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>>hey've been unaccountable to the public, they've lied about what people do (pretending they've attacked them), they've lied about their use of force, and atta

>>hey've been unaccountable to the public, they've lied about what people do (pretending they've attacked them), they've lied about their use of force, and attacked people in tents to displace them. So a normal police force then? This is a natural reaction when property crime goes unenforced by the government. I know this will be an unpopular take but property crime like shoplifting is not a "victimless" crime against evil "corporations" and when it allowed to occur unchecked it creates an over all unsafe condition for everyone. There needs to be ALOT of police reforms, not punishing crime should not be in that list of reforms but that seems to be the #1 action taken by "reformers" of late

wahnfrieden 4y ago
[flagged]
- pmarreck 4y ago
  because taxation to fund a public good is not theft in your world there are only private security firms. if you're not up to date on your dues, oh well, they'll happily watch you get robbed I guess. EDIT: I was unaware of the "wage theft" problem and assumed this was angling at "taxation is theft," my bad
  - pixl97 4y ago
    What, you did not answer his question, and came up with some gibberish. https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-from-workers-paychecks-each-year/ https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-fro... >What this report finds: This report assesses the prevalence and magnitude of one form of wage theft—minimum wage violations (workers being paid at an effective hourly rate below the binding minimum wage)—in the 10 most populous U.S. states. We find that, in these states, 2.4 million workers lose $8 billion annually (an average of $3,300 per year for year-round workers) to minimum wage violations—nearly a quarter of their earned wages. This form of wage theft affects 17 percent of low-wage workers, with workers in all demographic categories being cheated out of pay.
    - wahnfrieden 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - culi 4y ago
        Some stats: US Police have taken $68 billion without due process from citizens in the past 20 years https://boingboing.net/2020/12/21/us-police-have-stolen-68-billion-in-the-past-20-years-from-american-citizens-without-due-process.html https://boingboing.net/2020/12/21/us-police-have-stolen-68-b... I personally know a lot of houseless folks who've just had their wallets and personal belongings taken from them making it nearly impossible to get other forms of help.
        pmarreck 4y ago
        This is a massive injustice. Any way to fight this?
        culi 4y ago
        Unfortunately, this primarily affects houseless folks. And like most houseless people issues there's very little attention and resources aimed at this. I've put up houseless folks in Motel 6's before only to have the manager lock them out and keep their stuff, knowing full-well the police wouldn't help. I'd definitely encourage people to get involved locally in local mutual aid groups focused on houselessness. If for no other reason than to see it with their own ideas. Even people that grew up in poverty or lower class are often shocked to see the extent of human rights abuses happening under their own noses. After seeing it first-hand the will to tell all your friends and neighbors about it will find you Legislatively, the usual suspects do have related campaigns (i.e. ACLU's Criminal Law Reform Project) but even those only work on this issue as a related tangent. Local prison abolition groups often have more local campaigns but the effectiveness of that strategy is really up in the air. Some states have passed legislation against some of the worst abuses,[0] but I can tell you first hand that legislative victories rarely translate to on the ground changes in police behavior when it comes to houseless folks [0] https://endforfeiture.com/legislative-reforms/#ended-civil-forfeiture https://endforfeiture.com/legislative-reforms/#ended-civil-f...
  - danuker 4y ago
    Wikipedia: Wage theft is the failing to pay wages or provide employee benefits owed to an employee by contract or law. You have defended taxation, not wage theft.
    - pmarreck 4y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34221450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34221450
  - culi 4y ago
    GP was pointing out that things like wage theft is a much bigger priority over petty shoplifting. The combined value of all robberies (shoplifting, mugging, etc) in 2012 was $341 million while wage theft alone accounts for $933 million yet we spend far more trying to prevent the former and hardly do anything to prevent the latter which primarily affects minimum wage workers https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-forms-theft-workers/ https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-fo...
    - wahnfrieden 4y ago
      Wage theft is estimated at $15 billion annually in US per US government reporting
      - culi 4y ago
