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Anecdotal regional issue: I had an AirTag on my AirPod Pro's case that was stolen. I immediately notified Austin's police (APD) as I could see where it was goi
by errcorrectcode 5y ago
Anecdotal regional issue:
I had an AirTag on my AirPod Pro's case that was stolen. I immediately notified Austin's police (APD) as I could see where it was going. Unfortunately, due to understaffing of 100-200 police officers and detectives, most calls unrelated to imminent threats of injury or death aren't being handle for days or ever. So, it's open-season on packages and property because APD can't or won't do its job, even if you tell them where stolen property is located. As long as a crime is nonviolent or the threat of violence has passed (with the exception of rape), ATX has the security measures of a third-world country. I met a UT campus police officer who refuses to live in or bring his family to ATX because of the risks and de facto lawlessness.
- shiftpgdn 5y agoThis is every major city right now, unfortunately.
- errcorrectcode 5y agoWhich? Where?
- radicaldreamer 5y agoSan Francisco, for one.
- mushbino 5y agoThey've never responded for things like this, be it now, pre-pandemic, or 20 years ago. It's never been an understaffing issue.
- flounder3 5y agoSan Francisco. Los Angeles. Seattle. San Jose (albeit theft has never received attention in San Jose)
- rootusrootus 5y agoPortland, of course, definitely belongs on the list. I live in a small town outside of Portland and it's not bad, we haven't cut the funding for our police.
- jjeaff 5y agoWell, San Francisco cut their police budget by $6m... From $668 million. And they increased funding to other parts of the justice apparatus. Like and increase to juvenile programs and the district attorney's office. You'll be hard pressed to find even the most liberal cities in America have actually cut police funding in any significant way.
- ornornor 5y agoToronto ON
- filoleg 5y agoI can only speak for the city I live in, but Seattle fits the bill perfectly right now.
- panzagl 5y agoEvery city in the US. Between 'are we the baddies' and relatively meh pay most municipalities are short of officers. I'd link an article, but googling 'police shortage' would seem to do the trick.
- jjeaff 5y agoIs "are we the baddies" really a reason? Because many other industries are having a shortage of workers right now.
- r00fus 5y agoLaw Enforcement definitely do not have "meh" pay in "most municipalities".
- panzagl 5y agoAnd let me guess, all teachers do is hand out worksheets for 6 hours a day and why do you always see 3 constructions workers standing around a hole? But you- you cleared 1.5 story points today tying two Javascript libraries together, that's where the real value is.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoIn New Jersey most of the town cops make 6 figures and are in less danger than a bicyclist on public roads.
- panzagl 5y agoI think that speaks more about being a bicyclist on the roads of New Jersey than the dangers a cop faces. It's funny when people complain about HN being too US-centric, when in reality it's CA,NY/NJ, and MA centric. NJ is awash in money flowing from Wall St, so I don't feel bad that their cops make a decent wage.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
- pantalaimon 5y agoBerlin certainly too
- ornornor 5y agoIn North America. Not every major city in the whole developed world.
- entropie 5y agoAt least in most major city in Germany its the same. MY GF filed a public assault (very minor) case like a year ago and there is still no success yet all persons identities are known. Police is horrible understaffed.
- FredPret 5y agoRefund the police!
- mensetmanusman 5y agoRepair the police
- FredPret 5y agoThat too
- reustle 5y agoEvery major American city*
- dheera 5y agoSame, I had $4K of camera equipment stolen in the Bay Area and police just closed the case. I wouldn't be surprised if the next 10 car smashings were the same crooks because the police department won't do its job. They keep letting the crooks go, and we wonder why there are so many thefts in SF these days. Well maybe don't let the crooks go! That said though I wonder if AirPods are having success in other countries with more competent police. For the US I really wish we could commercialize some kind of tracker that releases fart spray, honey, flour, ink, glue, and other annoying substances if stolen. If the police won't do their job we need to do it ourselves.
- OnlineGladiator 5y ago> For the US I really wish we could commercialize some kind of tracker that releases fart spray, honey, flour, ink, glue, and other annoying substances if stolen. I assume you've seen this already, but just in case you haven't. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3c584TGG7jQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3c584TGG7jQ
- andrewmunsell 5y agoMark Rober's videos are always entertaining, but I wonder the legality of audio/video recording in supposedly an unaware person's house. I assume he has this figured out, but it also makes me wonder whether the "thieves" are actually plants.
