4 ms·

This is very doable when what you're dealing with is a Major Crime That Gets Full Institutional and Individual Attention. What about a bike theft, a jacked car

This is very doable when what you're dealing with is a Major Crime That Gets Full Institutional and Individual Attention. What about a bike theft, a jacked car or a stolen parcel though? There is a price to having information easily available to the law enforcement. There is a price to not having this information easily available to the law enforcement too.

eclipticplane 4mo ago
Even with Flock, police aren't solving those crimes.
- seibelj 4mo ago
  [dead]
- zhivota 4mo ago
  Yes, many cases of people calling the police with actual tracker data showing exactly where their stolen property is, and the response being to get laughed at and told it's not a priority.
- derektank 4mo ago
  That entirely varies by locality. My parents just had their vehicle broken into and their credit and debit cards stolen (in addition to some cash) and the local police department visited the grocery store where the thief used the cards to buy gift cards multiple times to collect security footage to try and track them down (the grocery store store’s security lead was out the first time on vacation). If your local police department won’t do this and you want them to, ask your community to raise taxes to hire more and/or better cops.
thewebguyd 4mo ago
Doesn't matter, they should have to follow the same process. Cops, at least where I live, don't give af about any of those crimes though. Bike gets stolen? You'll be lucky if they even show up at all, let alone do anything about it, surveillance data available or not. They largely don't even get prosecuted when caught.
- declan_roberts 4mo ago
  It's true. We're getting the worst possible outcome. Police state surveillance that tolerates nearly every level of criminality. Anarcho-tyranny.
- pandaman 4mo ago
  This depends on what evidence there is. If it's just "omg, bike was here yesterday, but is not here today, find it!" then what are they really going to do? They are not calling a CSI team and collect fibers from the scene, this is not a TV show. In my experience, the police will follow the leads if they have them. I had several bikes stolen by homeless so they hid them in some commercial property few blocks away. One bike had a tracker, which they found and disabled but they did it near where they ultimately hid the bikes. Using the last location from the tracker cops were able to find the bikes and return them. If there were cameras they might be able to also find the perps and put them to jail.
plagiarist 4mo ago
They can get a subpoena for that, too. The bike and the parcel are already long gone by the time police do anything. (Nor will they do anything other than file a report if you are lucky.)
dw_arthur 4mo ago
The majority of crime is committed by a relatively small number of individuals. If citizens feel crime is out of control they need to vote in politicians and judges who sentence repeat offenders to long sentences or involuntary commitment.
- Gigachad 4mo ago
  Long sentences are far less effective than reliable enforcement. Something that seems to be very true in practice. If you steal or vandalise something in China, there is an extremely high chance you will get caught, you won't get a massive penalty, but it will be enough to cover the damages + some. If you for example knew that stealing had a penalty of 100% of the item value + 10% fine, with a 100% chance of getting caught, you'd never steal anything again even though the penalty is so much smaller than what it is currently in most countries. And then if you make a dumb decision as a teenager or in a lapse of judgement, it won't ruin your life.
  - defen 4mo ago
    How does that work when you don't have enough assets to cover the cost of the thing you broke or stole?
    - Gigachad 4mo ago
      Of course you could still rack up a large penalty / jail time if you cause an incredible amount of damage quickly, but in general you'd catch people before they get that far. Catching a bike thief after the first 1-2 bikes rather than when they have stolen 100.
  - ACCount37 4mo ago
    Long sentences and reliable enforcement are complimentary. If you can reliably prosecute the repeat offenders you catch, and put them behind bars for a long time? You stop them from committing more crimes. The crime rate falls, and the amount of enforcement manpower you have available per crime rises. Making it easier to catch and prosecute the remaining offenders. Most of the low level crime isn't done by "a dumb decision as a teenager or in a lapse of judgement". It's done by someone who has done it 5 times before and will do it again. Unless jailed, that is. The jail doesn't fix whatever's wrong with them, but it is hard to keep doing crimes while behind bars.
willis936 4mo ago
If only we had an amendment in the original bill of rights that drew the line here.
- derektank 4mo ago
  The 4th amendment doesn’t really have much of anything to say about public surveillance; the courts have largely agreed it does not constitute a search unless it reveals information that is not intended to be public (such as the thermal imaging of buildings) or reveals intimate personal information (such as documentation of habits through long term data aggregation).
  - kelnos 4mo ago
    > (such as documentation of habits through long term data aggregation) Don't ALPRs do exactly this?
coffeefirst 4mo ago
A few years ago I had police knock on my door to see if our camera had footage of a crash on our block. This is not a problem. A little friction in the right places is a good thing.