        I suppose it depends how you count https://laborstandards.sccgov.org/impact-issues/wage-theft https://laborstandards.sccgov.org/impact-issues/wage-theft I think the important bit is the ratio between wage theft and other forms of theft. Whichever way you slice it you basically get the same conclusion
    - phpisthebest 4y ago
      Where do begin with this First off it appears that wage theft is being enforced, as the $933 million is the amount RECOVERED for victims of wage theft, I would like the highlight that victims of property theft are almost never made completely whole, even with insurance. Wage theft, when reported and backed up with evidence is often aggressively pursued and most states have Treble damages statues for damages which is often why it is easy to get cogency litigation started for wage theft. Based on that is likely the amount of wages stolen by employers is on par with the total value of property stolen since the recovered amount would be 3x what amount stolen in the case of wages Futher their slight of hand in only adding the market value of the property taken instead of the economic loss suffered by the victim gives me red flags they are attempting to be dishonest in their evaluation. For example if a person has their work truck stolen they are out far more than just the value of the truck but are also out wages, income, time, etc. All of which have a value outside that of the market value for the actual property taken Wage theft is a serious matter and should be taken seriously. Luckily in most states the Dept of Labor does take is VERY seriously and most states have enacted laws to enable victims of wage theft to not only recover their wages but 3x their wages making it very enticing for lawyers to help victims without alot of upfront costs The whataboutism trying to derail the top of property crime enforcement has not teeth if you really look into.
- idiotsecant 4y ago
  Wage theft is a serious problem but it's an 'orderly' theft- it targets people at the bottom and the people at the top are either uneffected or benefit and life goes on as usual. Property crime is a crime against the order of things. The powerful are impacted as well as the powerless. Crime isn't the problem to be solved,necessarily, it's just a wrench in the social order where the few dominate the many. That order is what must be preserved at all costs, which explains why we prosecute some crimes but not others. Very few of the things we do as a society are about what we say they are about.
  - wahnfrieden 4y ago
    Sounds like disorder to me. What you're saying sounds more like a propagandized political statement.
  - jancsika 4y ago
    If any of this were relevant then we would expect that employers (the powerful) could steal physical items from the person/vehicle/abode of employees (the people at the bottom) and get away with it. At least here in NC, I can say that every clear case I've heard of an employer trying to steal the property of an employee (directly off their person, out of their vehicle, out of their abode, or even attempting to steal their vehicle) ended either with the police escorting the employee to retrieve their property, or with the police escorting away the employer[1]. Besides, just take that recent oddball case of that Dept. of Energy person who was apparently stealing luggage from randos at the airport. Do a search and tell me how that has affected Sam's power over the people at the bottom. Edit: 1: Just to keep things apples to apples, I'm talking about situations that are equivalent to shoplifting: a) person enters a space that belongs to the victim without permission, b) person takes property of that victim, and c) person leaves that property with the stolen goods in hand.
  - throwaway-PDX 4y ago
    Wage theft doesn't typically involved a gun or a knife. Property crimes, when interrupted intentionally or accidentally by the victim can easily become violent crime.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  I often hear this whataboutism and am not sure why. Do you see the problems or solutions somehow in competition? Can people not care about two things?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - prepend 4y ago
    I think the reasoning goes something like: 1) corporations are guilty of wage theft and not prosecuted 2) shoplifting harms corporations 3) harming corporations is ok because they are guilty. Different in scale, but I think it’s similar to the “it’s ok to punch a Nazi” rationale.
- brk 4y ago
  Property theft and wage theft are two very different categories of theft. The average police department does not get involved in wage theft, which would be something more involving lawyers, maybe ultimately leading to an arrest warrant carried out by a police force. And of course this is another example of an "AND" decision, not an "OR" one. We can enforce and prosecute property theft crimes, which absolutely needs to happen, while simultaneously pursuing wage theft prosecution.
  - mikem170 4y ago
