[HN Gopher] Train robbery for Amazon packages? More common than ...
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Train robbery for Amazon packages? More common than you think
Author : tysone
Score : 82 points
Date : 2024-01-24 18:22 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| graphe wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20240124062144/https://www.nytime...
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Wow they must want my shower curtain rings and dental floss so
| bad
| MilStdJunkie wrote:
| Speaking academically, of course, I would think you'd station
| some dudes with binoculars at the loading dock and ID which car
| has the good stuff. Then send (quadruple-encrypted, on dark
| web, etc, etc) that info to the guys breaking in, so you can
| get out fast with as much valuable stuff as possible. Risking
| that kind of crime for a couple hundred bucks doesn't seem too
| worth it. In fact, I could see the spotters for these sorts of
| operations making out like gangbusters, since they can sell the
| info to lots of ne'er-do-wells.
| popcalc wrote:
| I can guarantee that NONE of these crime rings understand
| what encryption is. Generally people intelligent enough to
| know OPSEC are intelligent enough to know how reckless and
| risky this type of crime is. The smarter move is setting up a
| fence with plausible deniability. eBay must profit more from
| retail and supply chain theft than any other single entity in
| existence.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| The most extreme type of modern train theft occurs when thieves
| cut the air-compression brake hoses that run between train cars,
| thereby triggering an emergency braking system. When that
| happens, the engineer stays in the cab and the conductor walks
| the length of the stopped train, trying to locate the source of
| the problem. (Thieves can also stop a train by decoupling some of
| its cars.) Of course, if a train is miles long, that walk takes a
| while. In the meantime, the pilferers unload.
|
| Way more brazen than I had imagined. I was foolishly just
| thinking these were people sneaking into train yards at night.
| geodel wrote:
| > I was foolishly just thinking these were people sneaking into
| train yards at night.
|
| That would be theft not robbery.
| irrational wrote:
| Or burglary. My understanding is robbery is theft that
| involves violence or the threat of violence. Burglary is
| theft that does not involved violence or the threat of
| violence.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Burglary is entering a property with the intend to commit a
| crime. Theft is intentionally depriving someone permanently
| of their property. Robbery is doing so through violence or
| intimidation.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| So this should be under Offenses Against the Public Safety,
| Unlawful impairment of operation of railroads, not even telling
| about thousands of losses for the railroad itself.
|
| Yet nobody does nothing.
| atourgates wrote:
| Most of it is much more opportunistic than that example.
|
| > "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.
| spenczar5 wrote:
| Careful, there: 5% of the _people arrested or cited._ That is
| not the same as 5% of the thefts (one would expect the
| professionals do more than their share of the thieving) or
| even 5% of the thieves (one might believe that pros are less
| likely to get caught).
| ysavir wrote:
| It's also not representative of the quantity of stolen
| cargo. Even if it's 5% of thefts, that 5% could be
| responsible for 60% of stolen cargo.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It's just one datapoint, but under 5% of the thefts this
| specific taskforce identified were perpretrated by organized
| groups.
|
| 5% of the people arrested, not 5% of the thefts.
|
| "Less sophisticated thieves are more likely to be arrested"
| isn't a surprising result.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > who just happened to pick up fallen boxes
|
| 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.
| legitster wrote:
| The videos of people just standing on moving trains in broad
| daylight ripping open packages is... something else.
|
| Completely changed the way I understand society.
| xattt wrote:
| Something happened between the Wild West when this was common
| and now which brought a stop to that behaviour for a century
| and a half.
|
| That something needs to happen again.
| grow2grow wrote:
| Guns. Guns happened.
| ssully wrote:
| The Wild West, very famous for not having guns.
| kazinator wrote:
| Tar and feathering.
| dmckeon wrote:
| It would be interesting to see train conductors on electric
| mountain bikes, with drones scanning each side of the stopped
| train for damaged or cut air hoses, hotbox bearings, etc. Could
| save a lot of walking, if the railroad and the union agree.