eclipticplane 4mo ago

Even with Flock, police aren't solving those crimes.

seibelj 4mo ago
[dead]
zhivota 4mo ago
Yes, many cases of people calling the police with actual tracker data showing exactly where their stolen property is, and the response being to get laughed at and told it's not a priority.
derektank 4mo ago
That entirely varies by locality. My parents just had their vehicle broken into and their credit and debit cards stolen (in addition to some cash) and the local police department visited the grocery store where the thief used the cards to buy gift cards multiple times to collect security footage to try and track them down (the grocery store store’s security lead was out the first time on vacation). If your local police department won’t do this and you want them to, ask your community to raise taxes to hire more and/or better cops.

thewebguyd 4mo ago

Doesn't matter, they should have to follow the same process. Cops, at least where I live, don't give af about any of those crimes though. Bike gets stolen? You'll be lucky if they even show up at all, let alone do anything about it, surveillance data available or not. They largely don't even get prosecuted when caught.

declan_roberts 4mo ago
It's true. We're getting the worst possible outcome. Police state surveillance that tolerates nearly every level of criminality. Anarcho-tyranny.
pandaman 4mo ago
This depends on what evidence there is. If it's just "omg, bike was here yesterday, but is not here today, find it!" then what are they really going to do? They are not calling a CSI team and collect fibers from the scene, this is not a TV show. In my experience, the police will follow the leads if they have them. I had several bikes stolen by homeless so they hid them in some commercial property few blocks away. One bike had a tracker, which they found and disabled but they did it near where they ultimately hid the bikes. Using the last location from the tracker cops were able to find the bikes and return them. If there were cameras they might be able to also find the perps and put them to jail.

plagiarist 4mo ago

They can get a subpoena for that, too. The bike and the parcel are already long gone by the time police do anything. (Nor will they do anything other than file a report if you are lucky.)

dw_arthur 4mo ago

The majority of crime is committed by a relatively small number of individuals. If citizens feel crime is out of control they need to vote in politicians and judges who sentence repeat offenders to long sentences or involuntary commitment.

Gigachad 4mo ago
Long sentences are far less effective than reliable enforcement. Something that seems to be very true in practice. If you steal or vandalise something in China, there is an extremely high chance you will get caught, you won't get a massive penalty, but it will be enough to cover the damages + some. If you for example knew that stealing had a penalty of 100% of the item value + 10% fine, with a 100% chance of getting caught, you'd never steal anything again even though the penalty is so much smaller than what it is currently in most countries. And then if you make a dumb decision as a teenager or in a lapse of judgement, it won't ruin your life.
- defen 4mo ago
  How does that work when you don't have enough assets to cover the cost of the thing you broke or stole?
  - Gigachad 4mo ago
    Of course you could still rack up a large penalty / jail time if you cause an incredible amount of damage quickly, but in general you'd catch people before they get that far. Catching a bike thief after the first 1-2 bikes rather than when they have stolen 100.
- ACCount37 4mo ago
  Long sentences and reliable enforcement are complimentary. If you can reliably prosecute the repeat offenders you catch, and put them behind bars for a long time? You stop them from committing more crimes. The crime rate falls, and the amount of enforcement manpower you have available per crime rises. Making it easier to catch and prosecute the remaining offenders. Most of the low level crime isn't done by "a dumb decision as a teenager or in a lapse of judgement". It's done by someone who has done it 5 times before and will do it again. Unless jailed, that is. The jail doesn't fix whatever's wrong with them, but it is hard to keep doing crimes while behind bars.

willis936 4mo ago

If only we had an amendment in the original bill of rights that drew the line here.

derektank 4mo ago
The 4th amendment doesn’t really have much of anything to say about public surveillance; the courts have largely agreed it does not constitute a search unless it reveals information that is not intended to be public (such as the thermal imaging of buildings) or reveals intimate personal information (such as documentation of habits through long term data aggregation).
- kelnos 4mo ago
  > (such as documentation of habits through long term data aggregation) Don't ALPRs do exactly this?

coffeefirst 4mo ago

A few years ago I had police knock on my door to see if our camera had footage of a crash on our block. This is not a problem. A little friction in the right places is a good thing.