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Police allow car break-ins to become a Seattle growth industry

240 points by kirillzubovsky 12y ago

autism_hurts 12y ago
Again, the police are never there to help you.
- danepowell 12y ago
  I disagree, and I don't think hyperbole furthers the discussion. I've been helped by police in many cities (in America and elsewhere) on several occasions. I've also witnessed harassment, abuse of power, and indifference- fortunately less so than the former.
  - meandave 12y ago
    The above commenter stated "The police are never there to help you". as in, that it is not their purpose. Although I have no doubt you have encountered some police that went above and beyond their job description to help you, this does not change the fact that helping you is not their job, or purpose.
    - brittonsmith 12y ago
      Many police cars used to have "To protect and serve" painted on their sides. I certainly remember that, although I haven't seen it in years. No one is saying they expect the police to carry your groceries inside. They are law enforcement officers whose job description is to enforce laws. If they can't/wont' do that because of external factors, then citizens should be told the truth about why that is. Vigilantism comes from a sense of injustice, that the system doesn't work for unknown reasons. Without that transparency, we are left to fill that void in understanding with our imaginations.
- donavanm 12y ago
  Depends on what you mean. If you're referencing that law enforcement does not have a duty to protect citizens heres a citation for others http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html. If you're saying that law enforcement will never render aid, thats prima facie incorrect.
lkrubner 12y ago
This is the flip side of the new powers granted to police under laws such as the Patriot Act. Yes, they have more power than ever before to spy on you. No, they won't arrest criminals, even after you have tracked down the criminals yourself. The government needs expanded powers so it can spy on you, not the criminals. Certain classes of criminals are high profile (drug dealers!) and there is a certain prestige in getting them, so the government is happy to go after them. But if we are talking about ordinary criminals, then the government can't be bothered. This is the flip side of increasing police powers: the police are increasingly immune to criticism, so they are increasingly lazy about going after the kinds of criminals that ordinary people actually care about.
- vorg 12y ago
  > the new powers granted to police under laws such as the Patriot Act. Yes, they have more power than ever before to spy on you. No, they won't arrest criminals, even after you have tracked down the criminals yourself. The government needs expanded powers so it can spy on you, not the criminal Surely it's possible to use the same database collecting info on Patriot Act violations to sift through and report on petty crimes also, even predict where and to/by whom they might happen? If the police won't do it then surely there's someone out there who could hack into the machines running the algorithms for such terrorism and high profile crime prediction to do the same for car breakins?
  - GhotiFish 12y ago
    >If the police won't do it then surely there's someone out there who could hack into the machines running the algorithms for such terrorism and high profile crime prediction to do the same for car breakins? you were sane right up until you hit NCIS hacker territory.
freditup 12y ago
I don't understand this story. Why wouldn't the police do anything? If I'm an officer who's motivated by helping others, it's a clear way to do that. If I'm motivated by a desire for justice, easy way to promote that. If I'm motivated by power, I can go take down the thieves and bring them down a notch. Perhaps one explanation is that the police get enough zany people calling in about enough zany things that they don't take any info from ordinary people seriously because it's that unreliable. But not sure if I even buy this explanation myself. Anybody with good knowledge of police workings have insight into why things happen like they do in the linked article?
- tatterdemalion 12y ago
  Most police are motivated by none of these things. Policing is a job. Depending on how career-oriented they are, they want to be promoted or they want not to be fired. And chasing down petty criminals that they probably don't have enough evidence to charge is not helping their stats, which is all that matters in either case.
  - a3n 12y ago
    Although individual discretion probably has some influence, this seems more like a policy issue.
- d4mi3n 12y ago
  I have a friend who works in the records department of the San Mateo shariff's office. She's on the graveyard shift, which is slow, and they're constantly getting crazy calls about all manner of things. It wouldn't surprise me if there were policies or protocols around when reported information is considered actionable considering all the silly stories I've heard about loonies calling the local PD.
  - jpatokal 12y ago
    I'm sure they do, but is "my iPhone was stolen, and the GPS tracker says it's at X" still a crazy call by a loonie in 2014?
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tonyplee 12y ago
You can try to forward links to this article to all the current + future politicians that is running in that area - anyone that is running for City, County, State, Congress - CC a few the reporters in the area and asked for statements from them on see what their responses, CC the head of police in the mailing list also and CC dispatcher's name / email if possible. From time to time, post their responses on some public forums. My mom has accident in Sacramento downtown uneven sidewalk once, bruise pretty badly. Her doctor take care of her. I just email the city manager + couple elective officials 's public email addresses. I got 10+ follow up emails from various folks in couple day and the issue was fixed in a few days.
efiftythree 12y ago
Car prowl reports are generated by social networks in Seattle. Everything from Facebook groups to community based Twitter accounts and blogs. Most everyone here knows that the Police will do nothing so they have turned to a method that basically tells people when prowl rates are up in their neighborhood. I guess at least then they might have a chance to look up their insurance policy info ahead of potential breakin activity.
azinman2 12y ago
While a sad and interesting story, why is this on HN?
- _delirium 12y ago
  Probably the same reason it's making the rounds on Facebook at the moment. All else equal, this kind of website tends towards resharing/retweeting/upvoting identitiarian, political, and outrage type stories. The management does make an admirable effort to nudge it away from that, so a somewhat lower percentage of HN stories are in that category, but it's still quite a lot of them. (Also, it hits the "things of concern to affluent white American urbanites living in the U.S.'s somewhat dysfunctional cities" category, which is somewhat overrepresented here.)
- VLM 12y ago
  There's an extremely strong bias toward urban living here on HN, and this is a fairly stereotypical "middle class person tries to move into the big city" story.
- gojomo 12y ago
  In addition to the 'urbanite high expectations outrage' factor, the clash is driven by a new technology: location tracking of stolen goods. This leads to interesting hacker-cultural questions: How will policing adapt, if at all? Can more tech help?
Chevalier 12y ago