| izzydata wrote:
| That's wild. Maybe they will start defending trains like they
| defend cargo ship.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Trains already have deputized private police forces, just a
| matter of staffing up again
| olliej wrote:
| I feel there have been plenty of stories about smash and grab
| stuff in apple stores but surely the trucks carrying shipping
| container of new apple products must be valuable targets
| gumby wrote:
| I thought smash and grab at apple had almost vanished because
| the valuable stuff won't operate if stolen. I know the display
| units won't work, and ones already set up have varying (but
| generally pretty high) levels of resuse security (which has
| made them less likely to be stolen on the street). I assume
| apple can prevent an uninitialized phone stolen in its box from
| being initialized.
|
| You _can_ walk into an apple store and walk out with a $100
| power supply. I assume that happens so infrequently that they
| just don 't care.
| bequanna wrote:
| Can't Apple just remote brick stolen items? I thought they were
| doing this with stolen merchandise.
| RegnisGnaw wrote:
| How? The $100 power supply? The $150 dock?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Smash and grabbers that work apple stores simply aren't very
| smart, since Apple locks down their hardware from thievery
| pretty well at the software level (to the chagrin of the OSS
| community). The smash and grabs that can make money and catch
| attention these days happen at luxury bag shops.
| legitster wrote:
| The pictures of the pollution and mess the thieves leave behind
| is really heartbreaking.
|
| The article meanders around the point without getting to it. But
| our society just really has no effective way stop nonviolent
| crime. The police have bigger problems. The train and shipping
| companies would rather just pay for the insurance. The only
| people who care are the insurance companies but they have no
| authority.
|
| If you ask the question - how much crime could the average person
| get away if they wanted to, the answer is _a lot_. In a way it 's
| almost reassuring how _little_ crime there is right now.
| wincy wrote:
| Depends on where you live. In my city in the Midwest, some
| people tried to push three shopping carts of merchandise out of
| a TJ Maxx, drove into a cop car that was trying to stop them,
| then drove down the highway toward the police HQ (I'm guessing
| on accident), and as they tried to escape crashed into another
| car and flipped their vehicle. This feels like a lot for
| shoplifting.
|
| At the same time, as a law abiding citizen this coming down
| hard on crime sure makes my life easier. My TJ Maxx doesn't
| have boards on the windows and they don't have off duty cops
| posted at the door, unlike the Target I visited on my trip last
| year to the SF Bay Area. So the question is which society do we
| want to live in, or is there an optimal middle ground?
| cogman10 wrote:
| Theft will always happen, it'll happen more when it's made easy.
|
| The actual issue here is train companies have cut staff down to
| almost nothing while simultaneously increasing train length to
| miles and miles. (And they are trying to cut staff even further).
|
| A train with 2 miles worth of cargo and 2 people to defend it
| ends up being SUPER easy for a thief to target and rob. It takes
| an hour just for someone to figure out what's happening to the
| train.
|
| What's the solution? How about the train companies employ more
| people, install more cameras, or shorten their trains? Or they
| can use their insurance to cover the cost of lost goods (as they
| are almost certainly already doing).
|
| Train companies are trying to operate like the dollar general and
| are putting on surprised pikachu faces when they get robbed like
| a dollar general store. Almost certainly what they want to happen
| is the offloading of their security problems onto the public. We
| the public should not be subsidizing private monopolies because
| their bad business decisions make them particularly vulnerable to
| crime.
|
| A company that earns 25 billion dollars of revenue a year can
| afford moving back to older business practices to avoid theft.
| Baader-Meinhof wrote:
| I'm not disagreeing with your overall point but this reads a
| bit like victim blaming. "Those sexy trains were manned so
| skimpily, and going down those long routes all alone at night,
| they were just asking for it!"
| huytersd wrote:
| I think you're making the exact opposite point you're trying
| to make that's reaching back to skimpily dressed women in a
| way you don't intend.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Certainly, because it is. I don't think it's wrong to view
| companies responsibilities as being different from those of
| an individual.
|
| For example, if a company chooses to ignore a RCE
| vulnerability in their software for years, are they to blame
| when that vulnerability is exploited? I'd say absolutely they
| are.
| morkalork wrote:
| At the same time, banks and other business take
| responsibility and pay for armored cars to do pick-ups. They
| don't just wing it and hope for the best.
|
| One question though, what are the laws like surrounding
| security for trains in the US? In Canada, security employed
| by rail companies actually have actually been granted all the
| powers of a police officer by the government.
| dwater wrote:
| The railroad companies have their own police forces to
| protect them:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_police#United_States
|
| Your analogy doesn't quite hold up here.
