[HN Gopher] Metal thieves in America's cities
___________________________________________________________________
Metal thieves in America's cities
Author : gumby
Score : 40 points
Date : 2024-07-09 20:54 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| office_drone wrote:
| https://archive.is/RiuFM
| tomcam wrote:
| Be nice if the cities had police, and if they had prosecutors
| willing to put people in jail for property theft.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| If I hear "but the underlying causes" or "maybe they're poor"
| one more time, so help me...
|
| But seriously, this isn't an either/or game. We can and should
| fight the underlying causes simultaneously while arresting
| people, temporarily preventing them from doing further damage.
|
| Also, part of life is realizing there are people who commit
| crime just for the heck of it, who have no interest in reform,
| and arrive at that lifestyle from a wide array of backgrounds.
| I still vividly remember when a news station in LA chased a
| beggar and found they lived in a mansion.
| silverquiet wrote:
| That beggar must have inherited a lot of wealth because you
| normally have to commit way more lucrative crimes to own an
| LA mansion.
| ok_dad wrote:
| I guess we solid fund the scrap yards taking this material
| and punish them too, since they enable it. I suggest we jail
| the execs and managers there for not putting systems in place
| to prevent paying for stolen materials. I bet this would stop
| it really quick, and we only have to prosecute a few people
| rather than every thief, because of supply and demand;
| reducing demand immensely will make it not worth stealing
| infrastructure.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| That's a straw man because it shifts the blame onto the
| objects, and victims, of the theft rather than the thief.
|
| It doesn't matter what it is, crime is typically
| opportunistic.
|
| Next week, it will be smashing houses to steal jewelry. A
| month from now, it will be catalytic converters. A year,
| robbing laptops and getting decryption keys at gunpoint.
|
| Who needs to be punished here? The thief. Who needs to
| change? The thief. Who needs to be taken out of society if
| they voluntarily choose to not change? The thief.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Scrapyards are what we're talking about here, don't
| expand into other arguments needlessly. We're not talking
| about jewelry or electronics at the moment.
|
| Do you think it's acceptable to take 300 feet of
| commercial copper wiring from a random dude and pay him
| for it without question? Punish the thieves, but also
| roll them over to testify against the obvious criminality
| happening in the scrapyards. You're laying all the blame
| on the small thieves, but this kind of massive theft
| requires a supporting demand. Targeting one side is this
| equation doesn't work.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > Do you think it's acceptable to take 300 feet of
| commercial copper wiring from a random dude and pay him
| for it without question?
|
| Well, here's the problem with that: You're showing that
| the scrapyards are acting as though we are living in a
| high-trust society, and act as though everything was
| legit.
|
| Your proposal is to once again force the scrapyard to
| change and act like a potential customer is a thief. This
| is dangerous logic, because consider:
|
| - Should computers have mandatory spyware? Many of their
| users do illegal things, some morally repugnant.
|
| - Should stores check your ID at the door, even Walmart?
| That would surely stop thieves, it's their own fault if
| they don't.
|
| My point is that there are no shortages of industries
| which have criminal customers. Even the company hosting
| your little web server.
|
| I don't like scrapyards; but I believe that it is the job
| of police to allow society to function like we can trust
| each other. If that means the scrapyards are a little
| trashy; so be it.
| ok_dad wrote:
| You started with telling me not to straw man, then you
| did it. What does computer spyware and Walmart have to do
| with scrapyards?
|
| You're also pre-supposing that scrapyards are innocent
| victims of those thieves passing off goods as their own,
| but this scale of theft-to-scrap absolutely requires
| criminality of both sides of the transaction.
| RRWagner wrote:
| That would be contrary to lower taxes and less government,
| which many people claim to want.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The highest tax cities I have been in have the worst police,
| the worst roads, and the worst trash handling. Police and
| other basic services are _very cheap_ compared to many of the
| programs undertaken by high-tax cities.
