My job was broken in to. They sent a detective. He looked around and told us there was basically zero chance he’d catch the guy.
I found a cigarette butt outside. He said “It could be anybody”. I said “nobody here smokes”. He said “even if it’s his, there’s little chance it’s a DNA match.”
To his credit, the detective took the cigarette butt and tested it. There was a DNA match to a guy living in our small town who’d been in jail three times for robbery meaning the cops knew exactly who he was and what he did for a living but weren’t doing anything to stop him.
When they went to his house they found everything of ours that he couldn’t sell.
Really mind blowing how few crimes are actually solved. I’ve had real world experience of being a robbery victim and there was absolutely no attempt at solving it.
Someone told me if you have a problem and call the police, now you have two problems.
I was robbed when I worked as a cashier. I literally did all the work and found the dudes name because he came in earlier and paid with a card and signed his name. Gave them his name and they didn’t care. Nothing was ever done, I still see the dude walking around frequently.
We had a guy come in for training. His first day. During lunch he left, slashed a tire on every car and smashed two windows.
We had him on tape and we had all his info because he was just hired.
Cops wouldn’t do shit about it. Didn’t even look for the guy.
Many years ago, before identity theft was a thing, my mom (who live with me), had our mail stolen. That day was the day that Oregon was sending out our “kicker checks”, those are refund checks from the Oregon Dept of Revenue, and also the day that my mom’s bank sent out her bank statement.
We found out because I got a letter from the Oregon Dept of Revenue that my kicker check was cashed at a different amount than it was issued. I did get a replacement, but I pointed out to the Oregon Dept of Revenue that the kicker check did have my social security number on it. They agreed and stated that will be the last year that will be a thing.
My mom fared worse, since she had a bank statement that was stolen. The thief went to an office supply store where they sold paper check templates and used the bank account number that the bank helpfully included in full on the bank statement, and printed out fake checks and wrote several at WalMart. To this day my mom is banned from writing checks there.
I never did get the police to care. Identity theft was not a thing at time. They flatly stated that they were not going to even write a report because I was getting a replacement check, so there was no crime.
That never did make sense. If my car gets stolen and the insurance company gets me another one, the thief, if caught, will get charged with something.
Cops will often not do jack shit if it means they have to actually get off their fat mattress and work.
They’ve basically became untrained social workers who are terrible at their jobs. They spend lots of time dealing with mental illness and substance abuse issues and they think those can be solved with violence.
Not even that. Read the article. They spend 11% of their time responding to calls. The rest of the time they’re harassing people which are 50% of the time minorities.
They spend lots of time
dealingkilling people with mental illness and substance abuse issues and they think those can be solved with violence.
Why not just automate traffic violations and remove 83% of police?
Some cities have been sued for doing that. You can’t face your accuser in court if your accuser is a computer.
what if your family member or friend was using your car? what if your car was stolen? also, some of those cameras will ticket for legal right on red.
they just catch plates and send a ticket in the mail to the registered owner. it’s not great. source - i live in a city with these, though state law now means the city can no longer enforce tickets. also, the idea of camera/computer generated rosters of law-breakers is unsettling.
Sort of, the idea is that you can face the citing officer in court. Granted, all the officer has to do is lie and the judge is likely to side with them over a rando citizen, but that’s the intent of the law.
Red light cameras, sure. It can be done fairly - not that it is everywhere.
Speed cameras just trap people new to an area. The people who live in an area learn to avoid them and thus they don’t stop habitual speeders who are a danger. Plus they can’t be everywhere.
The bias needs to be taken out of it. Police can’t seem to stop themselves from racial profiling. Its like a compulsion.
I used to drive truck over the road, and I can attest to the fact that those red light cameras can also be made very deliberately unfair. The city of Hannibal, Missouri had these cameras at the intersection of Highway 61 and Red Devil, at the bottom of a steep hill. About 1/5 of a mile up the hill south of the intersection was a pole with a sensor on it set to about 12’6". I observed that any time any vehicle over that height passed that sensor, the light would trip to red. And it was set at a distance that a loaded semi would be all but guaranteed to run that light. Those of us who traveled that corridor with any frequency knew the sensor was there, and would try to want other drivers over the CB, but a lot of drivers had stopped routinely using the CB by then, so the light proved quite lucrative. At least, until it started causing wrecks from the trucks jackknifing in the intersection in the winter. That setup ran for three or four years before the city was dragged into court over it and forced to remove the red light cameras, though it was done in such a way as to question the enforceability of the tickets and without ever directly acknowledging that the cameras were set up to entrap commercial vehicles.
Gridlock cameras can be added to red light cameras, also reducing congestion policing costs.
Speed cameras trap people new to an area.
Or they could just, not speed? And speed cameras can be everywhere. They cost up to $50k to deploy and collect to 2k+ fines per year (based in my location, this obviously varies wildly), so they run net positive. Rotating locations can also get after the habits of locals, though that’s the 50k cost, I’d guess statics are cheaper.
If immediate reduction is most important than habit changing over time (i.e. a school zone or highway transition) speed linked red lights can achieve the effect. Such to say, if you drive over the limit, the light turns red. This forces you to stop and pisses off everyone behind you, providing social pressure. These are only in the pilot stage, so I don’t know the real deployment costs.
Speed traps are called speed traps because the limit suddenly drops like 20-30 mph in a very short distance. Saying “just don’t speed” completely ignores how speed traps work and why they exist .
Over the past decade, “consistently less than half of all violent crime and less than twenty-five percent of all property crime were cleared…
The response to a car break in is always, just call your insurance company. Imagine if they took it seriously and used forensic tools. Most car breakins are done by a small number of the same people.