I really hate to see blind hatred for the police on HN. It's a tough goddamn job, people, made all the more so by political pressure to improve statistics. As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, police are forced to focus on serious crimes and solvable crimes and avoid minor and unsolvable crimes. Nobody wants it to work that way, but departments are hammered when they bring down crime stats. This story is pretty outrageous, but I understand why cops are leery of having citizens pursue and enforce vigilante justice. This could EASILY have led to a shootout. I have no explanation or excuse why the cops refused to investigate the caller's lead -- and maybe there is no reasonable explanation -- but I'd rather give them the benefit of the doubt than insist "police are never there to help you."
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- vonklaus 12y ago
  Blind hatred for police seems to stem from experience. My father said once (after I had a particularly horrible, and unfair besting, by the police) that I had no respect for the police because I had never been in a situation where I had seen heroism, or been helped. The police have never stopped a robber from burgling my house, or stopped a violent crime from happening to me or anyone I know. The point is, that anecdotally, the police have never appeared to be a positive force around me, except intangibly. They only seem to focus on things I myself, and many of my peers, consider acceptable victimless crimes. They focus on padding revenue by stopping speeding violations, and petty drug offenses. Largely, police appear to regularly abuse their authority, ignore relevant data, and serve an agenda I am diametrically opposed to. Obviously, this isn't a scientific study, but I think it encapsulates the hatred for police. Also, there are many instances on youtube and the news, of them either covering for fellow officers, or ignoring basic laws, like speeding, cell-phone use ore petty drugs. They need to wear cameras for objective scrutiny rather than be allowed to BE the law. EDIT: I should say that of course, there are police officers who work hard, are incorruptible and are genuine upstanding citizens who enforce laws and are just. The simple fact is that a percentage of bad actors can disrupt the flow enough to severely damage an institution if given significant power. See the banking industry for an analogy of this. I do not mean to discount all police, and many do positive things in society.
VLM 12y ago
Its a stereotypical urban vs suburban vs rural thing. Its only new in the sense of it being hip to live in urban areas. Always been this way. There has always been a different social contract between the cops and each social class. The cops have no idea why an urban person is calling them because if they're upper class they are rich so they don't care and a normal personal assistant isn't going to go all batman and hunt down thieves, and if they're poor then they have their own ethnic / gang type of ways to fix this in addition to deep seated victim shaming (she was asking for it, what kind of idiot leaves her purse in a car in an urban area, etc). The urban cops just don't know what to think about middle class people, or middle class outlooks on policing. In the burbs they'd do exactly what the author was expecting, dispatch a squad, take care of business. In a rural area they wouldn't have a crime like this, but something similar would be handled like the burb example. There's a social contract and developed protocols and expectations and it would all be OK. Not saying its right or wrong, just saying its a fact that pioneers skeletons always end up having arrows sticking outta their backs.
- enobrev 12y ago
  I agree with your point that that's the way things go in the city. I've lived in 4 major US cities in my life, and the cops respond to some things and don't respond to others. It's generally a numbers game. I also agree that in the suburbs and rural areas, the numbers work in the favor of the local police. I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean in regards to the the ethnic / gang type way of fixing things in poor neighborhoods. Also, I'm not sure if you've been to Seattle. I lived there for two years, recently. I wouldn't really call Seattle ethnic, gang-type, or poor.
Sonicmouse 12y ago
If it were a celebrity or any other high-profile citizen, you know they would bring out the SWAT team and the criminals would be locked up for 20 years. But, when it's a "nobody important" tax paying citizen, then go f-yourself. Congrats goes out to everyone who voted in the current representatives. Wonderful job.
- wyager 12y ago
  >Congrats goes out to everyone who voted in the current representatives. Perhaps there are more fundamental issues than "people voted for the wrong person". For example, there may be problems with the governmental structure itself, not just who populates the structure.
- randallsquared 12y ago
  Do you really believe that voting in team A instead of team B would have helped ordinary citizens?
  - PhantomGremlin 12y ago
    Yes, I believe that our republic is strengthened if, occasionally, "throw the bums out" occurs. Even if it results in "meet the new boss, same as the old boss".
    - psychometry 12y ago
      Not always. See: 2010 Tea Party backlash to Obama.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
panarky 12y ago
Take care of the small stuff and the big stuff will take care of itself. The broken windows theory is a criminological theory of the norm-setting and signaling effect of urban disorder and vandalism on additional crime and anti-social behavior. The theory states that maintaining and monitoring urban environments in a well-ordered condition may stop further vandalism and escalation into more serious crime[1]. From the article: There also was no proof who did the smash-and-grab, so even if [the police] had come, it would have been tricky to charge them with anything. That's hogwash. Possession of stolen property is a criminal offence in Washington State[2]. The crime and disorder in downtown Seattle is shocking, even to people from other big cities[3]. In 2013, Seattle had 2,356 property crimes per 100,000 population[4]. By comparison, New York City had a property crime rate of just 795 per 100,000[5]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory [2] http://www.avvo.com/legal-guides/ugc/possession-stolen-property-Washington-State http://www.avvo.com/legal-guides/ugc/possession-stolen-prope... [3] http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2021696782_westneat28xml.html http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2021696782_westneat28... [4] http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/preliminary-semiannual-uniform-crime-report-january-june-2013/tables/table-4-cuts/table_4_offenses_reported_to_law_enforcement_by_state_oklahoma_through_wisconsin_2013.xls http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/p... [5] http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/preliminary-semiannual-uniform-crime-report-january-june-2013/tables/table-4-cuts/table_4_offenses_reported_to_law_enforcement_by_state_montana_through_ohio_2013.xls http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/p...
- x0x0 12y ago
  sf is the same -- the city is a dump, and people there tolerate a level of misbehavior from the street trash that is stunning. One of them attempted to kill my so by chasing her around a parked car with a screwdriver trying to stab her while a bunch of sf asshole pedestrians crossed the street to avoid getting involved. In the middle of the afternoon. We came from nyc and stuff like this -- and it's far from the only incident -- wasn't tolerated.
  - raldi 12y ago
x0x0 12y ago
