6 ms·

I think this is just the new normal. My car was stolen in Seattle and it was found with the person driving it when he was pulled over by police. In the car he

I think this is just the new normal. My car was stolen in Seattle and it was found with the person driving it when he was pulled over by police. In the car he had paperwork with his name on it, a weapon, and his work uniform in the trunk with a name badge (he was a security guard - lol) along with a neighborhood witness. Despite a mountain of evidence, the prosecutors declined to press charges because without direct video evidence of him stealing the car, they would not get a jury to convict, because jurors in Seattle have become accustom to thinking that the only way to overcome reasonable doubt is to have it on video. And even that often isn't enough...

dylan604 4mo ago
You know, sometimes, you just gotta get to work and the busses just aren't going to get you there in time. /s I was in a jury pool not in Seattle for a guy that already pled guilty for GTA, so it was just the sentencing part. The defense attorney asked if I thought it might be possible to sentence the minimum. I said yes. The prosecutor asked if I thought I could give the the maximum sentence of 99 years. I said for stealing a car? I was bounced from the pool. So maybe juries in Seattle have had their fair share of prosecutorial shenanigans as well???
- bonoboTP 4mo ago
  I thought jurors don't decide the sentence length, just the (not) guilty verdict. Are you implying they were testing whether you're willing to let the judge use the entire span of sentencing available in law? Otherwise I'm not sure what you mean that you were bounced from the jury because the defense lawyer wanted you to be fine with 99 years in prison for his client.
  - dylan604 4mo ago
    Nope. The jury was to give the sentence. This depends on jurisdiction when the jury does the sentencing. Capital murder cases are a famous example. I guess I was lucky that my local jurisdiction said GTA was worth of a jury sentencing?? The defense attorney was looking for jurors sympathetic to giving his client the least time possible. The prosecutor was looking for people to throw the book at the defendant and be open to maximum sentencing. Because I was not, he struck me.
    - bonoboTP 4mo ago
      It seems that the selection process optimizes for either liars or dumb people who are easiest to emotionally manipulate. If you appear very reflective and capable of complex thought, you're a risk. You could've said, you're open to whatever sentence, you make no prior commitment and will decide for whatever sentence is appropriate based on the court proceedings and the law as given by the judge. But they would have called bullshit on that too, they are good at seeing who is a difficult person to work with from their POV. It's a very broken system and I'm glad to live in a civil law country. The power imbalance is huge. The lawyers are incredibly well prepared regarding tricks around jury psychology but the jury are selected for being the most naive people possible. If you seem too much of a smartass to them who knows their tricks, you're out.
      - lovich 4mo ago
        > It seems that the selection process optimizes for either liars or dumb people who are easiest to emotionally manipulate. It does. Having expert knowledge is a deal breaker too. I actually want to serve on a jury but because I am unwilling to lie to a judge I’ve been bounced everytime when I am asked if I would believe the police testimony and I reply with “that would depend on if they were a Brady cop”
        bonoboTP 4mo ago
        I once saw the livestream of jury selection in a big trial and read up on the whole thing and it seemed like such an obviously weak point of the whole process. The whole language around the concepts that underpin it seem totally ignorant of human psychology and pretend that humans are great at self reflection, won't hide their motivations etc. Like asking whether you're able to put aside X and Y from influencing your judgment, and if you say yes, that's good, if no, you're out. Of course it's impossible to look into people's minds, but it's clear that the kludge is a result of historical push and pull of interests and a kind of truce and compromise they could arrive at that people still find convincing enough in the end, but also practical for the lawyers. Like, I understand this isn't easy, you don't one one highly qualified person dominate everyone else, even if just subconsciously. You want to encourage all jurors to feel that they have an equal input into the process. It's certainly not a system that's engineered for finding truth, and much more concerned with pretense in favor of the appearance of truth. A realist retort would be that pursuing a truth-finding system is only possible in utopia idealized situations, so going with the adversarial system is the best bet we have for getting some acceptable balanced compromise.