    > Property theft and wage theft are two very different categories of theft. This kind of reinforces the parent's point. They are both theft (shoplifting and wage theft), and yet so many people are ok ignoring the numerically worse problem (wage theft). The fact that the police don't get involved and lawyers are required to rectify wage theft just shows how far we as a society don't care to defend those people. Meanwhile private security can get away with abusing shoplifters and homeless. Like you said, they are both theft, but for some reason we as a society go after one much more aggressively than the other. Something about that doesn't seem fair.
    - jaywalk 4y ago
      How would you suggest that police get involved in wage theft?
      - mikem170 4y ago
        Maybe the same as when someone writes a bad check? It's my understanding that people get arrested for that, it's not left just to lawyers and civil contract courts (which not everyone can afford). Maybe also make wage theft easier to prove, with a required paper trail like an employment contract and signed time sheets, more investigators, etc. I'd be curious how other countries might handle this better, there's often places that have already done a good job of figuring stuff like this out. The cynic in me worries that dollars count more than votes, and that the system is not as interested in protecting employees as it is protecting employers.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- kodyo 4y ago
  Small claims court is a thing. Sue your wage thief.
sethammons 4y ago
[flagged]
mxkopy 4y ago
[flagged]
- olonn 4y ago
  why would a store exist if you didn’t have to pay for stuff in it?
  - mxkopy 4y ago
    Not the point of my argument "Some shoplifting shouldn't be a crime" != "You don't have to pay for things at a store"
    - chroma 4y ago
      So what do you think should happen if someone takes stuff without paying?
      - mxkopy 4y ago
        So what do you think should happen about exploitative-by-default corporate practices?
        chroma 4y ago
        I have no idea what you're talking about or how that relates to the problem of people stealing from stores.
        mxkopy 4y ago
        [flagged]
      - dragonwriter 4y ago
        Well, wage theft is technically a crime in some jurisdictions, but almost never prosecuted even where it is, leaving only civil compensatory remedies. Treating far more minor (both in absolute value and relative to the wealth of the victim) cases of tangible personal property theft in the form of shoplifting, which has basically mirror-image class dynamics, the same way way doesn’t seem unfair.
mlindner 4y ago
> I know this will be an unpopular take but property crime like shoplifting is not a "victimless" crime against evil "corporations" and when it allowed to occur unchecked it creates an over all unsafe condition for everyone. I have trouble taking anyone seriously who claims those are "victimless crimes". There's little common ground I can find because their fundamental facts tend to be so backward. Shoplifting ruins people's livelihoods and corrupts the social contracts of a society over time. It gradually erodes the living standards of people living in an area.
jrochkind1 4y ago
> There needs to be ALOT of police reforms, not punishing crime should not be in that list of reforms but that seems to be the #1 action taken by "reformers" of late I would say it's not exactly an action taken by "reformers"... it's a lack of action (for one thing) resulting from an interplay between attempted reformers, and police (individually and collectively) basically deciding "fine, if you think we need reform, we'll just stop doing our jobs, that'll show you." I don't think there are any police reformers (or even police abolitionists) who think their agendas have been successful at all, lest you think the current situation is what anyone was going for. I would not call this... situation to be an action taken by police reformers, exactly, let alone the "#1" action taken by them. I do think "punishing crime" is a more complicated concept than you imply, I admit (all "crime" has never been universally and consistently "punished"), but before we even get into that.
- phpisthebest 4y ago
  By "reformers" I am mainly referring to activist elected DA's that go in publicly declaring entire segments of the criminal code void by saying they will not peruse any cases for violations of those acts. Shoplifting is one such law they often ignore, along with other non-violent theft (like breaking into cars)
  - jrochkind1 4y ago
    "entire segments of the criminal code void by saying they will not peruse any cases for violations of those acts. Shoplifting is one such law they often ignore" Are you exagerating? I don't think anyone anywhere has completely stopped prosecuting shoplifting. Or if they have somewhere, please cite specifically, either with numbers, or with enough context so we can try to find some. There are some places where shoplifting prosecutions declined due to decisions by prosecutors, for sure. That is not at all the same thing as "declaring entire segments of the criminal code void". When we can't talk about what's really going on without exagerating it into the most absolute versions we can imagine while speaking in vague generalities that can't be researched... we can't easily get at what's actually going on instead of our imaginations.

