> "But over the course of the task force’s existence, which lasted nearly a year, only 34 of the roughly 700 people arrested or cited for stealing from trains were part of these organized crews. Many more were just passers-by or unhoused people living near the tracks in R.V.s or makeshift structures who just happened to pick up fallen boxes."
It's just one datapoint, but under 5% of the thefts this specific taskforce identified were perpretrated by organized groups. Most were essentially opportunistic thefts by individuals on the margins of society.
Although I never underestimate human stupidity or laziness for misrepresentation of numbers/statistics/etc, it's usually some poor SME that writes the report, and then the Manager sees the "60%", freaks out, asks the SME to rewrite making it softer, and thus the truth is (given a serious effort to be hidden).
I've been writing audit, security, and other reports a big part of my life. I tend to write numbers in the form of "5 out of 100 X (5%) examined, regarding the Y process, failed due to..". It freaks out anyone who reads my reports, but, hey, they pay me for accuracy and truth. Once I send it (and it's 'untouched' on my Sent Items), they can do whatever they want with it, as long as they put THEIR names & signatures in the bottom if they change a single word (sorry for the cynicism but there exists no corporate hill that I want to die on) - also you never know when a regulator will come back 6.5 years later and ask about THAT job scheduler that was transferring £€$5bn per day between X-system and Y-system.
I cannot recount the AMOUNT of times my report has 'softer' writing in the end, and it's their prerogative. But "it's not deliberate"????? No way in hell!!! Manager --> Director --> C-suite --> Audit Committee --> Regulator. EVERYONE will change a couple of words, and instead of a dumpster fire (Red) it will end up being Yellow.
Previously on reddit https://old.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/ree4ef/this_huge_...
5% of the people arrested, not 5% of the thefts.
“Less sophisticated thieves are more likely to be arrested” isn’t a surprising result.
Its not, though.
> Each theft event is a singular event composed of one or possibly multiple items being stolen.
Even if you ignore that the arrest rate likely isn't consistent between the two groups, that doesn't make the arrest proportion “accurate in the sense of oroxinate cause” unless you assume also that the organized vs. disorganized arrested parties are responsible for the same number of theft events per individual.
All the proportion of individuals arrested in the theft ring vs. not actually tells you is the proportion if individuals areested. It doesn't tell you the proportion of “theft events” or the proportion of $ valie of theft or anything else.
I wonder if any of those 'fallen' boxes were deliberately dropped in an area covered by CCTV just to catch opportunistic thieves?
It would certainly be a good way to catch one type of thief while entirely missing the biggest heists.
If you find an object with no obvious owner, you either leave it where it lies, or you report it by turning it in somewhere. To the business where you found it, or the Lost & Found department of the transit authority, or the police if all else fails.
I don't see anyone calling up the police to say, "Hi, I found <item> and I'll keep it until someone comes over here to claim it!" because the only people coming over will be the police themselves.
Every place with a Lost & Found service, and the police, regularly liquidate the unclaimed property. You can find lists and auctions on your civic website if they're selling the stuff. They may also donate it to charity or destroy it.
The police or anyone else are not going to stick a tag on a box with your name and number so you can come to claim it after the grace period elapses. That's not how claiming stuff works.
If a package falls off a truck in front of your house you can pick it up and inform the authorities, who'll in turn inform the owner.
If the police or owner care enough to pick it up they can have it, but presumably there's cases where they can't be bothered, then it becomes abandoned property and you can keep it.
Just because you find abandoned property you don't need to go out of your way to mail it to the owner, just inform them and they can come to you.
The "why not just leave it?" aspect of this is easily defended, if the package e.g. contains electronics they'd be damaged by exposure to the elements.
This of course varies a lot by jurisdiction, but yes, in many places that is exactly what the police will do.
One hypothetical scenario:
1. Thieves stop a train somehow, spill containers for distraction, run away with valuables.
2. Idiots see stuff lying on the ground and go pick it up causing chaos and confusion.
3. Police arrest some of the idiots. Win win. Thieves go away free and police can claim they arrested some people. This also pads their numbers. Politicians can pretend they were not asleep at the wheel with organized crime under their nose because look only 5% of arrests were organized crime. All we needed to do is arrest more homeless people.
You have some nerve to equivocate between an anonymous object bearing no clues as to its ownership and a box with an address label on it signifying exactly to whom the parcel belongs. How do you blame an owner who likely lives hundreds if not thousands of miles away for not contacting every police precinct along the shipping path instead of expecting someone who finds the parcel to simply return it to the shipping company so that they can finish the job?