sieabahlpark 4mo ago
[dead]
downrightmike 4mo ago
so cameras are useless, but everywhere
- ryanisnan 4mo ago
  Right, just the worst of all possible worlds. Computer generated video is going to make this mess a whole lot worse too.
smithoc 4mo ago
This anecdote may be true, but is certainly not representative of current life in America. Take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St... Millions in prison, massively disproportionate to the rest of the world. If jurors in Seattle have become skeptical of the claims that police and prosecutors make without evidence, the blame should fall squarely on decades of innocent people being sent to jail and minor infractions sending people to prison for years due to police lying, fabricating evidence, destroying evidence and prosecutors filing charges for far more severe crimes than what really occurred. You're fortunate that your only experience of the failure of policing in America is in the most recent awakening against the unreliability of police and prosecutors. For many families, their lives have been destroyed after watching their loved ones be brutalized in prisons because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time and were victimized by the police and prosecutors.
- sellmesoap 4mo ago
  It's a large country with subtle differencies across the states but this story came to mind immediately https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48249747 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48249747
- daedrdev 4mo ago
  The majority of people in prisons in the US are incarcerated for violent crime. 64% of violent criminals are rearrested compared to 40% of nonviolent criminals. It really looks like the US is being somewhat efficient here and just has a lot of crime.
  - ProllyInfamous 4mo ago
    In my hope that violent criminals serve longer sentences than nonviolent criminals, perhaps there is a correlation between time-served and recidivism..? Living in a workingclass neighborhood, many of my most-favorite neighbors are felons of the nonviolent variety – nobody wants back in to their old prisonplanet – just keep looking forwards.
emodendroket 4mo ago
I rather doubt the point of all this stuff is that kind of crime.
- bonoboTP 4mo ago
  Then which kind? If you mean political resistance, that's easier to surveil from phones and chat apps and gps, not cameras.
  - titzer 4mo ago
    Why not all of them?
  - emodendroket 4mo ago
    It would be easier not to build Prism but they did that didn't they
- victor9000 4mo ago
  It was just a little baby GTA
  - ProllyInfamous 4mo ago
    My state recently passed a law (similar to Texas') which allows people to defend with lethal force certain property (beyond just their vehicle, which was already allowed). Tennessee-wide, it goes into effect July 1st – and is long-overdue. I live in a working-class neighborhood and we do whatever we can to keep the trouble elsewhere (i.e. not here). Wish guns didn't exist, but until they don't stay safe thugz.
    - jeffbee 4mo ago
      What's your hypothesis on why Texas has a much higher auto theft rate than Tennessee, given that they long had the policy you seem to believe is a remedy?
      - 4mo ago
fny 4mo ago
Your forgetting the nonsense a defense attorney will conjure. How do you know he didn't buy the car from the thief? We had a similar issue with the hit and run of my grandfather: even though video evidence found the car and later saw the suspect leave the car, the detectives worried a defence attorney would argue someone else may have been driving at the time the accident (e.g his wife), and therefore "beyond reasonable doubt" might be questioned. In the end, the detectives managed to collect enough evidence to seek a conviction, and the experience taught me a lot of "unreasonable" doubts are often considered "reasonable."
- mixmastamyk 4mo ago
  Bank records are readily available, large cash transactions as well.
  - butlike 4mo ago
    Need a subpoena/warrant for those records. Don't know the intricacies of that, but I doubt a judge would grant the warrant unless they had the person dead-to-rights and were going after a bigger fish higher up on the chain.
    - mixmastamyk 4mo ago
      Warrants were never hard to get for a good-faith case and increasingly ignored for others.
- sleepybrett 4mo ago
  Well then he's in possession of stolen property, which is also a crime.
- bmitch3020 4mo ago