| theamk wrote:
| Companies are not people. The multi-billion companies should
| be held responsible for the problems caused by their
| decisions.
| colpabar wrote:
| I think a good first step would be to repeal the law that
| allows the federal government to deem a strike by rail workers
| "illegal" so that those workers can fight for better
| conditions.
| bsder wrote:
| When insurance gets expensive enough, the companies involved
| will put forth the needed effort to fix this.
|
| Until then, this is a no-op.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Can't both insurance and theft be balanced out in accounting
| terms?
|
| In other words, they have to move more freight... but it's
| after-tax profit neutral for them whether they have a huge
| amount of theft or a little.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Definitely.
|
| This reminds me of patio11's assertion that the optimal
| amount of fraud in a system is not 0 because the marginal
| price of reducing fraud to 0 is far higher than the amount
| lost to the hardest to eliminate fraud.
|
| The key is to make sure that the costs of eliminating theft
| are internalized. So as long as the train company
| reimburses everyone fully then I would imagine they will
| quickly figure out what the correct level of security is.
| justrealist wrote:
| Why would this fix anything?
|
| This is exactly like shoplifting at Target -- thieves now know
| the employees are not allowed to violently engage them, so
| there's absolutely no deterrent. If you think 4 unarmed railway
| employees are going to take it upon themselves to defend train
| cargo against cartel thugs or mentally ill and drugged out
| looters, you are insane.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Cameras, shorter trains, more personnel. They all make it
| more likely that certain details about the thieves' operation
| are documented; how many people are involved, in what
| direction they traveled, etc.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Railway police are often certified law enforcement officers
| with police and arrest powers. And armed.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Not having their own courts seems to be a problem though.
| No one can get convictions anymore.
| mrexroad wrote:
| My understanding is that Target's loss prevention forensics
| team makes some police departments look amateur. Also, the
| aggregate shoplifting for an individual is "allowed" until
| the dollar amount crosses the line for it to be considered a
| felony. At that point, the fat stack of evidence is handed to
| local DA/PD. The same tech used for tracking your browsing
| and purchase behaviors also works pretty well for identifying
| and tracking known shoplifters. I'd wager that going after
| every instance of misdemeanor theft would be an ineffective
| use of resources at their scale.
|
| With that said, it makes less than zero sense for Target to
| ask retail employees to risk their lives in order to stop
| someone stealing a cart full of Tide or pockets full of
| sonicare replacement heads. Not to mention, the potential for
| interventions to quickly escalate and become a danger to
| other shoppers.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I mean, their name is "Target". What were they expecting?
| legitster wrote:
| What are more trains and staff going to do? Conductors and
| engineers aren't going to start tackling thieves on moving
| trains.
|
| The train companies already have their own police forces, but
| if they can't get convictions in court, all they can do is
| scare away the least coordinated thieves. So it's hard to
| understand what security investments are supposed to achieve.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| To expand on the above a bit, retail (and presumably freight
| rail?) security still has to refer cases through public law
| enforcement for prosecution.
|
| Given limited resources and varying priorities, public law
| enforcement follow-through can range from helpful to
| apathetic to non-existent.
|
| Even major, national retail chains with clear video evidence
| of organized theft rings can have issues getting local PD to
| pursue prosecution.
|
| _Edit_ : Courtesy of dwater's note up-thread, railroad
| police can indeed be empowered by states as law enforcement.
| Though I expect at some point prosecution still reverts to
| state/federal authority. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail
| road_police#Jurisdiction...
| linkjuice4all wrote:
| Sorry but the railroads don't get to hide behind the "we
| need the cops to fix this" crap. In the US many railroads
| have their own police force with full arrest and police
| powers[0]. They can literally throw their own money and
| bodies at this problem if they really wanted to fix it.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_police#Jurisdict
| ion_a...
| justrealist wrote:
| > Sorry but the railroads don't get to hide behind the
| "we need the cops to fix this" crap.
|
| 1. Why should individuals and companies be responsible
| for their own law enforcement? That's literally the point
| of government.
|
| 2. They still rely on the court system and prosecutors.
| The railway companies aren't allowed to execute looters
| on sight.
| kube-system wrote:
| The railroads have them because there wasn't much
| government out where they were operating when they became
| necessary.