> provided you report it to the authorities and nobody claims it in some time frame
One would expect that "report it to the authorities" covers that problem. The authorities will take care of either contacting the shipping company and letting them know, instructing you on how to do it yourself, or even take possession of the package to return it themselves.
I'd say an anonymous parcel on private land is the concern of the landowner, even with a right-of-way.
So it's theft either way, but the private-ness of the zone may mean additional crimes are getting committed, such as trespassing and/or burglary. (Or worse variations of the same crime, depending on how the laws are written.)
(Also even when a wily Sicilian complains that "You're trying to kidnap what I've rightfully stolen".)
All they said is that the other person, Wallet-Dropper, is something less than the prima facie legal owner. This permits several possibilities, but in every case Wallet-Taker still seems to be doing something wrong:
1. If Wallet-Dropper is a thief, then Wallet-Taker is just a thief stealing from a thief.
2. If Wallet-Dropper is the well-meaning temporary custodian of unclaimed property that they cannot (yet) claim as their own, then Wallet-Taker is a thief, taking to deprive the legal owner (wherever they are) of their property.
3. If Wallet-Dropper is the new legal owner of the discovered cash, that's theft by Wallet-Taker no matter how much you think Wallet-Dropper "didn't really earn it."
What is written in the books.
What is practiced by law enforcement and the judicial system.
So while dropping your wallet in the street may technically be a crime, the idea that law enforcement is going to go about seeking justice for the infraction is pretty much laughable in the vast majority of situations unless there is a large amount of corroborating evidence.
>(Also, I don't think anyone would consider it "finders keepers" if the thief started using the credit-cards!)
I mean, that is its own separate crime, and the only one likely to be punished as there is a direct evidence chain where you're accessing an account without permission and performing the act of theft.
Anybody who believes this is being foolish. Packages don't just "fall off" of boxcars. Those cars aren't open topped, the cardboard packages would be ruined by the weather if they were. The only way for a package to fall off a train is if somebody deliberately breaks into the train cars with those packages, and probably starts throwing the packages off the train.
The fact that they couldn't charge most people with that only highlights the inadequacy of their enforcement.
Perhaps some of what is happening is truly done by opportunistic amateurs, but the observation voted would also be perfectly consistent with a ground truth where every single case was done by an organized group.
I could also see that people performing the crime might be unhoused, what are they going to do with 20 blenders they just stole? They will go to some organized group and sell the loot for some cash.
So on paper it doesn’t appear organized in practice it’s sort of is. If there is no one buying the 20 blenders, it’s not worth bothering jumping on a train for them.
Completely changed the way I understand society.
That something needs to happen again.
- Stable jobs with good salaries
- Home Ownership
- Salaries that increased as much as profits when productivity raised.
It was a good time, they told me.
These people aren't Robin Hood, stop excusing their criminal behavior.
If you actually care about reducing crime you look at the evidence. E.g. https://equalitytrust.org.uk/crime
But when people have their needs met, are above the poverty line with a decent job that pays the bills, and they still steal because "inequality" makes them jealous and greedy, they don't deserve sympathy. Most people in such a condition don't become theives, they either content themselves with what they have or they try to better their condition through some honest means, like seeking better job training or political advocacy for social change. The ones who respond by turning to crime (usually targetting other common people living in similar conditions as themselves) are antisocials who need to have the book thrown at them. The reason they're stealing packages instead of robbing banks or spending their time looking for a better job is because porch theft is easy and low risk. If penalties and enforcement were increased, theft rates would drop.
If 1% of the population suddenly got personal space-ships (hugely increasing inequality) would that make people steal from trains more?
That's not a carrot that's just less stick
No I'm not. I asked how you define poverty
We'd have to be careful about that since research shows that past a certain point harsher penalties do not act as a deterrent. It might be that being a little bit harsher improves the situation, but the tendency is the US is to go way overboard to the point that the US locks up more of its citizens than any other nation on Earth, and even an arrest is enough to cause someone to lose their job while a conviction can cause someone to because virtually unemployable for the rest of their lives.
It might be better to focus on making it more likely that people are caught at all for stealing packages than increasing punishments for the ones that do get caught.
"Societal community spirit" or something like that. Some places in the US have it, some don't.
Quote: Workers in the US have an estimated $50bn-plus stolen from them every year
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/15/wage-theft-u...
I'm also quite confused as to how home ownership could ve causative here.
Because what you think is happening and what is happening likely differs significantly.
> "When our men go as guards over the mail, that mail must be delivered, or there must be a Marine dead at the post of duty."
We evolved, beginning seven million years ago, from species that were already highly sociable and live naturally, gregariously, and peacefully in groups of dozens or even hundreds. Chaos and sociopathy are illnesses.