- dheera 5y agoIt's on them, they stole the device, if they didn't steal it, they wouldn't have been recorded. It's 100% their fault.
- orhmeh09 5y agoBe careful with creating traps — booby traps are illegal in most jurisdictions.
- mh- 5y ago
- tharne 5y ago
- downrightmike 5y agoI wonder if we'll see higher civil asset forfeiture by police to make up for the funding loss.
- chimeracoder 5y ago> I wonder if we'll see higher civil asset forfeiture by police to make up for the funding loss. What funding loss? Total spending on police increased in 2021 and 2022 in every major city across the country.
- alfalfasprout 5y agoYeah, and notice how a good chunk of the people asking to defund the police are from already very safe neighborhoods or very young and never had to live through lots of crime. I'm all for police reforms (eg; body-cam requirements, more training) but the whole defund the police movement is downright dangerous.
- josephcsible 5y ago> I'm all for police reforms (eg; body-cam requirements A lot of rabidly anti-police people are actually against body cams.
- everdrive 5y ago
- chimeracoder 5y ago> I wonder why they’re understaffed? Perhaps someone defunded them. This meme keeps popping up without basis. No major city in the US actually decreased funding for the police overall in the last two years. In this case, the APD budget for 2021-2022 was increased from $309.7 million (2020-2021) to $443 million, a whopping 43% increase.
- Tr3nton 5y ago
- jen20 5y ago> I met a UT campus police officer who refuses to live in or bring his family to ATX because of the risks and de facto lawlessness. I live in Downtown Austin, and this kind of picture simply does not fit with my day-to-day experience of Austin.
- uoaei 5y agoIf you ask a lifeguard what they fear, they'll say drowning. Cops are not objective sources of reality, neither is anyone else. More than a few grains of salt need to be taken when cops say stuff because they're steeped in a very different life than the average citizen.
- orhmeh09 5y agoNot necessarily more dangerous, either —- jobs like line cook, delivery driver are more dangerous than police work.
- kemayo 5y agoSince people are downvoting the parent, check out https://advisorsmith.com/data/most-dangerous-jobs/ https://advisorsmith.com/data/most-dangerous-jobs/ Near as I can tell, there are good statistics available from the BLS about fatal on-job accidents, but not so good for definitions of "dangerous" that also include non-fatal injuries. If we're talking pure fatalities, policing is dangerous (it's on that list), but it's much less dangerous than a bunch of other professions... such that you're about 2.3x more likely to die on-job as a delivery driver than as a police officer.
- diebeforei485 5y agoBy this token, it's also worth noting that the people who are blaring the alarm horns over AirTags are also people who are steeped in a very different life than the average citizen. Notably, Eva Galperin of EFF who works on investigating stalking-related issues. So, more than a few grains of salt need to be taken when hearing what they say.
- 5y ago
- thebean11 5y ago> ATX has the security measures of a third-world country That's a pretty dramatic way to describe police not wanting to spend resources to get your $200 headphones back..
- mrits 5y agoIt is spending resources to catch a criminal. Very unlikely this loser is just stealing once and going back to being a decent citizen.
- thebean11 5y agoIt depends, if he just found some AirPods on the ground and decided to keep them, I actually think it's very likely.
- holistio 5y agoWhat's the threshold over which you believe crime is no longer okay? AirPods Max? Only $549. A MacBook? Only $2000. A car? Only $20000. Does someone have to burn my house down for it to be worthwhile for the police?
- mbesto 5y agoBelieve it or not, these thresholds have effectively existed in the US forever. It's why we have small claims courts, misdemeanors vs felonies, traffic violations, etc. > What's the threshold over which you believe crime is no longer okay? You completely missed the parent's point. It's not that they don't think crime should be "no longer be okay", it was addressing the the grandparent's point of "we're living in a third world country because my $200 AirPods got stolen" is simply out of touch with reality. > Does someone have to burn my house down for it to be worthwhile for the police? In third world countries this is pretty much how it works. As an American, going to Brazil or South Africa (for example), you're basically told "don't wear/carry anything of value". It's not that there is a chance that you'll get mugged, it's that it's likely it'll happen. I live in Austin and carry my AirPods on me all of the time. The likelihood that I experience what the OP experienced is so unlikely that it rarely crosses my mind. The grandparent's comment is hyperbolic drivel.