  > How do you know he didn't buy the car from the thief? If you're caught with stolen property, particularly a vehicle that has a title, I think the burden is on you to prove you thought you bought the car legitimately. Show a bill-of-sale, signed title, or any other evidence of a transaction. Particularly when that evidence includes identifying information of the seller.
georgeven 4mo ago
I wonder if you can sue him in civic court, could teach him a lesson.
- daveshistory 4mo ago
  The lesson would be that you spend a great deal of money upfront, go through a tremendous amount of stress, end up with a judgment against someone who doesn't have the money to pay it anyways?
- orthecreedence 4mo ago
  Small claims maybe to recoup towing/recovery fees, but a civil case? No way. That shit will make you go gray quick.
- sudokatsu 4mo ago
  How do you know it was a Honda?
Trias11 4mo ago
We should let the thieves off the hooks so they'd vote for us again and again. -- politicians
gwbas1c 4mo ago
> because jurors in Seattle have become accustom to thinking that the only way to overcome reasonable doubt is to have it on video. Who serves on a jury frequently enough to become accustomed to anything? I've only been mailed for jury duty a few times, and every time when I check the night before I'm waived out.
- dhosek 4mo ago
  I think a more accurate way to phrase this is that potential jurors in Seattle have grown to believe etc. How does that happen? Television. They see the police pulling up surveillance videos or using high tech lab technologies on television shows and assume that these fictional techniques are the norm. See, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect
  - redsocksfan45 4mo ago
    [dead]
  - LeifCarrotson 4mo ago
    Television courtrooms are half of it, the other is social media. Tiktok and Youtube and Facebook will show you videos all day long with notable events that were pulled from security cameras, or uploaded by bystanders with cell phones, or found in the background of videos that were intended to capture something else. The other side of the equation is that surveillance infrastructure is already nigh omnipresent, as described by the attached article. A juror who gets alerts every day from their Ring doorbell, who drives a Tesla with an integrated dashcam, and parks in a lot covered by their apartment's security cameras, can be easily persuaded that camera surveillance should be the standard of proof.
brendoelfrendo 4mo ago
Ok, so, what was the evidence he was the one who stole the car?
runjake 4mo ago
If you're wondering what is being discussed in the meetings about whether or not more surveillance should be deployed, at the city and county levels, this is it. Crime isn't being prosecuted, the criminals know it, and this breeds more crime (and more criminals). Even when they are imprisoned and incarcerated, they're probably in jail for somewhere between 24 hours and a few weeks. They know pretty much everyone else in jail, so it's almost like going to a camp reunion for them. There used to be BOLO "be on the look out" lists with grids of mugshots passed around various informal circles so that businesses and organizations can better protect themselves from crime. But, mugshots are no longer public, so they can't even do that anymore. It ends up creating more profiling of a person based on their appearance. And... more surveillance.
- VohuMana 4mo ago
  Honest question, do we know why crime isn’t being prosecuted anymore? I’ve noticed where I live this definitely seems to be the case and has a two fold effect, police aren’t even bothering to enforce laws because when they do the city/county refuses to prosecute and then criminals are getting wise to this and escalating their crimes. Previously where I live there would be violent crimes but generally in the early hours (2-4am) but in the last 5 years those same crimes have been happening more and more during the normal daytime hours (8am-7pm)
  - awesome_dude 4mo ago
    There's a lot here to unpack - and it's incredibly nuanced. Crime in most countries is on the decline, there have been "blips" or "spikes", but the reality is that crime is decreasing. When people talk about communities not being policed, there's also multiple things at play - partly it's perception, which is subjective, and not very reliable (back in my dayyyyyy), and partly it's about focus. As for prosecution - most countries are realising that prosecution leading to incarceration is counter productive - as the GP touched on, prison becomes a University for criminals, as well as a record being prohibitive in getting individuals "on the right track" - that is, they become more isolated and excluded, leaving them with fewer choices when it comes to behaviour. I'm middle aged, and for my entire life, the same drum has been beaten - crime is rising, children don't respect their elders, youth are getting away with crime, there should be harsher punishments, and so on. But the hard facts have shown otherwise (as to /why/ crime is dropping, that's a genuine subject for debate, for example the removal of lead in petrol is now thought to be one of the key reasons that violent crime is dropping)