| hobs wrote:
| That very much depends on your city, in some places cops
| take up more than 20% of city budgets, in some places more
| than 40% of the city budget is taken up by policing.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Where I live today, about 40% of the town budget goes to
| firefighters and police together. I was honestly
| surprised it was that low. However, it's one of the basic
| functions of a city and I live in a very low-tax place. I
| don't think you should generally be upset that police
| cost a lot of a town's budget, especially if the budget
| is small.
|
| By contrast, I used to live in NYC, which had a budget of
| over $100 billion, of which about 5% was the police
| department.
| swayvil wrote:
| A small city in southern il.
|
| Surrounded by prisons.The new home of choice for recently
| released prisoners.
|
| It's where all cities within 100 miles send their problem
| homeless.
|
| Primary industries: retirement communities, abortion
| services, care for the mentally disabled and a small
| university.
|
| Worst restaurants.
|
| Many trailer parks.
|
| Half the population collects welfare.
|
| High taxes
|
| Unreasonably large police station and train station.
| Seriously. Huge.
|
| It's like they're setting something up.
|
| Any other cities like this?
| threatofrain wrote:
| Cupertino has no police department. They sometimes get cops
| from SJ but... visually speaking there are basically no
| cops. Their public schools are Really Excellent. Maybe not
| top 10 in the nation, but they are around top 100. Palo
| Alto is about as nice as Cupertino in many respects but has
| lots of police. They are both similar population towns.
| There are many cities which likely will never ever be
| Cupertino no matter what sort of governance they pursue.
| Similarly, America might never achieve another NYC, just as
| the UK might never achieve another London.
|
| We need more sophisticated theories about what _specific_
| theories apply to what _specific_ cities rather than
| looking for general copy-paste philosophies which can be
| summarized on the back of a napkin.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| My suggestion here was that tax rate actually has nothing
| do to with quality of such basic services. It sounds like
| we agree.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| Cities typically vote for higher taxes and more government,
| on the contrary.
| RRWagner wrote:
| That would be contrary to lower taxes and less government,
| which many people claim to want.
| vondur wrote:
| Hmm, I see two examples from Los Angeles California, which
| isn't known for lower taxes and less government.
| pjmorris wrote:
| It'd be nice if people were well-off enough that they didn't
| have to strip-mine the infrastructure.
|
| The economic optimization continues.
| kurthr wrote:
| It's pretty easy to do a few $k of drugs in a week. Do the
| calculation.
|
| The people buying the "recycled" metal are the ones making
| bank. Why bother investigating or prosecuting them?
|
| Also, this has been going on for decades.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| I think it's more important for the cities to be tolerant and
| inclusive of theft culture. Theft is just part and parcel of
| living in a large city and diversity makes us stronger.
| sneak wrote:
| It costs way more to jail people. Prison isn't free.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Who cares? The point is we live in a society of laws, not
| that we choose which laws have teeth because the cost of
| punishing someone is greater than the cost of the crime.
| silverquiet wrote:
| > The point is we live in a society of laws
|
| I used to believe this, but watching the Trump presidency
| really shook something loose for me, and now I pretty much
| believe we live more in a society of "whatever you can get
| away with" if I was to put my feeling into words. You might
| think that that means I feel like I can do whatever I want,
| but it's sort of made me realize how important my own
| morality is to me and I feel like I'm living the best I
| have in my lifetime. I guess it didn't have that effect on
| everyone however.
| dymk wrote:
| Scrap recyclers should be required to keep a log of who they're
| buying scrap from, so there's a paper trail to identify patterns
| with. Some states require scrap yards to do that with catalytic
| converters, for the same reason.
| rwmj wrote:
| There was the same issue in the UK a few years ago (with
| thieves even stripping copper war memorials), and the solution
| was indeed this, making recyclers demand ID from people and
| keep logs.
| PlunderBunny wrote:
| Ditto New Zealand. The first time I took some scrap metal to
| a dealer, I had to fill in a lot of paperwork, but subsequent
| visits required me to only show my id.
| 50208 wrote:
| This ... it's the recyclers that need to stop this ... or be
| forced to stop it.