- iqanq 5y ago
- kbos87 5y agoThe unfortunate truth is that police have better things to spend their time on. Heck, I had a nighttime home invasion/$4k+ of goods stolen in Boston 9 months ago and as far as I can tell the police couldn’t even be bothered to get their hands on the security camera footage from a neighboring convenience store after I told them there were cameras outside.
- rootusrootus 5y agoThat's definitely over the line. Theft of a laptop or bicycle is one thing, but home invasion is a violent crime, and should justify a far more significant amount of attention.
- kbos87 5y agoThere was an initial flurry of officers and detectives right off the bat but it felt like theater and there hasn’t been any follow up that I haven’t initiated myself.
- autoexec 5y ago> The unfortunate truth is that police have better things to spend their time on. From what I can "better things" is mostly pulling people over (legitimately or otherwise) in order to hand out tickets to raise revenue. Catching criminals is what we're told they do, stealing from the public, making money, and protecting only the most wealthy seems to be their real job.
- kbos87 5y agoYou aren’t wrong! I saw this recently and it blew my mind… https://www.instagram.com/p/CYtk8HVr3SP/?utm_medium=copy_link https://www.instagram.com/p/CYtk8HVr3SP/?utm_medium=copy_lin... Police actually spend a tiny portion of their time on what you think they spend their time on.
- asimilator 5y ago> I immediately notified Austin's police (APD) as I could see where it was going. Was the tracking good enough to reasonably narrow it down to a single person? I think people expect too much of the police with a lot of these tracking devices/services. I don't have any experience with AirTags, but I know Apple's Find My can narrow down the location of e.g. a lost phone to a street corner. But if you're in a city there's a decent chance that there's more than one person on that street corner. The police can't/shouldn't stop everyone there and search them. Tracking a stolen item to a house is even harder (need a warrant). And an apartment is probably impossible because I doubt the tracking is good enough to narrow it down to a particular unit.
- jkestner 5y agoLot of assertions without citations in this thread. HN can do better. If you’ve never had something stolen before, let me flesh out your data point. The police almost never investigate theft of private property—if they do, it’s when there’s serial theft in an area. That’s anywhere in the US, in any year. They’re only there as a notary of sorts for your claim to the insurance company. It’d be cool if police used the surveillance tech built into our products for our benefit, but that’s not how the world works. They’re not standing by for hot pursuit of your earbuds.
- toss1 5y agoYup, can confirm. Had $20K++ worth of stuff stolen from my shop. Police were there only to take notes, file a report, and send me the report # for the insurance claim. the officer didn't even ask any interesting questions, and offered no hope when I suggested maybe they could check around come likely locations where it might be. He was just acting as a stenographer with a badge. I totally get that they are overwhelmed and have to prioritize.
- anfilt 5y ago20k is grand theft which is a felony. I am surprised they did not take it more seriously. I had 2000ish dollar bicycle stolen, the police where I live took it very serious because the value. They ended up arresting the guy. They also find dozens of other bicycles that were stolen and in various levels of being parted out from what I was told. Also note a tracker in a bike can definitely lead to it being recovered.
- toss1 5y agoYup, it was an industrial transformer, and a 0-hour racecar motor/transmission setup... no tracking devices on them though...
- TameAntelope 5y agoOnce you take the emotional factor out of theft, it's basically solved by the concept of insurance. Just replace your things, and you should be mostly whole again.
- paxys 5y agoYou just described every police department in the country.
- pyronik19 5y agoBut hey lets defund the police!
- FredPret 5y agoThat’s wild. The first reason we even have a government is for police and judges.
- renewiltord 5y agoIt has literally been like this for at least the last ten years in America. It takes a huge amount of work to get the police to do anything. But also, you guys don’t know what the Third World is like. But at least I can tell that Nextdoor and HN have some overlap.