wahnfrieden 4y ago

[flagged]

pmarreck 4y ago
because taxation to fund a public good is not theft in your world there are only private security firms. if you're not up to date on your dues, oh well, they'll happily watch you get robbed I guess. EDIT: I was unaware of the "wage theft" problem and assumed this was angling at "taxation is theft," my bad
- pixl97 4y ago
  What, you did not answer his question, and came up with some gibberish. https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-from-workers-paychecks-each-year/ https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-fro... >What this report finds: This report assesses the prevalence and magnitude of one form of wage theft—minimum wage violations (workers being paid at an effective hourly rate below the binding minimum wage)—in the 10 most populous U.S. states. We find that, in these states, 2.4 million workers lose $8 billion annually (an average of $3,300 per year for year-round workers) to minimum wage violations—nearly a quarter of their earned wages. This form of wage theft affects 17 percent of low-wage workers, with workers in all demographic categories being cheated out of pay.
  - wahnfrieden 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - culi 4y ago
      Some stats: US Police have taken $68 billion without due process from citizens in the past 20 years https://boingboing.net/2020/12/21/us-police-have-stolen-68-billion-in-the-past-20-years-from-american-citizens-without-due-process.html https://boingboing.net/2020/12/21/us-police-have-stolen-68-b... I personally know a lot of houseless folks who've just had their wallets and personal belongings taken from them making it nearly impossible to get other forms of help.
      - pmarreck 4y ago
        This is a massive injustice. Any way to fight this?
        culi 4y ago
        Unfortunately, this primarily affects houseless folks. And like most houseless people issues there's very little attention and resources aimed at this. I've put up houseless folks in Motel 6's before only to have the manager lock them out and keep their stuff, knowing full-well the police wouldn't help. I'd definitely encourage people to get involved locally in local mutual aid groups focused on houselessness. If for no other reason than to see it with their own ideas. Even people that grew up in poverty or lower class are often shocked to see the extent of human rights abuses happening under their own noses. After seeing it first-hand the will to tell all your friends and neighbors about it will find you Legislatively, the usual suspects do have related campaigns (i.e. ACLU's Criminal Law Reform Project) but even those only work on this issue as a related tangent. Local prison abolition groups often have more local campaigns but the effectiveness of that strategy is really up in the air. Some states have passed legislation against some of the worst abuses,[0] but I can tell you first hand that legislative victories rarely translate to on the ground changes in police behavior when it comes to houseless folks [0] https://endforfeiture.com/legislative-reforms/#ended-civil-forfeiture https://endforfeiture.com/legislative-reforms/#ended-civil-f...
- danuker 4y ago
  Wikipedia: Wage theft is the failing to pay wages or provide employee benefits owed to an employee by contract or law. You have defended taxation, not wage theft.
  - pmarreck 4y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34221450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34221450
- culi 4y ago
  GP was pointing out that things like wage theft is a much bigger priority over petty shoplifting. The combined value of all robberies (shoplifting, mugging, etc) in 2012 was $341 million while wage theft alone accounts for $933 million yet we spend far more trying to prevent the former and hardly do anything to prevent the latter which primarily affects minimum wage workers https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-forms-theft-workers/ https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-fo...
  - wahnfrieden 4y ago
    Wage theft is estimated at $15 billion annually in US per US government reporting
    - culi 4y ago
      I suppose it depends how you count https://laborstandards.sccgov.org/impact-issues/wage-theft https://laborstandards.sccgov.org/impact-issues/wage-theft I think the important bit is the ratio between wage theft and other forms of theft. Whichever way you slice it you basically get the same conclusion
  - phpisthebest 4y ago
    Where do begin with this First off it appears that wage theft is being enforced, as the $933 million is the amount RECOVERED for victims of wage theft, I would like the highlight that victims of property theft are almost never made completely whole, even with insurance. Wage theft, when reported and backed up with evidence is often aggressively pursued and most states have Treble damages statues for damages which is often why it is easy to get cogency litigation started for wage theft. Based on that is likely the amount of wages stolen by employers is on par with the total value of property stolen since the recovered amount would be 3x what amount stolen in the case of wages Futher their slight of hand in only adding the market value of the property taken instead of the economic loss suffered by the victim gives me red flags they are attempting to be dishonest in their evaluation. For example if a person has their work truck stolen they are out far more than just the value of the truck but are also out wages, income, time, etc. All of which have a value outside that of the market value for the actual property taken Wage theft is a serious matter and should be taken seriously. Luckily in most states the Dept of Labor does take is VERY seriously and most states have enacted laws to enable victims of wage theft to not only recover their wages but 3x their wages making it very enticing for lawyers to help victims without alot of upfront costs The whataboutism trying to derail the top of property crime enforcement has not teeth if you really look into.