| dendrite9 wrote:
| Item 1 is likely related to the spread of the railroads
| and how important they were so early on. I knew about
| railroad cops, and the no Social Security eligibility,
| but it wasn't until the recent strike threats that I
| learned how railroad employment is so different from most
| other employment because there are specifically different
| laws. The importance of the railroads is why there is so
| much checkerboarded land in the western US, it was given
| away in grants to the railroads.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkerboarding_(land)
|
| The railroads using shorter trains would allow them to
| keep the trains in the railyards, where they have more
| physical control. But that would involve more employees
| and seems to be something the rail companies are
| specifically avoiding for various reasons.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| 1. Trains run through very long multi jurisdictional
| route often with no meaningful police along the routes
| and no access due to lack of roads along the route. This
| was especially true historically but still remains true
| today. Train robberies have been a real thing for a long
| time with the robbers not being stupid and attacking the
| train far from police presence. Further rail facilities
| require 24x7 protection that local police can't afford to
| offer.
|
| 2. They often have specific laws at a federal level and
| as I understand it wouldn't depend on general local
| courts and prosecutors, particularly on interstate lines.
| For spur lines it'll usually be state prosecutors.
|
| The crux of it is the rail companies probably don't WANT
| to hire police if they absolutely can avoid it. That's
| very expensive and I'm sure they would rather just eat
| losses, pay insurance premiums, and whine to local and
| state police for more coverage at the tax payers expense.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Sure they want their own police. Nothing better than
| being able to investigate yourself and find you did
| nothing wrong.
|
| And when you call your local PD, good luck getting
| anywhere when another police force discontinued the
| investigation and local PD knows little/nothing about
| railways.
|
| Canada has similar private rail police and that's
| basically what happened at least once:
| https://theconversation.com/why-major-canadian-railways-
| must...
| legitster wrote:
| Expanding private police forces... is a good thing?
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| Presumably if it dovetails back into the existing public
| court system at the prosecution level (i.e. there are
| railroad lawyers empowered to bring cases similar to
| DAs), that's still a reasonable separation of powers.
|
| But the slope towards the government (with democratic
| checks and balances) ceding enforcement authority to a
| private party (without democratic checks and balances)
| seems worrisome.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_police#
|
| With a very narrow space and scope.
| spamizbad wrote:
| In this case: yes, because it puts undue burden on
| taxpayers given the unique nature of the rail system.
| Does every jurisdiction with rail freight traffic need a
| fully staffed, taxpayer-funded task force to cover these
| things? You'd bankrupt a ton of smaller counties.
|
| The whole world is not New York City or the Bay Area
| where you have several billions of taxpayer revenues
| sloshing around you can throw at crime problems.
|
| The "tough on crime" crowd needs to be less ideological
| and think deeply about the fiscal implications of
| taxpayers of their policies.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| A big part of this is those mile-long trains have to park
| "somewhere" and that can't be rail yards 'cause they're
| too big to fit.
|
| So this wind-up being as if Fedex, to save money,
| eliminated their own parking lots and parked their trucks
| in the sketchy parts of town - and then demanded the
| cities eliminate the homeless 'cause their truck kept
| getting broken into.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| That's the premise of self-checkouts: reduce your
| internal costs, _increase_ your risk and externalize the
| costs of those risks to someone else.
| legitster wrote:
| Sure, but I think the issue is that even when they are
| empowered as law enforcement, there's not much they can do
| if the DA isn't going to prosecute these cases.
|
| My understanding is that they can pursue drug crime or
| break up organized fencing operations. But at the low level
| most of these train robberies are happening they probably
| don't waste their time.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Shortening the time it takes for an employee to know what's
| going on means you can reach out and get authorities
| involved. Securing high value containers can slow down theft.
|
| > but if they can't get convictions in court
|
| Why wouldn't they be able to get convictions?