neutronicus 4mo ago
My wife was on a murder jury in Baltimore that convicted on the strength of video evidence. She was surprised at just how much of it there was.
- bombcar 4mo ago
  The amount of resources brought to bear on a murder is way above what will be brought for a stolen car. For those they likely won’t even have a cop call the local businesses.
patsplat 4mo ago
The stolen property in the story in the above comment was recovered. I don’t see how this justifies more surveillance that is likely to be abused.
- loeg 4mo ago
  Do you think if stolen property is eventually recovered, in some condition, it's "no harm, no foul?" Or, maybe it would be beneficial for society if theft didn't happen in the first place?
RIMR 4mo ago
This is such a strange reactionary take to blame Seattle jurors for this. I agree that this should have resulted in charges, but every cop in Seattle wears a body camera. Even if your theory was correct (it isn't), they would actually have video evidence of this person driving your car without an explanation after you reported it stolen. I suspect that there is more to this story that either you don't know, or you aren't telling us, because your logic here is very flawed.
- SauntSolaire 4mo ago
  That's footage of them driving it, not footage of them stealing it.
malwrar 4mo ago
I don’t understand how video evidence from a mass surveillance network would have helped here. They found your car without it! Shouldn’t your issue be with the prosecutor, and thus your ineffective local government? Otherwise, what’s to stop them from just telling you video evidence isn’t enough, because jurors have become accustom to thinking that video evidence can be faked by vindictive cops?
slowhadoken 4mo ago
It’s political. The same thing is happening with marijuana. A state legalizes it and then functional junkies show up from conservative states to smoke it in doors. Places like Colorado have laws to regulate it but they don’t. Police and judges follow suit because mayors don’t want to create a precedent that would scare potheads. This keeps the drug money coming in and crime stats low. It’s crazy because regulation is a liberal practice but they’re just not being enforced and no new explicate regulations are being written which is a conservative tactic. All of this emboldens criminal use of marijuana under the pretense of preventing persecution of drug addicts by dressing them up as medication recipients.
- lovich 4mo ago
  If the state legalized it then it’s not a crime as far as the state is concerned. The feds still have it illegal but states are not required to enforce or even help federal law enforcement to enforce their own laws. They can choose to do so but it’s not an obligation. Your comment is coming from the perspective that they are criminals because you don’t like the activity, not because they broke the law. Lobby your state representatives and run an activist campaign to make it illegal again if that’s how you feel.
  - slowhadoken 4mo ago
    Even if a state legalized marijuana it’s still illegal to possess a lot of it, to sell it without a license, and can violate tort, municipal, state and federal laws about drug smoke outdoors or indoors. It’s not my opinion, it’s regulation based on scientific evidence to protect public health. A lot of this is understood in California but cash poor states with huge budge problems look the other way. Potheads know this, they use these facts to pressure cities and states to take their dirty money. Since the revenue from taxing marijuana isn’t going to K-12 schools a lot of locals are getting tired of the bad money coming from pot. It’s a trade off like legalizing gambling but with no benefits. Smokers make up a fraction of the total population so you’re going to see pushback very soon.
    - lovich 4mo ago
senderista 4mo ago
Same, my stolen car was full of PII when it was pulled over (driver fled), and the cops couldn't have cared less. I found the thief and his girlfriend on Facebook, but decided to drop it there.
- philwelch 4mo ago
  Wise decision. If you did anything to the thief, odds are the cops would have cared.
mannanj 4mo ago
Ever think about whether maybe he bought it from someone who stole it and sold it with fake paperwork? Not saying you don't deserve to get your vehicle back, and I'm sorry that happened to you.

