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Just curious to understand how you think vehicles are such a critical point for decreasing crime in the US? I do agree that we have heavy crime (though HN will

Just curious to understand how you think vehicles are such a critical point for decreasing crime in the US? I do agree that we have heavy crime (though HN will say it's all anecdotal and the stats show we're in a period of remarkable peace). I just don't know that greater enforcement around vehicle use will have the outsized effect that you're claiming.

giancarlostoro 10mo ago
I live in a usually safe and crime free area in Florida, we had someone going car by car stealing from any car left open. My neighbor opened his door and told him he had him on camera, guy ran away. I had him on camera too but sadly no spotlight to catch a better look. I cant help but imagine that Flock deters people doing this sort of thing. I hate surveillance nanny states but criminals are getting bolder everyday it feels like. I wish there was a way to implement this sort of “surveilance” in such a way that it only impacts criminals or would be criminals and only them.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 10mo ago
  Thanks for the response and I generally agree. Though I HATE HATE HATE the march towards the surveillance state, we need to stop crime. I was specifically asking about the GP's focus on vehicles (larger plates, unregistered vehicle enforcement) and how they thought that would reduce crime so much.
  - jeffbee 10mo ago
    All but literally every crime in my city (in the categories of, say, burglary, robbery, assault, etc) are committed by people who drive into town in stolen cars with no plates. It's totally ridiculous. If the only tactic the police knew was to pull over every Infiniti with tinted windows and no plates, the crime rate would drop to zero.
    - yannyu 10mo ago
      > If the only tactic the police knew was to pull over every Infiniti with tinted windows and no plates, the crime rate would drop to zero. Then the question is, why don't they do that? Why do we need a surveillance state to enable police to do what residents might consider the bare minimum?
      - aerostable_slug 10mo ago
        A large part of the deal is that ALPRs flag on hotlists and cannot be accused of racism. There's no way to argue a vehicle stop is the result of profiling when it's a machine recognizing a plate on a list and issuing an alert. The stats don't go in the same bucket. At the end of the day, avoiding accusations of racism is behind much of modern policing's foibles (like the near-total relaxation of traffic law enforcement in some cities).
        kyboren 10mo ago
        I think the broad thrust of your argument is right on the money. Officers' perception of heightened (or unfair) accountability has turned every police interaction into a risk for the officers and department, too. However, I think the problem actually goes even deeper. The incentives are all aligned to launder responsibility through automated systems, and we'll end up sleepwalking into AI tyranny if we're not careful. Where I am, police officers get paid healthy 6-figure salaries plus crazy OT to boot. $300k total comp is absolutely not unheard of. I think the police have basically figured out that the best way to stay on the gravy train is to do as little as possible. Certainly stop enforcing traffic laws entirely, as those are the highest risk interactions. Just rest n' vest, baby. So you get to hear about "underfunded" and "overworked" police departments while observing overpaid police officers who are structurally disincentivized from doing their jobs. The bottom line is: People want policing, but adding more police officers won't deliver results and anyway is too expensive. What to do? Enter mass surveillance and automated policing. If we can't rely on police to do the policing, we'll have to do it some other way. Oh, look at how cheap it is to put cameras up everywhere. And hey, we can get a statistical inferential model (excuse me, Artificial Intelligence!) to flag "suspicious" cars and people. Yeah yeah, privacy risks blah blah blah turnkey totalitarianism whomp whomp whomp. But think of all the criminals we can catch! All without needing police to actually do anything! While police are expensive and practically useless at doing things people want, this technology can actually deliver results. That makes it irresistible. The problem is that it's turning our society into a panopticon and putting us all in great danger of an inescapable totalitarian state dominated by a despot and his AI army. But those are abstract risks, further out and probabilistic in nature. Humans are terrible at making these kinds of decisions; as a population we almost always choose short-term benefit over abstract long-term risks and harms. Just look at climate change and fossil fuel consumption.