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Nah, another piece of this is that rail companies have
| eliminated rail yards and park those super-long trains on
| just random tracks (at least in the LA area). They then
| complain about the homeless who camp on the sides of the
| tracks and demand that LA county do something about the
| camps. The homeless may provide cover for the professional
| thieves but the homeless aren't the thieves (and the county
| should indeed eliminate the homeless camps _by finding them
| housing_ but given a population of people can 't legally or
| pleasantly sleep _anywhere_ , that population is going
| gravitate to area least protected and that's railroad tracks
| and freeways, where problem things happen - notice recent
| freeway fire, etc).
|
| Rail companies go in, apprehend the homeless for trespassing
| and then complain that county won't prosecute them. And no,
| the county sensibly doesn't want to fill it's jails with
| vagrants just 'cause the rail companies don't park their
| trains where they're safe.
|
| All this is part of the "supply chain problems" of the last
| few years but the thing with those is the large carriers
| (shippers and railroads) actually made profits by a legal
| situation wound-up as "our losses are your losses, our gains
| are ours". They cried all the way to the bank.
| graphe wrote:
| Homeless people don't want to be housed, there is housing
| provided to them. They just want to do drugs and be free
| rather than be given a curfew and deal with other homeless
| people who could be even worst.
| hristov wrote:
| And why do you think they cannot get convictions? If they get
| video evidence of someone damaging a train car and get that
| person in custody they will get an easy conviction.
|
| Train companies do have police forces but since the advent of
| "precision railroading" they have been cutting all staff to
| the bone.
| graphe wrote:
| Because prosecutions aren't happening and even shooters
| walk. What would you do anyway? Fine them?
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Maybe you want to live in the world where "theft happens and it
| is your fault for not providing enough guards" but some of us
| would much prefer a high trust society. It doesn't have to be
| this way.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Yeah it's crazy. The John Oliver segment was eye opening about
| the myriad of issues. At 3 miles long with 1 engineer, they
| sometimes have to walk miles to the end and then of course back
| in order to fix something. They frequently block roads and
| emergency responders for hours sometimes and people die. The
| trains are essentially ticking time bombs as they commonly
| carry flammable/toxic/explosive materials with no tracking and
| they go through towns where the tracks weren't designed for
| trains of that length. The end of the John Oliver skit has them
| do their own very dark episode of Thomas the Train that
| satirizes these issues.
|
| Edit: I think there may be 2 staff, but they're trying to
| change it to 1 and you basically aren't allowed to ever call in
| sick or else you're fired.
| bluGill wrote:
| Trains shouldn't have any crew at all. They can't do anything
| useful when the train is moving now that we have modern
| automatic train control. (they cannot hit the brakes fast
| enough to stop if someone is on the tracks). Unlike cars,
| self driving trains is an easy problem that was solved 20
| years ago. If a train brakes down send a mechanic to the
| train - they only need a couple in every state.
|
| They train companies should still have crew, but they should
| be for use on secondary lines and the crew lives near that
| line and just works 1 week a month (most of that time doing
| mandatory training). With a little work on scheduling they
| can find local farmers looking for a side job when there
| isn't farming to do.
| wnc3141 wrote:
| eventually the cost benefit of insurance will change as thefts
| increase. Otherwise couldn't trains have better locks?
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| > _" Almost certainly what they want to happen is the
| offloading of their security problems onto the public. We the
| public should not be subsidizing private monopolies because
| their bad business decisions make them particularly vulnerable
| to crime."_
|
| Law enforcement is the state's job, and companies do pay taxes.
| Blithely ignoring train robberies on the premise that if it
| gets bad enough, the company will hire private armed forces
| won't lead to the kinds of societal changes you're hoping for.
|
| The kinds of theft happening in LA on a regular basis are
| essentially unheard of in places like Japan, Korea, Singapore,
| Hong Kong or Taiwan. Any such occurrence would be shocking news
| and police would be all over it.
| throwup238 wrote:
| The railroads have a unique security arrangement with the
| state and law enforcement is their responsibility:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_police#United_States
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| It's an interesting division, and the wiki rabbit hole is
| fascinating.
|
| It doesn't appear the system has been very effective in
| recent years, compared to other approaches internationally,
| unfortunately.
| throwup238 wrote:
| According to [1] there's fewer than 2,300 railroad police
| officers in North America now (under 1,000 in the US)
| compared to 9,000 in the mid-1940s. How much of that is
| the switch to cars and how much is reduction in work
| force is unclear but today's number does include the East
| coast Amtrak security which sees a ton of ridership and
| there is much more freight these days.
|
| It doesn't seem like they hire enough people.