idiotsecant 4y ago
Wage theft is a serious problem but it's an 'orderly' theft- it targets people at the bottom and the people at the top are either uneffected or benefit and life goes on as usual. Property crime is a crime against the order of things. The powerful are impacted as well as the powerless. Crime isn't the problem to be solved,necessarily, it's just a wrench in the social order where the few dominate the many. That order is what must be preserved at all costs, which explains why we prosecute some crimes but not others. Very few of the things we do as a society are about what we say they are about.
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  Sounds like disorder to me. What you're saying sounds more like a propagandized political statement.
- jancsika 4y ago
  If any of this were relevant then we would expect that employers (the powerful) could steal physical items from the person/vehicle/abode of employees (the people at the bottom) and get away with it. At least here in NC, I can say that every clear case I've heard of an employer trying to steal the property of an employee (directly off their person, out of their vehicle, out of their abode, or even attempting to steal their vehicle) ended either with the police escorting the employee to retrieve their property, or with the police escorting away the employer[1]. Besides, just take that recent oddball case of that Dept. of Energy person who was apparently stealing luggage from randos at the airport. Do a search and tell me how that has affected Sam's power over the people at the bottom. Edit: 1: Just to keep things apples to apples, I'm talking about situations that are equivalent to shoplifting: a) person enters a space that belongs to the victim without permission, b) person takes property of that victim, and c) person leaves that property with the stolen goods in hand.
- throwaway-PDX 4y ago
  Wage theft doesn't typically involved a gun or a knife. Property crimes, when interrupted intentionally or accidentally by the victim can easily become violent crime.
s1artibartfast 4y ago
I often hear this whataboutism and am not sure why. Do you see the problems or solutions somehow in competition? Can people not care about two things?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- prepend 4y ago
  I think the reasoning goes something like: 1) corporations are guilty of wage theft and not prosecuted 2) shoplifting harms corporations 3) harming corporations is ok because they are guilty. Different in scale, but I think it’s similar to the “it’s ok to punch a Nazi” rationale.
brk 4y ago
Property theft and wage theft are two very different categories of theft. The average police department does not get involved in wage theft, which would be something more involving lawyers, maybe ultimately leading to an arrest warrant carried out by a police force. And of course this is another example of an "AND" decision, not an "OR" one. We can enforce and prosecute property theft crimes, which absolutely needs to happen, while simultaneously pursuing wage theft prosecution.
- mikem170 4y ago
  > Property theft and wage theft are two very different categories of theft. This kind of reinforces the parent's point. They are both theft (shoplifting and wage theft), and yet so many people are ok ignoring the numerically worse problem (wage theft). The fact that the police don't get involved and lawyers are required to rectify wage theft just shows how far we as a society don't care to defend those people. Meanwhile private security can get away with abusing shoplifters and homeless. Like you said, they are both theft, but for some reason we as a society go after one much more aggressively than the other. Something about that doesn't seem fair.
  - jaywalk 4y ago
    How would you suggest that police get involved in wage theft?
    - mikem170 4y ago
      Maybe the same as when someone writes a bad check? It's my understanding that people get arrested for that, it's not left just to lawyers and civil contract courts (which not everyone can afford). Maybe also make wage theft easier to prove, with a required paper trail like an employment contract and signed time sheets, more investigators, etc. I'd be curious how other countries might handle this better, there's often places that have already done a good job of figuring stuff like this out. The cynic in me worries that dollars count more than votes, and that the system is not as interested in protecting employees as it is protecting employers.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
kodyo 4y ago
Small claims court is a thing. Sue your wage thief.