On top of that, we have the intelligence to reason about what works better (let's use it).
> species that were already highly sociable and live naturally, gregariously, and peacefully in groups of dozens or even hundreds.
And if you have a source stating authoritatively how society functioned seven million years ago, as we parted evolutionary ways with the baboons and chimpanzees, I would love to read it.
How about it? I spend lots of time in cities; they are generally peaceful, gregarious and friendly.
> if you have a source stating authoritatively how society functioned seven million years ago, as we parted evolutionary ways with the baboons and chimpanzees, I would love to read it.
What is your point here?
Which ones?
> What is your point here?
I live in a city of almost nine million. Which far exceeds such a population, and not of proto-humans, but of fully modern ones (assuming the Toba Catastrophe Theory[0] is correct). As such, it's a pretty good bet that those few thousand who survived such a bottleneck 50-75k years ago lived similar lives (albeit with less technology) as we do today.
And while we do have some issues with anti-social behavior (which, I'm sure, is present in your village on a much smaller scale -- and only because it's a much smaller population) in my city of almost nine million, on the whole people are cooperative, supportive and pro-social.
If you don't like cities, that's fine -- don't live in one. But while Dunbar's Number[1] isn't applicable in my city, for the most part, we live pretty good lives.
I take issue with "peacefully".
Hunter gatherer adult violent death rates are often estimated at 2% to 10% (googling seems to confirm my memory here). While people in developed countries have around 0.01% violent death rates.
Which species? Bonobos are fairly peaceful, but Chimps aren't.
IMO the only clear window into this are victim surveys.
A look at the link[0] provided by GP provides the source[1] of the data, and AFAICT, both UCR and NIBRS statistics reflect reported crimes, not convictions.
So, no they don't. But feel free to ignore the actual data sources if they don't fit with your beliefs. Lots of people seem to do that. It makes life so much simpler, no?
A fair point. And thank you for your observation.[0]
However, GP made an assumption that wasn't supported by, well, anything in anyone's posts or any of the supporting data in an (apparent) attempt to justify their point of view.
I just said the quiet part out loud and gave GP license to continue using unsupported assumptions to justify their views.
If pointing that out is considered inappropriate by some, then so be it.
[0] I want to clarify that I really do appreciate your comment and am absolutely not being snarky or sarcastic when I say so.
Nope.
>I have,
Sucks to be you, I guess.
Please do share where you lived where your public servants are so crappy so I know never to go there. Thanks!
Especially since WRT property crime (which is what we're discussing here), filing an insurance claim requires providing access to an actual police report that can be provided (by the police) to the insurance company in order to get your claim processed.
Again, please let us know which jurisdiction(s) (and please, be specific) it is that refuses to take reports of property crime. Thanks!
Edit: Fixed usage.
Now we have more brazen smash and grabs with big hauls, idiots with trash bags an calculators being posted on social media, and porch pirates for which we see countless Ring videos?
Look again: you missed the infinitely greater amount of footage of people behaving civily and normally. Or just walk outside and look around.
Why use that word?
Property and violent crime is caused by lack of enforcement.
In Monaco inequality is huge, but crime levels low.
The US has plenty of law enforcement, but relatively high crime rates. Is there any evidence for what you are saying?
I beleive there is lots of evidence for the GP.
It's not just that the percieved reward is increasing, it's that the risk appears to be decreasing.
Do you have evidence?
Towards the end of last year, more than 90 containers were vandalized every day.How is this not policed?..
That would be theft not robbery.
Yet nobody does nothing.
> The Union Pacific Police department has jurisdiction over the 32,000 miles of track Union Pacific owns. Many of these "special agents" used to patrol this now infamous stretch of track. According to the source, the number of patrolling officers has been cut from 50 to 60 agents to eight, which the worker thinks has led to an increase in train robberies.
Not doing avout it anything hurts all the business that either have to refund customers or resend another item at their own expense.
I don’t know what other train companies are doing but Union Pacific cut a lot of its police force 3 years ago.
If they aren’t trying to hire more police, presumably they did the math and they must be making more money now than before regardless of any business they may now be losing.
The punishment for theft isn't the death penalty even in the US last I checked.
[1] https://reason.com/volokh/2020/06/02/are-people-allowed-to-u... [2] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+22%3A2-3...
As the system will be expensive, it will have to be state-subsidized, of course. At the end of the day, the parcels services are providing an essential service of first necessity, and it would only make sense that everything is done at a national level to ensure they are functioning correctly.
And why stop there? We could also ask defense contractors to design specialized trains. On top of absolute safety, it will have the added benefit of creating good job opportunities!