- gs17 10mo ago
  > we had someone going car by car stealing from any car left open. We have that too here, the issue seems to be more that it's a catch and release crime. The police not only knew who was doing it on our street, they had caught them multiple times and released them immediately. I'm guessing if they're not caught with stolen guns on them here it's not enough of a charge to bother with. I really doubt Flock would matter.
  - buellerbueller 10mo ago
    Hell, at least you have the "catch" part. Here, "officers of the law" just DGAF.
- kortex 10mo ago
  > but criminals are getting bolder everyday it feels like. Might feel that way, but objectively, violent and property crime are on the decline in the USA. I've also heard many stories where a person gets high def footage of someone committing a crime (usually burglary, smash and grab, or porch snatching) and the cops are basically like "eh we'll get to it when we get to it" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States edit: can someone explain what is objectionable about this comment?
  - buellerbueller 10mo ago
    Two weeks ago, my parked car, along with two other parked cars, was rear-ended at 3:15am by a drunk driver (the car interior smelled like alcohol), in an unregistered car that was not his. He then fled the scene. All of this was caught on high definition video. However, he also left his phone and State ID (he was also unlicensed) in the car. Did the cops drive the 2 blocks to the address listed on his ID to arrest him for leaving the scene of the accident, or to give him any kind of blood alcohol test? No, no they did not. Did the cops follow up in any way whatsoever? No, no they did not. How do I know this? Because a few days later, I walked the two blocks to the house to inquire whether the car was insured. It was not. --- What is objectionable about your comment is the same thing that eventually plagues every social media that has downvoting/flagging: you violated someone's strongly-held priors.
- sethammons 10mo ago
  We are moving from God sees all and the afterlife will judge you to The Govt de Jour sees all and will judge you in this life.
wat10000 10mo ago
I'm curious as to why you think we have heavy crime when you know the stats say otherwise.
- rpjt 10mo ago
  You have to be careful with stats. There's an incentive to manipulate crime stats. https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/12/12/dc-police-chief-doj-crime-stats/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/12/12/dc-police...
  - wat10000 10mo ago
    I could buy that for some crimes, but e.g. murder is pretty hard to manipulate.
    - rationalist 10mo ago
      [flagged]
      - wat10000 10mo ago
        If that actually happened often enough to skew the stats, it would get a huge amount of attention.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 10mo ago
  I work with stats. I think even very honest people with high incentive to tell an accurate story and good data have trouble with stats. Now add politicians and police and bad data into that mix with winner-takes-all politics at stake and the stats get gamed. Also I believe my eyes and when I see crimes happening in my neighborhood I don't rush to "the stats" to ask them what I saw.
  - RHSeeger 10mo ago
    But "what you saw" isn't necessarily representative of the state of things, either. Arlington, VA is (was?) one of the nicer places in VA; generally expensive, etc. When I drove through there, the van in front of me at a light was car-jacked, and the person in it chased down. I'm uncomfortable driving through Arlington because of that; even though it's not representative of the area. Admittedly, this was years ago... but the point stands. My experience is not representative of the actual facts.
infecto 10mo ago
I don’t think it’s so much as critical but has potential to help close the loop on crime. Big box stores love this service. The can easily identify the car type and license and out out a bolo with the police. Police put this into flock and track movement. You don’t have to pursue chases as aggressively. You can just track the car next time it pops up. I think flock is a net positive in this sense.
rcpt 10mo ago
Car crashes are a leading cause of death. We can save a lot of lives by getting drivers to follow the law.

