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.
> "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.