| sneak wrote:
| These people are buying valuable resources for pennies on the
| dollar in cash. They are hugely incentivized to not ask too
| many questions.
| christophilus wrote:
| Hence, "should be required to..." If you make non-compliance
| with the law far more painful than the profits from illegal
| metals, you've fixed the incentive problem.
| spicybbq wrote:
| Many states require photos, fingerprints, record retention, and
| other restrictions on scrap metal dealers:
|
| https://www.recyclingtoday.com/article/scrap-theft-complianc...
| haburka wrote:
| Insane that we are at the level of poverty where deconstructing
| infrastructure makes economic sense to people. It's insane the
| amount of effort and shamelessness people are willing to go
| through for a few hundred bucks. When you consider how high
| minimum wage is in LA too, it's ridiculous they can't find work
| instead of going as low as this.
| glass1122 wrote:
| when you are hungry, poor and desperate, the lines between
| shameless, guilt all starting to vanish.
| sporc wrote:
| more like "fiending" than "hungry".
| docandrew wrote:
| When they put hidden cameras inside packages to catch porch
| pirates, plenty of thieves have a decent apartment, big
| screen TV. They're not stealing groceries, they're stealing
| things to fence.
| BadHumans wrote:
| Stealing groceries doesn't pay the electricity bill.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's hard to value something you don't have a stake in.
|
| Fewer and fewer people have a stake in their communities and
| their community's prosperity. Fewer have a stake in the housing
| market. Fewer have a stake in our institutions working
| properly. Fewer have a stake in capitalism itself. It's not
| surprising that these things are slowly becoming devalued. The
| solution may involve welcoming back more people as
| _stakeholders in society_ rather than pushing them away.
| Kalium wrote:
| I suspect you will find that in many cases, people whose
| brains have been hijacked by chemical dependency may
| experience some difficulty in behaving as a _stakeholder in
| society_. It will often not stack up favorably against
| feeding that dependency, no matter how much they might favor
| it in the abstract.
| asdff wrote:
| This country has always had a segment of people in chemical
| dependent desperation since it was founded. The question
| is, why are we seeing a rise in metal theft? Its not
| because this population suddenly emerged, nor that they
| suddenly realized that metal has value as scrap. Its
| because the prices of metals has increased which creates
| incentive to fence metals. Theft in this sector is enabled
| through fences who take this stuff without asking
| questions.
|
| It's not like selling a stolen bike and pretending it's not
| stolen. There's just not a lot of good reasons for someone
| to bring into a recycler an old brass plaque from a city
| monument or a hundred yards of wire from a bridge. Law
| enforcement knows this at least and is lenient on the
| thieves if they help pin the fence.
| fallingknife wrote:
| There have always been thieves and the "they are only
| criminals because they are victims" line is nonsense. It is a
| risk vs reward calculation for them and it's not a surprise
| that the crime is more popular when you reduce the risk with
| minimal punishment.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| _> There have always been thieves_
|
| And yet countries that aren't as rich as the US and are a
| lot softer on crime, have a lot less of it than the US. So
| maybe something is actually wrong in the US at a societal
| leve, that it has such a higher crimerate.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Level of poverty? Nonsense. More like, level of opportunity
| given lack of enforcement.
| BadHumans wrote:
| It's not nonsense but neither is what you said. Both things
| can be true. There is a high level of poverty and large
| wealth disparity. There is also a lack of enforcement.
| asdff wrote:
| A large part of the rise in metals theft in recent years is
| from organized crime increasingly investing in and optimizing
| the sector.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| It has nothing to do with poverty, and everything to do with
| some people prioritizing money for themselves over the
| externalities.
|
| "If I make $100, and some stranger who I don't know loses
| $10,000...well, sucks to be that stranger, he should have paid
| a security guard to watch his wires" is the mindset of a whole
| load of people in the world.
|
| Hell, I mean, there are people out there who will kill you for
| your $100 phone if they have the chance.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > It has nothing to do with poverty
|
| Strong disagree.
|
| If the gains are high enough, lots of people who aren't poor
| will steal.