giancarlostoro 10mo ago

I live in a usually safe and crime free area in Florida, we had someone going car by car stealing from any car left open. My neighbor opened his door and told him he had him on camera, guy ran away. I had him on camera too but sadly no spotlight to catch a better look. I cant help but imagine that Flock deters people doing this sort of thing. I hate surveillance nanny states but criminals are getting bolder everyday it feels like. I wish there was a way to implement this sort of “surveilance” in such a way that it only impacts criminals or would be criminals and only them.

ahmeneeroe-v2 10mo ago
Thanks for the response and I generally agree. Though I HATE HATE HATE the march towards the surveillance state, we need to stop crime. I was specifically asking about the GP's focus on vehicles (larger plates, unregistered vehicle enforcement) and how they thought that would reduce crime so much.
- jeffbee 10mo ago
  All but literally every crime in my city (in the categories of, say, burglary, robbery, assault, etc) are committed by people who drive into town in stolen cars with no plates. It's totally ridiculous. If the only tactic the police knew was to pull over every Infiniti with tinted windows and no plates, the crime rate would drop to zero.
  - yannyu 10mo ago
    > If the only tactic the police knew was to pull over every Infiniti with tinted windows and no plates, the crime rate would drop to zero. Then the question is, why don't they do that? Why do we need a surveillance state to enable police to do what residents might consider the bare minimum?
    - aerostable_slug 10mo ago
      A large part of the deal is that ALPRs flag on hotlists and cannot be accused of racism. There's no way to argue a vehicle stop is the result of profiling when it's a machine recognizing a plate on a list and issuing an alert. The stats don't go in the same bucket. At the end of the day, avoiding accusations of racism is behind much of modern policing's foibles (like the near-total relaxation of traffic law enforcement in some cities).
      - kyboren 10mo ago
        I think the broad thrust of your argument is right on the money. Officers' perception of heightened (or unfair) accountability has turned every police interaction into a risk for the officers and department, too. However, I think the problem actually goes even deeper. The incentives are all aligned to launder responsibility through automated systems, and we'll end up sleepwalking into AI tyranny if we're not careful. Where I am, police officers get paid healthy 6-figure salaries plus crazy OT to boot. $300k total comp is absolutely not unheard of. I think the police have basically figured out that the best way to stay on the gravy train is to do as little as possible. Certainly stop enforcing traffic laws entirely, as those are the highest risk interactions. Just rest n' vest, baby. So you get to hear about "underfunded" and "overworked" police departments while observing overpaid police officers who are structurally disincentivized from doing their jobs. The bottom line is: People want policing, but adding more police officers won't deliver results and anyway is too expensive. What to do? Enter mass surveillance and automated policing. If we can't rely on police to do the policing, we'll have to do it some other way. Oh, look at how cheap it is to put cameras up everywhere. And hey, we can get a statistical inferential model (excuse me, Artificial Intelligence!) to flag "suspicious" cars and people. Yeah yeah, privacy risks blah blah blah turnkey totalitarianism whomp whomp whomp. But think of all the criminals we can catch! All without needing police to actually do anything! While police are expensive and practically useless at doing things people want, this technology can actually deliver results. That makes it irresistible. The problem is that it's turning our society into a panopticon and putting us all in great danger of an inescapable totalitarian state dominated by a despot and his AI army. But those are abstract risks, further out and probabilistic in nature. Humans are terrible at making these kinds of decisions; as a population we almost always choose short-term benefit over abstract long-term risks and harms. Just look at climate change and fossil fuel consumption.
gs17 10mo ago
> we had someone going car by car stealing from any car left open. We have that too here, the issue seems to be more that it's a catch and release crime. The police not only knew who was doing it on our street, they had caught them multiple times and released them immediately. I'm guessing if they're not caught with stolen guns on them here it's not enough of a charge to bother with. I really doubt Flock would matter.
- buellerbueller 10mo ago
  Hell, at least you have the "catch" part. Here, "officers of the law" just DGAF.
kortex 10mo ago
> but criminals are getting bolder everyday it feels like. Might feel that way, but objectively, violent and property crime are on the decline in the USA. I've also heard many stories where a person gets high def footage of someone committing a crime (usually burglary, smash and grab, or porch snatching) and the cops are basically like "eh we'll get to it when we get to it" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States edit: can someone explain what is objectionable about this comment?
- buellerbueller 10mo ago
  Two weeks ago, my parked car, along with two other parked cars, was rear-ended at 3:15am by a drunk driver (the car interior smelled like alcohol), in an unregistered car that was not his. He then fled the scene. All of this was caught on high definition video. However, he also left his phone and State ID (he was also unlicensed) in the car. Did the cops drive the 2 blocks to the address listed on his ID to arrest him for leaving the scene of the accident, or to give him any kind of blood alcohol test? No, no they did not. Did the cops follow up in any way whatsoever? No, no they did not. How do I know this? Because a few days later, I walked the two blocks to the house to inquire whether the car was insured. It was not. --- What is objectionable about your comment is the same thing that eventually plagues every social media that has downvoting/flagging: you violated someone's strongly-held priors.
sethammons 10mo ago
We are moving from God sees all and the afterlife will judge you to The Govt de Jour sees all and will judge you in this life.

wat10000 10mo ago

I'm curious as to why you think we have heavy crime when you know the stats say otherwise.

rpjt 10mo ago
You have to be careful with stats. There's an incentive to manipulate crime stats. https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/12/12/dc-police-chief-doj-crime-stats/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/12/12/dc-police...
- wat10000 10mo ago
  I could buy that for some crimes, but e.g. murder is pretty hard to manipulate.
  - rationalist 10mo ago
    [flagged]
    - wat10000 10mo ago
      If that actually happened often enough to skew the stats, it would get a huge amount of attention.
ahmeneeroe-v2 10mo ago
I work with stats. I think even very honest people with high incentive to tell an accurate story and good data have trouble with stats. Now add politicians and police and bad data into that mix with winner-takes-all politics at stake and the stats get gamed. Also I believe my eyes and when I see crimes happening in my neighborhood I don't rush to "the stats" to ask them what I saw.
- RHSeeger 10mo ago
  But "what you saw" isn't necessarily representative of the state of things, either. Arlington, VA is (was?) one of the nicer places in VA; generally expensive, etc. When I drove through there, the van in front of me at a light was car-jacked, and the person in it chased down. I'm uncomfortable driving through Arlington because of that; even though it's not representative of the area. Admittedly, this was years ago... but the point stands. My experience is not representative of the actual facts.

infecto 10mo ago

I don’t think it’s so much as critical but has potential to help close the loop on crime. Big box stores love this service. The can easily identify the car type and license and out out a bolo with the police. Police put this into flock and track movement. You don’t have to pursue chases as aggressively. You can just track the car next time it pops up. I think flock is a net positive in this sense.

rcpt 10mo ago

Car crashes are a leading cause of death. We can save a lot of lives by getting drivers to follow the law.