dylan604 4mo ago

You know, sometimes, you just gotta get to work and the busses just aren't going to get you there in time. /s I was in a jury pool not in Seattle for a guy that already pled guilty for GTA, so it was just the sentencing part. The defense attorney asked if I thought it might be possible to sentence the minimum. I said yes. The prosecutor asked if I thought I could give the the maximum sentence of 99 years. I said for stealing a car? I was bounced from the pool. So maybe juries in Seattle have had their fair share of prosecutorial shenanigans as well???

bonoboTP 4mo ago
I thought jurors don't decide the sentence length, just the (not) guilty verdict. Are you implying they were testing whether you're willing to let the judge use the entire span of sentencing available in law? Otherwise I'm not sure what you mean that you were bounced from the jury because the defense lawyer wanted you to be fine with 99 years in prison for his client.
- dylan604 4mo ago
  Nope. The jury was to give the sentence. This depends on jurisdiction when the jury does the sentencing. Capital murder cases are a famous example. I guess I was lucky that my local jurisdiction said GTA was worth of a jury sentencing?? The defense attorney was looking for jurors sympathetic to giving his client the least time possible. The prosecutor was looking for people to throw the book at the defendant and be open to maximum sentencing. Because I was not, he struck me.
  - bonoboTP 4mo ago
    It seems that the selection process optimizes for either liars or dumb people who are easiest to emotionally manipulate. If you appear very reflective and capable of complex thought, you're a risk. You could've said, you're open to whatever sentence, you make no prior commitment and will decide for whatever sentence is appropriate based on the court proceedings and the law as given by the judge. But they would have called bullshit on that too, they are good at seeing who is a difficult person to work with from their POV. It's a very broken system and I'm glad to live in a civil law country. The power imbalance is huge. The lawyers are incredibly well prepared regarding tricks around jury psychology but the jury are selected for being the most naive people possible. If you seem too much of a smartass to them who knows their tricks, you're out.
    - lovich 4mo ago
      > It seems that the selection process optimizes for either liars or dumb people who are easiest to emotionally manipulate. It does. Having expert knowledge is a deal breaker too. I actually want to serve on a jury but because I am unwilling to lie to a judge I’ve been bounced everytime when I am asked if I would believe the police testimony and I reply with “that would depend on if they were a Brady cop”
      - bonoboTP 4mo ago
        I once saw the livestream of jury selection in a big trial and read up on the whole thing and it seemed like such an obviously weak point of the whole process. The whole language around the concepts that underpin it seem totally ignorant of human psychology and pretend that humans are great at self reflection, won't hide their motivations etc. Like asking whether you're able to put aside X and Y from influencing your judgment, and if you say yes, that's good, if no, you're out. Of course it's impossible to look into people's minds, but it's clear that the kludge is a result of historical push and pull of interests and a kind of truce and compromise they could arrive at that people still find convincing enough in the end, but also practical for the lawyers. Like, I understand this isn't easy, you don't one one highly qualified person dominate everyone else, even if just subconsciously. You want to encourage all jurors to feel that they have an equal input into the process. It's certainly not a system that's engineered for finding truth, and much more concerned with pretense in favor of the appearance of truth. A realist retort would be that pursuing a truth-finding system is only possible in utopia idealized situations, so going with the adversarial system is the best bet we have for getting some acceptable balanced compromise.

sieabahlpark 4mo ago

[dead]

downrightmike 4mo ago

so cameras are useless, but everywhere

ryanisnan 4mo ago
Right, just the worst of all possible worlds. Computer generated video is going to make this mess a whole lot worse too.

smithoc 4mo ago

This anecdote may be true, but is certainly not representative of current life in America. Take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St... Millions in prison, massively disproportionate to the rest of the world. If jurors in Seattle have become skeptical of the claims that police and prosecutors make without evidence, the blame should fall squarely on decades of innocent people being sent to jail and minor infractions sending people to prison for years due to police lying, fabricating evidence, destroying evidence and prosecutors filing charges for far more severe crimes than what really occurred. You're fortunate that your only experience of the failure of policing in America is in the most recent awakening against the unreliability of police and prosecutors. For many families, their lives have been destroyed after watching their loved ones be brutalized in prisons because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time and were victimized by the police and prosecutors.

sellmesoap 4mo ago
It's a large country with subtle differencies across the states but this story came to mind immediately https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48249747 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48249747
daedrdev 4mo ago
The majority of people in prisons in the US are incarcerated for violent crime. 64% of violent criminals are rearrested compared to 40% of nonviolent criminals. It really looks like the US is being somewhat efficient here and just has a lot of crime.
- ProllyInfamous 4mo ago
  In my hope that violent criminals serve longer sentences than nonviolent criminals, perhaps there is a correlation between time-served and recidivism..? Living in a workingclass neighborhood, many of my most-favorite neighbors are felons of the nonviolent variety – nobody wants back in to their old prisonplanet – just keep looking forwards.

emodendroket 4mo ago

I rather doubt the point of all this stuff is that kind of crime.

bonoboTP 4mo ago
Then which kind? If you mean political resistance, that's easier to surveil from phones and chat apps and gps, not cameras.
- titzer 4mo ago
  Why not all of them?
- emodendroket 4mo ago
  It would be easier not to build Prism but they did that didn't they
victor9000 4mo ago
It was just a little baby GTA
- ProllyInfamous 4mo ago
  My state recently passed a law (similar to Texas') which allows people to defend with lethal force certain property (beyond just their vehicle, which was already allowed). Tennessee-wide, it goes into effect July 1st – and is long-overdue. I live in a working-class neighborhood and we do whatever we can to keep the trouble elsewhere (i.e. not here). Wish guns didn't exist, but until they don't stay safe thugz.
  - jeffbee 4mo ago
    What's your hypothesis on why Texas has a much higher auto theft rate than Tennessee, given that they long had the policy you seem to believe is a remedy?
    - 4mo ago

fny 4mo ago

Your forgetting the nonsense a defense attorney will conjure. How do you know he didn't buy the car from the thief? We had a similar issue with the hit and run of my grandfather: even though video evidence found the car and later saw the suspect leave the car, the detectives worried a defence attorney would argue someone else may have been driving at the time the accident (e.g his wife), and therefore "beyond reasonable doubt" might be questioned. In the end, the detectives managed to collect enough evidence to seek a conviction, and the experience taught me a lot of "unreasonable" doubts are often considered "reasonable."