|
| But if the gains are low, then there's a risk-to-reward ratio
| that comes into play and, generally speaking, the poorer you
| are, the high ratio you're willing to put up with.
| octopoc wrote:
| Really? I'm skeptical, unless you categorize someone
| stealing to fuel their drug addiction, as "due to poverty."
| What about people who steal because it's fun or exciting
| and not boring, like an actual job? I had a Hispanic friend
| like that once--he didn't even need the money, he stole
| just because it gave him an adrenalin rush and because of
| the crowd.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > What about people who steal because it's fun or
| exciting and not boring, like an actual job?
|
| Sure, there are those people too, but even then the risk-
| to-reward factor will come into play, it's just that
| those people are willing to take a higher risk not
| because of the monetary reward but because of the reward
| of the "thrill".
| makeitdouble wrote:
| You'll always have several categories of people stealing.
|
| Parent's point is that poverty will lower the threshold
| for some of these categories. People who wouldn't care
| that much about money if they had enough to get by will
| get into stealing, not necessarily to get rich but just
| to get back to a state they're comfortable with.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| _> some people prioritizing money for themselves over the
| externalities_
|
| You mean exactly like the employees, execs and shareholders
| of the big publicly traded companies many people here work
| for?
|
| But it's evil when the homeless crackhead in your
| neighborhood smashes your car window for drug money, but not
| the Google/Microsoft exec who pushes ads with malware or
| addictive drugs on your kids for a career advancement and a
| nice house in California, that's just called innovation,
| where the former person is the looser and the latter the
| winner of our capitalist system.
|
| Many profitable industries have been built on privatizing the
| profits and socializing the externalities on the environment,
| society, people, etc. Oil & gas, mining, motor vehicles, fast
| fashion, ads, gambling, food, pharma, etc. Usually on less
| developed countries, and it only makes the news when those
| externalities finally reach us here in the rich western
| countries.
| gmd63 wrote:
| This is the core source of disillusionment. It is wrong for
| both, but it is more impactful to society when corporations
| do this. Therefore it should be society's priority to raise
| the stakes of running a corporation, not hand out lazy
| penalties that continue to incentivize strategic
| negligence.
|
| More regulation, regular enforcement of law, and more
| responsibility in general for the people and firms that
| wield the most influence will prevent many otherwise great
| citizens from deciding not to play the game of civilized
| life. IRS getting massive returns from cracking down on
| wealthy tax cheats is one of many good steps in this
| direction under the current US administration.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| _> More regulation_
|
| That goes against easy money for corporations.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| The minimum wage makes it harder for the low skilled to find
| work.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| Your comments seem to have a theme.
| InfiniteTitan wrote:
| I'll never understand promoting the hysterical media driven
| vilification of crimes of poverty.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| The costs of repairing the damage vastly exceed the earnings
| obtained by the criminal. The article gives the example $85k in
| damage incurred to repair damage that yielded $394 in scrap.
| This destruction of wealth harms overall welfare, and deprives
| the government of resources, which hurts poor people
| especially. In other words, even if you only care about people
| who live in poverty, you should support a crackdown that will
| deter crimes like this.
| silverquiet wrote:
| I wonder what the costs to prosecute a criminal are? I'm
| pretty cynical, so if I heard about $85K, I wouldn't be all
| that surprised.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| You never have to prosecute the crimes you deter. And if
| you don't deter at all the crimes will just keep
| increasing. A city where only gated communities have
| electricity is not good for the poor.
| monkmartinez wrote:
| These are not crimes of poverty. These are crimes of people
| that literally don't give a f** about anyone but themselves and
| getting their next fix. Go ride along with your local PD or
| fire department to see the bulls** for yourself.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Even giving the benefit of the doubt that we can decide whether
| a thief was doing it to alleviate their poverty, it's still
| impossible to paint "poverty" theft as broadly sympathetic,
| since logically only a subset of thieves are making a
| sympathetic decision based on their personal circumstances.