|
| [1] https://www.therailroadpolice.com/history
| 4d4m wrote:
| Let's say the railroad hired the right people - the cost
| of litigation from injuries and death means that the
| people they hire have little incentive to intervene. I
| see this as akin to store shrinkage and security that
| can't touch a perpetrator - it's accepted by rail
| shippers as a cost of doing business.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The kinds of theft happening in LA on a regular basis are
| essentially unheard of in places like Japan, Korea,
| Singapore, Hong Kong or Taiwan. Any such occurrence would be
| shocking news and police would be all over it.
|
| That's more likely because these places (as does Europe, by
| the way - we also don't have people burglarizing trains!)
| have robust social security networks for their population.
| The homeless get at least basic assistance, the mentally ill
| get taken care of.
|
| The US does neither. People who have fallen through the
| cracks simply don't get any help at all (except from some
| charities), and mentally ill people don't get any care.
| tejtm wrote:
| bull. no, not like that. (old hobo "bull" "yard bull") private
| corporate police. not convinced re-normalizing that is a good
| idea.
|
| Come to think of it, that may be why this behavior is being
| encouraged. "the people" insisted we militarilized to protect
| their stuff.
|
| I am off to ground my tinfoil hat now.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| John Oliver did a segment on trains[0].
|
| He noted that rail companies are actively trying to lengthen
| trains, and reduce the staff to 1.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ2keSJzYyY
| coliveira wrote:
| This is a problem in other areas too. I believe a lot of the
| current theft on big box stores comes to very few workers on
| each store. Once people realize it is very easy to pick
| anything without any worker even seeing it, part of society
| starts to think of theft as an easy possibility.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I know this is way too common in the LA area. I would be curious
| how much of these happen in different parts of the country. I
| would assume LA is more than half of these thefts.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I don't know about currently, but this used to happen in
| southeast California. Thieves would get on the train at Yermo
| (just east of Barstow), and wait until it got to Cima Hill
| (quite a steep grade, and in the middle of nowhere). While
| climbing the hill, the train would slow down to maybe 8 MPH.
| They would break into containers while the train was moving,
| and just throw stuff overboard. People driving on the parallel
| road would pick up the stuff and drive off.
| atourgates wrote:
| I found this to be a fascinating article, and the problem is
| illustrative of problems in our society on a number of levels.
|
| The biggest problem is of course, societal. One anecdote from an
| anti-theft taskforce in the article showed that less than 5% of
| the thefts were prepretrated by organized groups, and the other
| 95% were from "passers-by or unhoused people living near the
| tracks in R.V.s or makeshift structures".
|
| People on the margins of society, who see an opportunity to make
| some money.
|
| Ideally, we'd fix the problem of unhoused people on the margins
| of society and we'd eliminate the vast majority of thefts like
| this.
|
| But of course, that's a much harder problem to solve.
|
| Much easier, then, to respond with bigger locks, and more
| security cameras, and GPS trackers and more security guards in
| vulnerable hotspots.
|
| While those measures might work (to an extent) to solve the
| immediate problem, they don't work to make the society that I'd
| like to live in. I'd much rather live in a more equitable society
| that works to eliminate homelessness, and the conditions that
| lead to this type of theft, then one that just prevents it with
| punatitive measures and thorough enforcement.
| programjames wrote:
| Someone else said it was 5% of _arrests_ , not thefts. If so, I
| would expect organized groups to be less likely to get caught,
| and to steal much more in each robbery.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| Yep, just have a mole at the rail yard to report where the
| sweetest things are => come quick, take exactly you need, get
| out.
| m463 wrote:
| I wodner if that is possible. It seems sort of a boil-the-ocean
| technique though.
|
| Is what you want really to make the cargo less valuable in
| comparison to the wealth of the people near its route?
|
| I suspect that even with full employment, there will still be
| theft.
|
| I think even in really decent societies like japan, there are
| still homeless people, and also the yakuza.
| Reubend wrote:
| > Ideally, we'd fix the problem of unhoused people on the
| margins of society and we'd eliminate the vast majority of
| thefts like this.
|
| I don't see any evidence of this.
|
| The article did point out that only 5% of the arrests were
| organized criminals, but I would expect the organized ones to
| do more than their fair share of total thefts. I'd also expect
| them to get arrested less often than their amateur
| counterparts.