This article is beyond stupid. The author spends a thousand words or more whining without once mentioning either budgets or civilian oversight of the police force. It's like the policy was created from thin fucking air, for no reason at all! A cursory googling found this: In the weeks before Monday's formal unveiling, McGinn released several details of his 2012 proposal, which will now be scrutinized by the City Council. Councilmembers, who will pass a final plan in November, have already indicated they're leery of the mayor's idea to reduce the Seattle Police Budget by $2.4 million by keeping 26 sworn officer positions vacant. [1] Wow, is there a possibility that could be related? I actually don't know; I don't live in seattle and I don't really care. But a minimal amount of effort for his readers would be asking the police chief or PR person why this policy was created. [1] http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/McGinn-budget-cuts-112-jobs-deficit-90-mil-thru-2189304.php http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/McGinn-budget-cuts-11...
chrismealy 12y ago
Seattle has half the cops that some big cities have (20 per 10,000 residents). New York and Chicago have around 40, Boston 33. http://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/police-officers-per-capita-rates-employment-for-city-departments.html http://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/police-offi...
- bhc 12y ago
  The level of public safety in a particular city frequently comes down to how much property tax its population is wiling to pay.
  - icelancer 12y ago
    Property tax in King County is no joke; both percentage-wise and absolute costs. Real estate prices are very high here and taxes are not friendly, either (lack of state income tax is shifted elsewhere). Spending two gazillion dollars on a stupid tunnel that is already going to cost 2x estimates is just another fine feature of this idiotic bureaucracy in my area.
donavanm 12y ago
This is a silly op ed piece designed to generate outrage based on a single, biased, anecdotal incident. The Seattle media, from kiro to the stranger, has devolved to this on just about every issue. Whether the issue is crime, urban planning, or bike lanes its much easier to generate their pennies from outrage than actually reporting on a substantive issues. By reading these "stories" we do nothing but reinforce the negative feedback loop. If single sourced anecdotal evidence is all we need I'll share mine: In the past two years my house has been broken in to once & prowled twice (that I know of). My car has been broken in to twice. My neighbors cars have been broken in to three times, at least. In every incident Seattle PD have been on scene within 7 to 15 minutes. Reports after the fact usually get a single car/officer. In progress has been multiple cars boxing in a sweeping the neighborhood. As I recall canine has come out twice to try and track perpetrators on foot. For the home burglary the responding officer spent about an hour walking the scene, taking photos, and trying to recover prints. Dispatch and responding officers have never been anything less than responsive, courteous, and professional. But that's not enticing link bait, is it? Edit: The plethora of downvotes without comment are fun. Do you object to my characterization of seattle media as "link bait" or posting my own anecdotal incidents? For context this is my neighborhood: http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2014/10/24/shooting-suspect-in-custody-after-standoff-in-south-seattle/ http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2014/10/24/shooting-suspect-in... http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2014/10/18/police-arrest-man-for-shooting-which-sent-two-men-to-hospital/ http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2014/10/18/police-arrest-man-f...
- coderjames 12y ago
  So police kept showing up. Did any of that policing actually solve anything? Sounds like a ridiculously high amount of crime for one person in two years.
  - donavanm 12y ago
    No. And even if it had led to conviction every time I personally dont believe it would have solved anything either. However the main story is explicitly about our police departments lack of "appropriate" reaction. And so my own anecdote is explicitly about response and reaction, not results. With regards to the high crime rate maybe Im just lucky. Some of those incidents had overlap, like both my car and the neighbors. It's totaled about 5 calls in the past two years. The city of Seattle does a good job on publishing crime & emergency services data in a timely manner. You're welcome to browse from the original source or a number of third parties. For reference my neighborhood is "Beacon Hill" bordering "Rainier Valley", south of I90. http://www.seattle.gov/police/crime/onlinecrimemaps.htm http://www.seattle.gov/police/crime/onlinecrimemaps.htm
jmspring 12y ago
Washington is a conceal carry friendly state, I wonder how reporting an attempt at a citizens arrest would have changed the situation. Here in Santa Cruz we have a very high property/lifestyle crime problem, thankfully the PD haven't given up, but the courts have made things here basically catch and release. The story basically comes down to laziness on the part of the police. Seattle doesn't have the budget problems of Oakland where this same situation has basically been going on for a decade.
- PhantomGremlin 12y ago
  > Washington is a conceal carry friendly state, I wonder how reporting an attempt at a citizens arrest would have changed the situation. I'm a big believer in the Second Amendment. It's not about duck hunting. And in an ideal world what you suggest would be OK. HOWEVER, we don't live in an ideal world. So IMO concealed carry is now about personal protection and not about retrieving stolen iPhones.
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
    "It's not about duck hunting" Yeah, it's about suppressing slave revolts.
    - PhantomGremlin 12y ago
      It's about a lot of things, not just slave revolts. E.g. the whiskey rebellion:[1] [President] Washington responded by sending peace commissioners ... while at the same time calling on governors to send a militia force to enforce the tax. With 13,000 militia provided ... Washington rode at the head of an army to suppress the insurgency And also to help protect individual rights against an overbearing government. Of course now that we've been providing every small town sheriff with APCs and military weapons, that deterrent effect might no longer be as relevant as it once was. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion
- donavanm 12y ago
  I think you misunderstand the intent and extent of "citizens arrest." Trying to retrieve property by force looks a lot like armed robbery. An individuals CPL status is nearly orthogonal to any armed confrontation. The police will arrest of you brandishing a weapon, CPL or not. Conversely if you use a firearm for self defense a CPL is irrelevant to the appropriate use of force. And in any offensive use of a weapon you will go to jail. Just the other week a homeless man down the street was arrested as he continued to shoot at two criminals after they were no longer a threat: http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2014/10/18/police-arrest-man-for-shooting-which-sent-two-men-to-hospital/ http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2014/10/18/police-arrest-man-f...
adekok 12y ago
The Seattle police lost a lawsuit about the ability to use overwhelming force: http://crosscut.com/2014/10/20/law-justice/122409/judge-tosses-out-officer-lawsuit-against-use-force/ http://crosscut.com/2014/10/20/law-justice/122409/judge-toss... But they won't use any force against known criminals who are right in front of them. Could the two be related? Especially because the "non-arrest" policy for break-ins appears to be recent.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  Telling cops not to use overwhelming force is like telling white people not to use racial slurs, the good ones are 'oh ok' and the others, hoo boy.
iramiller 12y ago
