling to survive? That's the level of argument you're on right now
  - bagacrap 5y ago
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
The article also says they're in charge of 36,000 miles of track. Presumably the trains are only in smaller segments, but that's still impossible to patrol it all. There is no reasonable amount of officers that could cover all of the parked trains 24/7 anyway. Without any actual consequences for getting caught, it's basically a minor inconvenience for the thieves. More officers just means slightly more inconvenience.

slg 5y ago

People don't have to be thrown in jail for there to be a deterrent. That is part of the reason why there is a market for those fake plastic security cameras that don't record anything. Simply placing guards in the area will reduce theft. This feels analogous to leaving a laptop unattended in the back seat of a parked car and blaming the government for not stopping it from being stolen. Union Pacific has responsibility to do at least the bare minimum to secure their own property and news of these layoffs seams to indicate they abdicated that responsibility in the hopes they could put political pressure on the government to do that work for them for free.

filed 5y ago
What good are security cameras if they still will not prosecute. We all have property rights, even businesses believe it or not. Theft is a violation of property rights. If you don’t believe in property rights then I’ll take the keys to your house- thanks
- slg 5y ago
  >What good are security cameras if they still will not prosecute. Prosecution is not the only punishment. Getting arrested or getting in a confrontation with security are still negative outcomes that still occur and people will want to avoid. If you allow people to just walk into the area and walk out with the stolen property more people are going to do it. Making the act of stealing more difficult (or even just appear more difficult) will reduce theft regardless of the punishment. >We all have property rights, even businesses believe it or not. >Theft is a violation of property rights. What did I say that makes you think I would disagree with this. >If you don’t believe in property rights then I’ll take the keys to your house- thanks My point is that Union Pacific has a responsibility to lock their house. If I leave my door unlocked and my house gets burgled, I have some responsibility in contributing to that outcome.
  - filed 5y ago

TrainedMonkey 5y ago

> According to the source, the number of patrolling officers has been cut from 50 to 60 agents to eight, which the worker thinks has led to an increase in train robberies. And they deterred several times more than arrested, imagine how much more effective deterring would be with ~10x more officers.

wolverine876 5y ago

> UP is making arrests though, even with fewer officers. The problem seems to be the LA Prosecutor not... prosecuting. That's not what their letter actually said, IIRC?

AlexandrB 5y ago
The letter said they made ~100 arrests for vandalism and didn't break out a number for thefts IIRC. This increasingly smells like a company trying to save money by firing their security force and passing sole responsibility for thefts off on publicly funded law enforcement.