mixmastamyk 4mo ago
Bank records are readily available, large cash transactions as well.
- butlike 4mo ago
  Need a subpoena/warrant for those records. Don't know the intricacies of that, but I doubt a judge would grant the warrant unless they had the person dead-to-rights and were going after a bigger fish higher up on the chain.
  - mixmastamyk 4mo ago
    Warrants were never hard to get for a good-faith case and increasingly ignored for others.
sleepybrett 4mo ago
Well then he's in possession of stolen property, which is also a crime.
bmitch3020 4mo ago
> How do you know he didn't buy the car from the thief? If you're caught with stolen property, particularly a vehicle that has a title, I think the burden is on you to prove you thought you bought the car legitimately. Show a bill-of-sale, signed title, or any other evidence of a transaction. Particularly when that evidence includes identifying information of the seller.

georgeven 4mo ago

I wonder if you can sue him in civic court, could teach him a lesson.

daveshistory 4mo ago
The lesson would be that you spend a great deal of money upfront, go through a tremendous amount of stress, end up with a judgment against someone who doesn't have the money to pay it anyways?
orthecreedence 4mo ago
Small claims maybe to recoup towing/recovery fees, but a civil case? No way. That shit will make you go gray quick.
sudokatsu 4mo ago
How do you know it was a Honda?

Trias11 4mo ago

We should let the thieves off the hooks so they'd vote for us again and again. -- politicians

gwbas1c 4mo ago

> because jurors in Seattle have become accustom to thinking that the only way to overcome reasonable doubt is to have it on video. Who serves on a jury frequently enough to become accustomed to anything? I've only been mailed for jury duty a few times, and every time when I check the night before I'm waived out.

dhosek 4mo ago
I think a more accurate way to phrase this is that potential jurors in Seattle have grown to believe etc. How does that happen? Television. They see the police pulling up surveillance videos or using high tech lab technologies on television shows and assume that these fictional techniques are the norm. See, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect
- redsocksfan45 4mo ago
  [dead]
- LeifCarrotson 4mo ago
  Television courtrooms are half of it, the other is social media. Tiktok and Youtube and Facebook will show you videos all day long with notable events that were pulled from security cameras, or uploaded by bystanders with cell phones, or found in the background of videos that were intended to capture something else. The other side of the equation is that surveillance infrastructure is already nigh omnipresent, as described by the attached article. A juror who gets alerts every day from their Ring doorbell, who drives a Tesla with an integrated dashcam, and parks in a lot covered by their apartment's security cameras, can be easily persuaded that camera surveillance should be the standard of proof.

brendoelfrendo 4mo ago

Ok, so, what was the evidence he was the one who stole the car?

runjake 4mo ago

If you're wondering what is being discussed in the meetings about whether or not more surveillance should be deployed, at the city and county levels, this is it. Crime isn't being prosecuted, the criminals know it, and this breeds more crime (and more criminals). Even when they are imprisoned and incarcerated, they're probably in jail for somewhere between 24 hours and a few weeks. They know pretty much everyone else in jail, so it's almost like going to a camp reunion for them. There used to be BOLO "be on the look out" lists with grids of mugshots passed around various informal circles so that businesses and organizations can better protect themselves from crime. But, mugshots are no longer public, so they can't even do that anymore. It ends up creating more profiling of a person based on their appearance. And... more surveillance.