|
| But more importantly, your proposal assumes that eliminating
| poverty would eliminate crime. That makes intuitive sense, but
| I don't think it's true. I've heard that many of the package
| thieves in my neighborhood are middle class people who just
| steal opportunistically.
| Spivak wrote:
| I mean I don't steal because I don't have to, not because of
| some moral drive to care one iota about the profits of
| corporations. No one is asking poverty reduction to eliminate
| crime but it's on the theory that for most people above a
| certain life comfort you have more to lose than gain by petty
| theft and you don't need to bother.
|
| I think "give people something to lose" is an underused and
| underrated crime deterrent.
| Kalium wrote:
| Most people already have something to lose. Giving them the
| fear of losing it has more to do with enforcement.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > I don't see any evidence of this.
|
| > I've heard that [...]
|
| This kinda sums the whole discussion really. We have an
| article that doesn't really go deep into the issue, and let's
| everyone come up with their own "all my homies say that XXXX"
| version of the root causes.
|
| The best answer is probably that it's complicated, poverty
| plays a role, but so do many other critical factors (e.g. a
| decent summary of the studies in the field:
| https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PA00XGJN.pdf )
| coliveira wrote:
| Yes, people don't understand that the increase in homelessness
| will certainly also increase dramatically the amount of theft.
| Middle class people with jobs and homes don't want to
| jeopardize their lifestyle by committing petty theft. People at
| the margins of society, especially homeless, don't have much
| more to lose, so this kind of behavior becomes the norm.
| focusedone wrote:
| This paragraph:
|
| >I left the encampment discombobulated by the mismatch between
| the perpetrators (down-and-out men living in tents stealing goods
| someone else had already nabbed and discarded), and the victim (a
| multinational company valued at more than $1.5 trillion). The
| stuff had been taken unlawfully, yes, but part of the reason
| these companies manufacture items for so much less in Asia and
| then transport them thousands of miles in ships and trains and
| trucks is so they don't have to pay the costs associated with
| adhering to environmental and labor laws here. Also, I was
| flummoxed trying to imagine how a man living in a tent would go
| about selling a stolen pet-grooming vacuum cleaner. What even is
| a pet-grooming vacuum cleaner?
| jimnotgym wrote:
| If anyone from the New York Times is reading, I'm about to cancel
| my subscription. Despite being a paying subscriber the site
| insists on serving me a cookie banner and a 'read in the app'
| overlay after I started reading. Don't interrupt my tiny amount
| of Fxxking reading time. You ruin the whole experience
| InCityDreams wrote:
| If anyone from the New York Times is reading, the last bit was
| "Don't interrupt my tiny amount of Fucking reading time. You
| ruin the whole experience." "Fucking", in case you're not
| fucking literate.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Sorry, what was the point you were making?
| karaterobot wrote:
| From time to time an Amazon delivery is canceled a couple days
| after it was scheduled to be delivered. It never occurred to me
| that the cause might be train robbery. I think I would get a kick
| out of knowing if it been reported lost due to land pirates.
| overstay8930 wrote:
| What does unhoused mean? Is that just homeless but more offensive
| or something? I'd be pissed if someone called me unhoused, it's
| like implying I'm incapable of taking care of myself or
| something.
| irrational wrote:
| I've noticed this recently too. It seems to be a euphemism for
| homeless. I have no idea why unhoused would be considered
| preferable to homeless.
| gradascent wrote:
| Because it shifts the burden (or at least appearance) of
| responsibility from those experiencing homelessness to the
| government orgs tasked with housing them.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| [delayed]
| sandworm101 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_police
|
| If they arent going to pay for bulls, the railroads can pay the
| extra insurance premiums. Private railroad police (bulls) were
| once common. We can bring them back. Public, sworn, railroad
| police are common in some cities and could also be expanded to
| police cargo trains.
|
| >> Through his detective business, Allan Pinkerton met George B.
| McClellan, the president of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad and
| Illinois Central Railroad, as well as its attorney, _Abraham
| Lincoln_. With Lincoln 's encouragement, Pinkerton began
| supplying detectives for the railroad.
| arsome wrote:
| Judging by some freight hopping videos, they're still around on
| cargo trains, perhaps just less numerous.
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