Perhaps this is a also a growth opportunity for a private security firm. Call us, we will use our trained armed personnel to confront the suspects and return your stuff. I would hope that it would not take too many incidents of private security 'resolving' issues to see that a police force doing its job is a far more preferred solution.
- tantalor 12y ago
  Just call Phoenix Jones! Seriously, how much would you pay for private security to return your stolen iPhone?
  - kybernetyk 12y ago
    Make it an insurance type of contract. Pay $9.95/mo and get your stuff back when it's stolen.
- jeangenie 12y ago
  This idea is the basis for mafia and similar organizations the world over.
- jedberg 12y ago
  I don't think it is legal to use deadly force to retrieve stolen goods, yours or anyone else's. You'd have to staff your firm with off duty cops or something to skirt that law.
  - rdl 12y ago
    You don't use deadly force to retrieve the stolen goods; you use regular force to retrieve them (at a level supported by your insurer, which is far below the limits of the law), and then use deadly force if the thieves threaten your life in the course of doing so. (Even the police are not supposed to be using deadly force to apprehend property crimes; the justification for deadly force is officer safety or the safety of others.)
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
poopsintub 12y ago
Call up your local news stations and see if they can put some pressure on the police department?
tralala123 12y ago
What??? I thought that if marijuana was legalized in Washington, that the world would be a better place... Cops will be freed up to deal with "real crime" and people would magically be better citizens... What could have gone wrong? Nearly all crime rates have gone up.
muyuu 12y ago
This is the kind of environment that leads to the creation of vigilante brigades and mafia-style syndicates.
IanDrake 12y ago
"Help! A van with license plate XXX-123 just shot at a guy in the parking lot here...hold on, what did you say...[muffled sound]...there's a badge on his belt, I think he's a cop from (insert adjacent town). I can still see the van, it just parked down the road at..." You get the idea. Call it in from the nearest pay phone and leave. Guaranteed response. I'd only do this if I lived in an area with a bunch of deadbeat cops. In MA our cops do their job without having to be tricked into doing it...the courts on the other hand seem to let everyone off.
wavesounds 12y ago
When this happened to my friend in Berkeley CA we called the police and after waiting almost an hour the officer that came didn't even get out of his car, he told us to file a report online. There was a security camera pointed at the lot which he said was "pointless" to try to access.
JumpCrisscross 12y ago
I used to commute between Manhattan to Stamford. A 5AM train would take me up and an 8, 9 or 10PM would haul me back. Staying awake for the duration of the return journey was rare. This led to curiosities: going to sleep in Stamford and waking up, four hours later, in Stamford again (Sartre had nothing on this fate) because you slept through arriving and then re-departing from Grand Central. Or waking up phoneless. I lost my phone a few times. I have a habit of lolling over when dozing on trains. This encourages my polished iPhone to slip out. The Metro-North line tours a wide socioeconomic spectrum. I understand the temptation I was taunting some of my fellow passengers with. Most of the time the opportunists were savvy enough to turn off the radio. Not always. Once I saw my phone blinking in from Rye. I stopped at their police station and showed the officer my iPad. Without question, we were on our way. The address I pinpointed resulted in a mother subjecting her son to an Inquisition. Nothing came of it. We apologised. Copper suggested we try the house across the street. Embarrassed from the last encounter, I demurred. He walked up to the door. A young man answered and yes: he had an iPhone. A few minutes later, I was (mentally) $650 richer. (I went back to the lady at the first house with a bottle of wine and the local bookstore's encyclopaedia of steamships—he had boat models in his room). New York City and State get a lot of shit for our police forces. And yes, we have a high frequency of idiocy. But swinging the other way, towards ineffectual policing—as Seattle appears to have—doesn't create strong societies. +1 New York.
- rayiner 12y ago
  I used to take Metro-North from New Rochelle down to Grand Central, and I miss it so much. Four trains an hour during the rush, always arriving within a minute or two of schedule. The 8:03 Amtrak between Baltimore and DC hasn't been on time in two weeks. As for the wide socieconomic spectrum--the only thing that ever bothered me about the crowd on MNR was the drunk suburban kids that'd take the 1am with me Saturday morning. Nothing like coming home from a long day at work and having some 19 year old Westchester brat puke all over the floor.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
rdl 12y ago
I wish insurers could pay the direct costs of having state police (I think there's statewide jurisdiction for all law enforcement agencies in WA, but WSP would certainly have jurisdiction), bait cars, and some serious resolution/retribution here.
dabockster 12y ago
I'm learning Javascript and the MEAN stack right now, and I'm really interested in building a small crowdsourced website for this.
kyleblarson 12y ago
It seems like a day doesn't go by when I don't read an article like this one and think of NWA's succinct summary of police in America.
homeinvasion333 12y ago
Home Invaders, call all home invaders, Seattle and big City USA. 0.) alleged the Police are out chasing bank robbers and allow car break-in 1.)why important? the new 'cartel' pays extra for your PERSONAL info for medical ID theft. 2.) the meth addicts who are up all night strike your mailbox to make sure they have a complete profile on U. 3.)since your garage door opener or home address allows the HOME INVADERS to get a copy of keys to your home. 4.) Mexican drug cartels have great stories they tell the neighbors, including pesticide pest control, lost cat animal control with uniforms, etc. when a gun is held to the head of your children, you will give up your pin, passwords to online bank accounts and combination number to the secret safe. 5.) USA citizens Trust the Police, especially the Detroit ones who never sent the rape kits to the lab. So, the serial criminals kept raping and home invading. 6.) This pattern is nationwide. Police never use the Internet. In Florida, the popular women fitness center car trunks break-ins target your wallet. Someone keeps an eye on you while you are exercising at the fitness center. The new master keys make it easy to take your WALLET, smartphone, HOME KEYS and even spare set of car keys. Does this happen during the day in broad daylight, with visitors from out of town driving a 'rental car'? when is your HOME INVADER going to invade?
ck2 12y ago
So 911 honestly believed the thieves were armed and dangerous and refused to dispatch? There's a lawsuit right there. If they thought the victim was going to get shot, then you should have said, I am going right over there now to 123 Main Street to confront them in so-and-so colored car. Then you wait and when the police show up at that car THEN you go over and make the theft claim. Victim was entirely too polite with dispatch.
rasz_pl 12y ago
What you do when dispatch refuses to help you? you suddenly remember perp was smoking pot and/or had a gun. Or you could become an important politician. Couple of years ago whole police force of my country capital city was mobilised because member of parliament wifes car got stolen. Took them an hour to track it down using GSM triangulation (purse with phone in the car). Guess what happens when you tell cops your car was stolen, but you have active tracker in it and can tell them where it is. Easier to get few big guys and deal with it yourself.