sethammons 4y ago

[flagged]

mxkopy 4y ago

[flagged]

olonn 4y ago
why would a store exist if you didn’t have to pay for stuff in it?
- mxkopy 4y ago
  Not the point of my argument "Some shoplifting shouldn't be a crime" != "You don't have to pay for things at a store"
  - chroma 4y ago
    So what do you think should happen if someone takes stuff without paying?
    - mxkopy 4y ago
      So what do you think should happen about exploitative-by-default corporate practices?
      - chroma 4y ago
        I have no idea what you're talking about or how that relates to the problem of people stealing from stores.
        mxkopy 4y ago
        [flagged]
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      Well, wage theft is technically a crime in some jurisdictions, but almost never prosecuted even where it is, leaving only civil compensatory remedies. Treating far more minor (both in absolute value and relative to the wealth of the victim) cases of tangible personal property theft in the form of shoplifting, which has basically mirror-image class dynamics, the same way way doesn’t seem unfair.

mlindner 4y ago

> I know this will be an unpopular take but property crime like shoplifting is not a "victimless" crime against evil "corporations" and when it allowed to occur unchecked it creates an over all unsafe condition for everyone. I have trouble taking anyone seriously who claims those are "victimless crimes". There's little common ground I can find because their fundamental facts tend to be so backward. Shoplifting ruins people's livelihoods and corrupts the social contracts of a society over time. It gradually erodes the living standards of people living in an area.

jrochkind1 4y ago

> There needs to be ALOT of police reforms, not punishing crime should not be in that list of reforms but that seems to be the #1 action taken by "reformers" of late I would say it's not exactly an action taken by "reformers"... it's a lack of action (for one thing) resulting from an interplay between attempted reformers, and police (individually and collectively) basically deciding "fine, if you think we need reform, we'll just stop doing our jobs, that'll show you." I don't think there are any police reformers (or even police abolitionists) who think their agendas have been successful at all, lest you think the current situation is what anyone was going for. I would not call this... situation to be an action taken by police reformers, exactly, let alone the "#1" action taken by them. I do think "punishing crime" is a more complicated concept than you imply, I admit (all "crime" has never been universally and consistently "punished"), but before we even get into that.

phpisthebest 4y ago
By "reformers" I am mainly referring to activist elected DA's that go in publicly declaring entire segments of the criminal code void by saying they will not peruse any cases for violations of those acts. Shoplifting is one such law they often ignore, along with other non-violent theft (like breaking into cars)
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  "entire segments of the criminal code void by saying they will not peruse any cases for violations of those acts. Shoplifting is one such law they often ignore" Are you exagerating? I don't think anyone anywhere has completely stopped prosecuting shoplifting. Or if they have somewhere, please cite specifically, either with numbers, or with enough context so we can try to find some. There are some places where shoplifting prosecutions declined due to decisions by prosecutors, for sure. That is not at all the same thing as "declaring entire segments of the criminal code void". When we can't talk about what's really going on without exagerating it into the most absolute versions we can imagine while speaking in vague generalities that can't be researched... we can't easily get at what's actually going on instead of our imaginations.