VohuMana 4mo ago
Honest question, do we know why crime isn’t being prosecuted anymore? I’ve noticed where I live this definitely seems to be the case and has a two fold effect, police aren’t even bothering to enforce laws because when they do the city/county refuses to prosecute and then criminals are getting wise to this and escalating their crimes. Previously where I live there would be violent crimes but generally in the early hours (2-4am) but in the last 5 years those same crimes have been happening more and more during the normal daytime hours (8am-7pm)
- awesome_dude 4mo ago
  There's a lot here to unpack - and it's incredibly nuanced. Crime in most countries is on the decline, there have been "blips" or "spikes", but the reality is that crime is decreasing. When people talk about communities not being policed, there's also multiple things at play - partly it's perception, which is subjective, and not very reliable (back in my dayyyyyy), and partly it's about focus. As for prosecution - most countries are realising that prosecution leading to incarceration is counter productive - as the GP touched on, prison becomes a University for criminals, as well as a record being prohibitive in getting individuals "on the right track" - that is, they become more isolated and excluded, leaving them with fewer choices when it comes to behaviour. I'm middle aged, and for my entire life, the same drum has been beaten - crime is rising, children don't respect their elders, youth are getting away with crime, there should be harsher punishments, and so on. But the hard facts have shown otherwise (as to /why/ crime is dropping, that's a genuine subject for debate, for example the removal of lead in petrol is now thought to be one of the key reasons that violent crime is dropping)

neutronicus 4mo ago

My wife was on a murder jury in Baltimore that convicted on the strength of video evidence. She was surprised at just how much of it there was.

bombcar 4mo ago
The amount of resources brought to bear on a murder is way above what will be brought for a stolen car. For those they likely won’t even have a cop call the local businesses.

patsplat 4mo ago

The stolen property in the story in the above comment was recovered. I don’t see how this justifies more surveillance that is likely to be abused.

loeg 4mo ago
Do you think if stolen property is eventually recovered, in some condition, it's "no harm, no foul?" Or, maybe it would be beneficial for society if theft didn't happen in the first place?

RIMR 4mo ago

This is such a strange reactionary take to blame Seattle jurors for this. I agree that this should have resulted in charges, but every cop in Seattle wears a body camera. Even if your theory was correct (it isn't), they would actually have video evidence of this person driving your car without an explanation after you reported it stolen. I suspect that there is more to this story that either you don't know, or you aren't telling us, because your logic here is very flawed.

SauntSolaire 4mo ago
That's footage of them driving it, not footage of them stealing it.

malwrar 4mo ago

I don’t understand how video evidence from a mass surveillance network would have helped here. They found your car without it! Shouldn’t your issue be with the prosecutor, and thus your ineffective local government? Otherwise, what’s to stop them from just telling you video evidence isn’t enough, because jurors have become accustom to thinking that video evidence can be faked by vindictive cops?

slowhadoken 4mo ago

It’s political. The same thing is happening with marijuana. A state legalizes it and then functional junkies show up from conservative states to smoke it in doors. Places like Colorado have laws to regulate it but they don’t. Police and judges follow suit because mayors don’t want to create a precedent that would scare potheads. This keeps the drug money coming in and crime stats low. It’s crazy because regulation is a liberal practice but they’re just not being enforced and no new explicate regulations are being written which is a conservative tactic. All of this emboldens criminal use of marijuana under the pretense of preventing persecution of drug addicts by dressing them up as medication recipients.

lovich 4mo ago
If the state legalized it then it’s not a crime as far as the state is concerned. The feds still have it illegal but states are not required to enforce or even help federal law enforcement to enforce their own laws. They can choose to do so but it’s not an obligation. Your comment is coming from the perspective that they are criminals because you don’t like the activity, not because they broke the law. Lobby your state representatives and run an activist campaign to make it illegal again if that’s how you feel.
- slowhadoken 4mo ago
  Even if a state legalized marijuana it’s still illegal to possess a lot of it, to sell it without a license, and can violate tort, municipal, state and federal laws about drug smoke outdoors or indoors. It’s not my opinion, it’s regulation based on scientific evidence to protect public health. A lot of this is understood in California but cash poor states with huge budge problems look the other way. Potheads know this, they use these facts to pressure cities and states to take their dirty money. Since the revenue from taxing marijuana isn’t going to K-12 schools a lot of locals are getting tired of the bad money coming from pot. It’s a trade off like legalizing gambling but with no benefits. Smokers make up a fraction of the total population so you’re going to see pushback very soon.
  - lovich 4mo ago

senderista 4mo ago

Same, my stolen car was full of PII when it was pulled over (driver fled), and the cops couldn't have cared less. I found the thief and his girlfriend on Facebook, but decided to drop it there.

philwelch 4mo ago
Wise decision. If you did anything to the thief, odds are the cops would have cared.

mannanj 4mo ago

Ever think about whether maybe he bought it from someone who stole it and sold it with fake paperwork? Not saying you don't deserve to get your vehicle back, and I'm sorry that happened to you.