240 points by kirillzubovsky 12y ago

autism_hurts 12y ago

Again, the police are never there to help you.

danepowell 12y ago
I disagree, and I don't think hyperbole furthers the discussion. I've been helped by police in many cities (in America and elsewhere) on several occasions. I've also witnessed harassment, abuse of power, and indifference- fortunately less so than the former.
- meandave 12y ago
  The above commenter stated "The police are never there to help you". as in, that it is not their purpose. Although I have no doubt you have encountered some police that went above and beyond their job description to help you, this does not change the fact that helping you is not their job, or purpose.
  - brittonsmith 12y ago
    Many police cars used to have "To protect and serve" painted on their sides. I certainly remember that, although I haven't seen it in years. No one is saying they expect the police to carry your groceries inside. They are law enforcement officers whose job description is to enforce laws. If they can't/wont' do that because of external factors, then citizens should be told the truth about why that is. Vigilantism comes from a sense of injustice, that the system doesn't work for unknown reasons. Without that transparency, we are left to fill that void in understanding with our imaginations.
donavanm 12y ago
Depends on what you mean. If you're referencing that law enforcement does not have a duty to protect citizens heres a citation for others http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html. If you're saying that law enforcement will never render aid, thats prima facie incorrect.

lkrubner 12y ago

This is the flip side of the new powers granted to police under laws such as the Patriot Act. Yes, they have more power than ever before to spy on you. No, they won't arrest criminals, even after you have tracked down the criminals yourself. The government needs expanded powers so it can spy on you, not the criminals. Certain classes of criminals are high profile (drug dealers!) and there is a certain prestige in getting them, so the government is happy to go after them. But if we are talking about ordinary criminals, then the government can't be bothered. This is the flip side of increasing police powers: the police are increasingly immune to criticism, so they are increasingly lazy about going after the kinds of criminals that ordinary people actually care about.

vorg 12y ago
> the new powers granted to police under laws such as the Patriot Act. Yes, they have more power than ever before to spy on you. No, they won't arrest criminals, even after you have tracked down the criminals yourself. The government needs expanded powers so it can spy on you, not the criminal Surely it's possible to use the same database collecting info on Patriot Act violations to sift through and report on petty crimes also, even predict where and to/by whom they might happen? If the police won't do it then surely there's someone out there who could hack into the machines running the algorithms for such terrorism and high profile crime prediction to do the same for car breakins?
- GhotiFish 12y ago
  >If the police won't do it then surely there's someone out there who could hack into the machines running the algorithms for such terrorism and high profile crime prediction to do the same for car breakins? you were sane right up until you hit NCIS hacker territory.

freditup 12y ago

I don't understand this story. Why wouldn't the police do anything? If I'm an officer who's motivated by helping others, it's a clear way to do that. If I'm motivated by a desire for justice, easy way to promote that. If I'm motivated by power, I can go take down the thieves and bring them down a notch. Perhaps one explanation is that the police get enough zany people calling in about enough zany things that they don't take any info from ordinary people seriously because it's that unreliable. But not sure if I even buy this explanation myself. Anybody with good knowledge of police workings have insight into why things happen like they do in the linked article?

tatterdemalion 12y ago
Most police are motivated by none of these things. Policing is a job. Depending on how career-oriented they are, they want to be promoted or they want not to be fired. And chasing down petty criminals that they probably don't have enough evidence to charge is not helping their stats, which is all that matters in either case.
- a3n 12y ago
  Although individual discretion probably has some influence, this seems more like a policy issue.
d4mi3n 12y ago
I have a friend who works in the records department of the San Mateo shariff's office. She's on the graveyard shift, which is slow, and they're constantly getting crazy calls about all manner of things. It wouldn't surprise me if there were policies or protocols around when reported information is considered actionable considering all the silly stories I've heard about loonies calling the local PD.
- jpatokal 12y ago
  I'm sure they do, but is "my iPhone was stolen, and the GPS tracker says it's at X" still a crazy call by a loonie in 2014?

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tonyplee 12y ago

You can try to forward links to this article to all the current + future politicians that is running in that area - anyone that is running for City, County, State, Congress - CC a few the reporters in the area and asked for statements from them on see what their responses, CC the head of police in the mailing list also and CC dispatcher's name / email if possible. From time to time, post their responses on some public forums. My mom has accident in Sacramento downtown uneven sidewalk once, bruise pretty badly. Her doctor take care of her. I just email the city manager + couple elective officials 's public email addresses. I got 10+ follow up emails from various folks in couple day and the issue was fixed in a few days.

efiftythree 12y ago

Car prowl reports are generated by social networks in Seattle. Everything from Facebook groups to community based Twitter accounts and blogs. Most everyone here knows that the Police will do nothing so they have turned to a method that basically tells people when prowl rates are up in their neighborhood. I guess at least then they might have a chance to look up their insurance policy info ahead of potential breakin activity.

azinman2 12y ago

While a sad and interesting story, why is this on HN?

_delirium 12y ago
Probably the same reason it's making the rounds on Facebook at the moment. All else equal, this kind of website tends towards resharing/retweeting/upvoting identitiarian, political, and outrage type stories. The management does make an admirable effort to nudge it away from that, so a somewhat lower percentage of HN stories are in that category, but it's still quite a lot of them. (Also, it hits the "things of concern to affluent white American urbanites living in the U.S.'s somewhat dysfunctional cities" category, which is somewhat overrepresented here.)
VLM 12y ago
There's an extremely strong bias toward urban living here on HN, and this is a fairly stereotypical "middle class person tries to move into the big city" story.
gojomo 12y ago
In addition to the 'urbanite high expectations outrage' factor, the clash is driven by a new technology: location tracking of stolen goods. This leads to interesting hacker-cultural questions: How will policing adapt, if at all? Can more tech help?

Chevalier 12y ago

I really hate to see blind hatred for the police on HN. It's a tough goddamn job, people, made all the more so by political pressure to improve statistics. As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, police are forced to focus on serious crimes and solvable crimes and avoid minor and unsolvable crimes. Nobody wants it to work that way, but departments are hammered when they bring down crime stats. This story is pretty outrageous, but I understand why cops are leery of having citizens pursue and enforce vigilante justice. This could EASILY have led to a shootout. I have no explanation or excuse why the cops refused to investigate the caller's lead -- and maybe there is no reasonable explanation -- but I'd rather give them the benefit of the doubt than insist "police are never there to help you."

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vonklaus 12y ago
Blind hatred for police seems to stem from experience. My father said once (after I had a particularly horrible, and unfair besting, by the police) that I had no respect for the police because I had never been in a situation where I had seen heroism, or been helped. The police have never stopped a robber from burgling my house, or stopped a violent crime from happening to me or anyone I know. The point is, that anecdotally, the police have never appeared to be a positive force around me, except intangibly. They only seem to focus on things I myself, and many of my peers, consider acceptable victimless crimes. They focus on padding revenue by stopping speeding violations, and petty drug offenses. Largely, police appear to regularly abuse their authority, ignore relevant data, and serve an agenda I am diametrically opposed to. Obviously, this isn't a scientific study, but I think it encapsulates the hatred for police. Also, there are many instances on youtube and the news, of them either covering for fellow officers, or ignoring basic laws, like speeding, cell-phone use ore petty drugs. They need to wear cameras for objective scrutiny rather than be allowed to BE the law. EDIT: I should say that of course, there are police officers who work hard, are incorruptible and are genuine upstanding citizens who enforce laws and are just. The simple fact is that a percentage of bad actors can disrupt the flow enough to severely damage an institution if given significant power. See the banking industry for an analogy of this. I do not mean to discount all police, and many do positive things in society.

VLM 12y ago

Its a stereotypical urban vs suburban vs rural thing. Its only new in the sense of it being hip to live in urban areas. Always been this way. There has always been a different social contract between the cops and each social class. The cops have no idea why an urban person is calling them because if they're upper class they are rich so they don't care and a normal personal assistant isn't going to go all batman and hunt down thieves, and if they're poor then they have their own ethnic / gang type of ways to fix this in addition to deep seated victim shaming (she was asking for it, what kind of idiot leaves her purse in a car in an urban area, etc). The urban cops just don't know what to think about middle class people, or middle class outlooks on policing. In the burbs they'd do exactly what the author was expecting, dispatch a squad, take care of business. In a rural area they wouldn't have a crime like this, but something similar would be handled like the burb example. There's a social contract and developed protocols and expectations and it would all be OK. Not saying its right or wrong, just saying its a fact that pioneers skeletons always end up having arrows sticking outta their backs.

enobrev 12y ago
I agree with your point that that's the way things go in the city. I've lived in 4 major US cities in my life, and the cops respond to some things and don't respond to others. It's generally a numbers game. I also agree that in the suburbs and rural areas, the numbers work in the favor of the local police. I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean in regards to the the ethnic / gang type way of fixing things in poor neighborhoods. Also, I'm not sure if you've been to Seattle. I lived there for two years, recently. I wouldn't really call Seattle ethnic, gang-type, or poor.

Sonicmouse 12y ago

If it were a celebrity or any other high-profile citizen, you know they would bring out the SWAT team and the criminals would be locked up for 20 years. But, when it's a "nobody important" tax paying citizen, then go f-yourself. Congrats goes out to everyone who voted in the current representatives. Wonderful job.

wyager 12y ago
>Congrats goes out to everyone who voted in the current representatives. Perhaps there are more fundamental issues than "people voted for the wrong person". For example, there may be problems with the governmental structure itself, not just who populates the structure.
randallsquared 12y ago
Do you really believe that voting in team A instead of team B would have helped ordinary citizens?
- PhantomGremlin 12y ago
  Yes, I believe that our republic is strengthened if, occasionally, "throw the bums out" occurs. Even if it results in "meet the new boss, same as the old boss".
  - psychometry 12y ago
    Not always. See: 2010 Tea Party backlash to Obama.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

panarky 12y ago

Take care of the small stuff and the big stuff will take care of itself. The broken windows theory is a criminological theory of the norm-setting and signaling effect of urban disorder and vandalism on additional crime and anti-social behavior. The theory states that maintaining and monitoring urban environments in a well-ordered condition may stop further vandalism and escalation into more serious crime[1]. From the article: There also was no proof who did the smash-and-grab, so even if [the police] had come, it would have been tricky to charge them with anything. That's hogwash. Possession of stolen property is a criminal offence in Washington State[2]. The crime and disorder in downtown Seattle is shocking, even to people from other big cities[3]. In 2013, Seattle had 2,356 property crimes per 100,000 population[4]. By comparison, New York City had a property crime rate of just 795 per 100,000[5]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory [2] http://www.avvo.com/legal-guides/ugc/possession-stolen-property-Washington-State http://www.avvo.com/legal-guides/ugc/possession-stolen-prope... [3] http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2021696782_westneat28xml.html http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2021696782_westneat28... [4] http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/preliminary-semiannual-uniform-crime-report-january-june-2013/tables/table-4-cuts/table_4_offenses_reported_to_law_enforcement_by_state_oklahoma_through_wisconsin_2013.xls http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/p... [5] http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/preliminary-semiannual-uniform-crime-report-january-june-2013/tables/table-4-cuts/table_4_offenses_reported_to_law_enforcement_by_state_montana_through_ohio_2013.xls http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/p...

x0x0 12y ago
sf is the same -- the city is a dump, and people there tolerate a level of misbehavior from the street trash that is stunning. One of them attempted to kill my so by chasing her around a parked car with a screwdriver trying to stab her while a bunch of sf asshole pedestrians crossed the street to avoid getting involved. In the middle of the afternoon. We came from nyc and stuff like this -- and it's far from the only incident -- wasn't tolerated.
- raldi 12y ago

x0x0 12y ago

This article is beyond stupid. The author spends a thousand words or more whining without once mentioning either budgets or civilian oversight of the police force. It's like the policy was created from thin fucking air, for no reason at all! A cursory googling found this: In the weeks before Monday's formal unveiling, McGinn released several details of his 2012 proposal, which will now be scrutinized by the City Council. Councilmembers, who will pass a final plan in November, have already indicated they're leery of the mayor's idea to reduce the Seattle Police Budget by $2.4 million by keeping 26 sworn officer positions vacant. [1] Wow, is there a possibility that could be related? I actually don't know; I don't live in seattle and I don't really care. But a minimal amount of effort for his readers would be asking the police chief or PR person why this policy was created. [1] http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/McGinn-budget-cuts-112-jobs-deficit-90-mil-thru-2189304.php http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/McGinn-budget-cuts-11...

chrismealy 12y ago

Seattle has half the cops that some big cities have (20 per 10,000 residents). New York and Chicago have around 40, Boston 33. http://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/police-officers-per-capita-rates-employment-for-city-departments.html http://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/police-offi...

bhc 12y ago
The level of public safety in a particular city frequently comes down to how much property tax its population is wiling to pay.
- icelancer 12y ago
  Property tax in King County is no joke; both percentage-wise and absolute costs. Real estate prices are very high here and taxes are not friendly, either (lack of state income tax is shifted elsewhere). Spending two gazillion dollars on a stupid tunnel that is already going to cost 2x estimates is just another fine feature of this idiotic bureaucracy in my area.

donavanm 12y ago

This is a silly op ed piece designed to generate outrage based on a single, biased, anecdotal incident. The Seattle media, from kiro to the stranger, has devolved to this on just about every issue. Whether the issue is crime, urban planning, or bike lanes its much easier to generate their pennies from outrage than actually reporting on a substantive issues. By reading these "stories" we do nothing but reinforce the negative feedback loop. If single sourced anecdotal evidence is all we need I'll share mine: In the past two years my house has been broken in to once & prowled twice (that I know of). My car has been broken in to twice. My neighbors cars have been broken in to three times, at least. In every incident Seattle PD have been on scene within 7 to 15 minutes. Reports after the fact usually get a single car/officer. In progress has been multiple cars boxing in a sweeping the neighborhood. As I recall canine has come out twice to try and track perpetrators on foot. For the home burglary the responding officer spent about an hour walking the scene, taking photos, and trying to recover prints. Dispatch and responding officers have never been anything less than responsive, courteous, and professional. But that's not enticing link bait, is it? Edit: The plethora of downvotes without comment are fun. Do you object to my characterization of seattle media as "link bait" or posting my own anecdotal incidents? For context this is my neighborhood: http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2014/10/24/shooting-suspect-in-custody-after-standoff-in-south-seattle/ http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2014/10/24/shooting-suspect-in... http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2014/10/18/police-arrest-man-for-shooting-which-sent-two-men-to-hospital/ http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2014/10/18/police-arrest-man-f...

coderjames 12y ago
So police kept showing up. Did any of that policing actually solve anything? Sounds like a ridiculously high amount of crime for one person in two years.
- donavanm 12y ago
  No. And even if it had led to conviction every time I personally dont believe it would have solved anything either. However the main story is explicitly about our police departments lack of "appropriate" reaction. And so my own anecdote is explicitly about response and reaction, not results. With regards to the high crime rate maybe Im just lucky. Some of those incidents had overlap, like both my car and the neighbors. It's totaled about 5 calls in the past two years. The city of Seattle does a good job on publishing crime & emergency services data in a timely manner. You're welcome to browse from the original source or a number of third parties. For reference my neighborhood is "Beacon Hill" bordering "Rainier Valley", south of I90. http://www.seattle.gov/police/crime/onlinecrimemaps.htm http://www.seattle.gov/police/crime/onlinecrimemaps.htm

jmspring 12y ago

Washington is a conceal carry friendly state, I wonder how reporting an attempt at a citizens arrest would have changed the situation. Here in Santa Cruz we have a very high property/lifestyle crime problem, thankfully the PD haven't given up, but the courts have made things here basically catch and release. The story basically comes down to laziness on the part of the police. Seattle doesn't have the budget problems of Oakland where this same situation has basically been going on for a decade.

PhantomGremlin 12y ago
> Washington is a conceal carry friendly state, I wonder how reporting an attempt at a citizens arrest would have changed the situation. I'm a big believer in the Second Amendment. It's not about duck hunting. And in an ideal world what you suggest would be OK. HOWEVER, we don't live in an ideal world. So IMO concealed carry is now about personal protection and not about retrieving stolen iPhones.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  "It's not about duck hunting" Yeah, it's about suppressing slave revolts.
  - PhantomGremlin 12y ago
    It's about a lot of things, not just slave revolts. E.g. the whiskey rebellion:[1] [President] Washington responded by sending peace commissioners ... while at the same time calling on governors to send a militia force to enforce the tax. With 13,000 militia provided ... Washington rode at the head of an army to suppress the insurgency And also to help protect individual rights against an overbearing government. Of course now that we've been providing every small town sheriff with APCs and military weapons, that deterrent effect might no longer be as relevant as it once was. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion
donavanm 12y ago
I think you misunderstand the intent and extent of "citizens arrest." Trying to retrieve property by force looks a lot like armed robbery. An individuals CPL status is nearly orthogonal to any armed confrontation. The police will arrest of you brandishing a weapon, CPL or not. Conversely if you use a firearm for self defense a CPL is irrelevant to the appropriate use of force. And in any offensive use of a weapon you will go to jail. Just the other week a homeless man down the street was arrested as he continued to shoot at two criminals after they were no longer a threat: http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2014/10/18/police-arrest-man-for-shooting-which-sent-two-men-to-hospital/ http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2014/10/18/police-arrest-man-f...

adekok 12y ago

The Seattle police lost a lawsuit about the ability to use overwhelming force: http://crosscut.com/2014/10/20/law-justice/122409/judge-tosses-out-officer-lawsuit-against-use-force/ http://crosscut.com/2014/10/20/law-justice/122409/judge-toss... But they won't use any force against known criminals who are right in front of them. Could the two be related? Especially because the "non-arrest" policy for break-ins appears to be recent.

GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
Telling cops not to use overwhelming force is like telling white people not to use racial slurs, the good ones are 'oh ok' and the others, hoo boy.

iramiller 12y ago

Perhaps this is a also a growth opportunity for a private security firm. Call us, we will use our trained armed personnel to confront the suspects and return your stuff. I would hope that it would not take too many incidents of private security 'resolving' issues to see that a police force doing its job is a far more preferred solution.

tantalor 12y ago
Just call Phoenix Jones! Seriously, how much would you pay for private security to return your stolen iPhone?
- kybernetyk 12y ago
  Make it an insurance type of contract. Pay $9.95/mo and get your stuff back when it's stolen.
jeangenie 12y ago
This idea is the basis for mafia and similar organizations the world over.
jedberg 12y ago
I don't think it is legal to use deadly force to retrieve stolen goods, yours or anyone else's. You'd have to staff your firm with off duty cops or something to skirt that law.
- rdl 12y ago
  You don't use deadly force to retrieve the stolen goods; you use regular force to retrieve them (at a level supported by your insurer, which is far below the limits of the law), and then use deadly force if the thieves threaten your life in the course of doing so. (Even the police are not supposed to be using deadly force to apprehend property crimes; the justification for deadly force is officer safety or the safety of others.)
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago

poopsintub 12y ago

Call up your local news stations and see if they can put some pressure on the police department?

tralala123 12y ago

What??? I thought that if marijuana was legalized in Washington, that the world would be a better place... Cops will be freed up to deal with "real crime" and people would magically be better citizens... What could have gone wrong? Nearly all crime rates have gone up.

muyuu 12y ago

This is the kind of environment that leads to the creation of vigilante brigades and mafia-style syndicates.

IanDrake 12y ago

"Help! A van with license plate XXX-123 just shot at a guy in the parking lot here...hold on, what did you say...[muffled sound]...there's a badge on his belt, I think he's a cop from (insert adjacent town). I can still see the van, it just parked down the road at..." You get the idea. Call it in from the nearest pay phone and leave. Guaranteed response. I'd only do this if I lived in an area with a bunch of deadbeat cops. In MA our cops do their job without having to be tricked into doing it...the courts on the other hand seem to let everyone off.

wavesounds 12y ago

When this happened to my friend in Berkeley CA we called the police and after waiting almost an hour the officer that came didn't even get out of his car, he told us to file a report online. There was a security camera pointed at the lot which he said was "pointless" to try to access.

JumpCrisscross 12y ago

I used to commute between Manhattan to Stamford. A 5AM train would take me up and an 8, 9 or 10PM would haul me back. Staying awake for the duration of the return journey was rare. This led to curiosities: going to sleep in Stamford and waking up, four hours later, in Stamford again (Sartre had nothing on this fate) because you slept through arriving and then re-departing from Grand Central. Or waking up phoneless. I lost my phone a few times. I have a habit of lolling over when dozing on trains. This encourages my polished iPhone to slip out. The Metro-North line tours a wide socioeconomic spectrum. I understand the temptation I was taunting some of my fellow passengers with. Most of the time the opportunists were savvy enough to turn off the radio. Not always. Once I saw my phone blinking in from Rye. I stopped at their police station and showed the officer my iPad. Without question, we were on our way. The address I pinpointed resulted in a mother subjecting her son to an Inquisition. Nothing came of it. We apologised. Copper suggested we try the house across the street. Embarrassed from the last encounter, I demurred. He walked up to the door. A young man answered and yes: he had an iPhone. A few minutes later, I was (mentally) $650 richer. (I went back to the lady at the first house with a bottle of wine and the local bookstore's encyclopaedia of steamships—he had boat models in his room). New York City and State get a lot of shit for our police forces. And yes, we have a high frequency of idiocy. But swinging the other way, towards ineffectual policing—as Seattle appears to have—doesn't create strong societies. +1 New York.

rayiner 12y ago
I used to take Metro-North from New Rochelle down to Grand Central, and I miss it so much. Four trains an hour during the rush, always arriving within a minute or two of schedule. The 8:03 Amtrak between Baltimore and DC hasn't been on time in two weeks. As for the wide socieconomic spectrum--the only thing that ever bothered me about the crowd on MNR was the drunk suburban kids that'd take the 1am with me Saturday morning. Nothing like coming home from a long day at work and having some 19 year old Westchester brat puke all over the floor.
- deleted 12y ago
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rdl 12y ago

I wish insurers could pay the direct costs of having state police (I think there's statewide jurisdiction for all law enforcement agencies in WA, but WSP would certainly have jurisdiction), bait cars, and some serious resolution/retribution here.

dabockster 12y ago

I'm learning Javascript and the MEAN stack right now, and I'm really interested in building a small crowdsourced website for this.

kyleblarson 12y ago

It seems like a day doesn't go by when I don't read an article like this one and think of NWA's succinct summary of police in America.

homeinvasion333 12y ago

Home Invaders, call all home invaders, Seattle and big City USA. 0.) alleged the Police are out chasing bank robbers and allow car break-in 1.)why important? the new 'cartel' pays extra for your PERSONAL info for medical ID theft. 2.) the meth addicts who are up all night strike your mailbox to make sure they have a complete profile on U. 3.)since your garage door opener or home address allows the HOME INVADERS to get a copy of keys to your home. 4.) Mexican drug cartels have great stories they tell the neighbors, including pesticide pest control, lost cat animal control with uniforms, etc. when a gun is held to the head of your children, you will give up your pin, passwords to online bank accounts and combination number to the secret safe. 5.) USA citizens Trust the Police, especially the Detroit ones who never sent the rape kits to the lab. So, the serial criminals kept raping and home invading. 6.) This pattern is nationwide. Police never use the Internet. In Florida, the popular women fitness center car trunks break-ins target your wallet. Someone keeps an eye on you while you are exercising at the fitness center. The new master keys make it easy to take your WALLET, smartphone, HOME KEYS and even spare set of car keys. Does this happen during the day in broad daylight, with visitors from out of town driving a 'rental car'? when is your HOME INVADER going to invade?

ck2 12y ago

So 911 honestly believed the thieves were armed and dangerous and refused to dispatch? There's a lawsuit right there. If they thought the victim was going to get shot, then you should have said, I am going right over there now to 123 Main Street to confront them in so-and-so colored car. Then you wait and when the police show up at that car THEN you go over and make the theft claim. Victim was entirely too polite with dispatch.

rasz_pl 12y ago

What you do when dispatch refuses to help you? you suddenly remember perp was smoking pot and/or had a gun. Or you could become an important politician. Couple of years ago whole police force of my country capital city was mobilised because member of parliament wifes car got stolen. Took them an hour to track it down using GSM triangulation (purse with phone in the car). Guess what happens when you tell cops your car was stolen, but you have active tracker in it and can tell them where it is. Easier to get few big guys and deal with it yourself.