| I.e. simply being poor doesn't mean you are stealing because
| you were forced into unfair circumstances and it's the only
| option you have left and your child is sick, etc.
|
| Yes, Americans have a problem regarding crime perception - a
| lack of sympathy and a thirst for punishment. But your attitude
| is simply the opposite problem. Trying to use your broad
| paintbrush is only going to create antagonism. People
| understandably hate crime - _hate_. It ruins homes, businesses,
| communities, one 's sense of safety and camaraderie - _all_ of
| the things we work hardest for and hold dearest. It 's too much
| to ask.
| kiratp wrote:
| Its really grating to see headlines phrased this way, implying
| extreme outcomes. To someone not living in a city, it paints an
| immediate picture of dystopia. It pushes the rural-city divide
| further - the last thing we need more of.
| glzone1 wrote:
| "social malaise lingering since the pandemic and soaring demand
| for metals, especially for copper, has brought this street crime
| to new levels."
|
| It's interesting that absolutely no mention of changes to
| policing / prosecution.
|
| Across Los Angeles County, more than 290 fire hydrants have gone
| missing since January.
|
| In my town we are having electric outages because of this (they
| call it "vandalism")
|
| "Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez joined Hernandez in opposing
| the motions, even though he had initially supported the idea. He
| asked his colleagues to understand that the thefts might be
| committed by people living in poverty who are pushed into acts of
| desperation."
|
| A note that the costs to report, schedule, supply, staff and roll
| a govt truck to do a fire hydrant or street light are not cheap.
| The poor person will get some money from wiring, but the city
| will be spending 10x - 100x that to get the infrastructure fixed
| up - so not sure allowing theft as a result of the pandemic or
| poverty is the most efficient way to address poverty? Insulated
| coper wire is about $1.50 per pound to recycle at a metal buyer.
| frankus wrote:
| What makes the multiplier even more wild is when you consider
| the proceeds are probably being used (by the front-line
| thieves) to buy drugs whose cost is something like 10x-100x
| higher than the cost of production.
|
| Many (including me) would consider it unethical but I
| understand the temptation to cut out several layers of
| middlemen and just have the government hand out drugs.
| erulabs wrote:
| You can say "just sort out who is doing this!" and you can say
| "what has happened to the world that it's come to this!" And the
| answer to both is the same:
|
| Drugs.
|
| You're stealing copper wiring because you're an addict. You're
| not getting a minimum wage job because you're an addict. You live
| in poverty because you're an addict.
|
| Comments lamenting the state of society are as useful as kicking
| dirt. Either build better bridges or make better medicine.
|
| Now one of you smart people comment something useful in this
| thread about tech that can cure dependency issues!
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| People live in poverty without being an addict; it's not an
| either/or, and you're punching down on both poor people and
| addicts, neither of which is helpful.
|
| Tech will not cure dependency issues, it's biochemists,
| biologists, and psychologists that are at the forefront of
| that, and there isn't a universal cure for addiction. Tech also
| won't solve poverty, which is a political issue.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Cheap access to GLP-1 agonists might help with addiction. I
| have facilitated someone getting access for alcoholism, and
| it's like night and day, with them being fully functional.
|
| Appears to be an incredibly powerful force multiplier, just
| need to scale up (can be manufactured for less than
| $5/month/person). My apologies for going off topic,
| confirming your point to solve addiction to solve these
| second order effects of mental health challenges and poverty.
| Secure (basic needs), functional humans with basic needs met
| don't strip infra and homes for copper.
|
| > Tech will not cure dependency issues, it's biochemists,
| biologists, and psychologists that are at the forefront of
| that, and there isn't a universal cure for addiction. Tech
| also won't solve poverty, which is a political issue.
|
| Preach.
|
| https://recursiveadaptation.com/p/wegovy-and-ozempic-
| semaglu...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40565144
|
| https://recursiveadaptation.com/p/the-growing-scientific-
| cas...
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48780-6
| monkmartinez wrote:
| > People live in poverty without being an addict
|
| Please let me know where these people are! I have been riding
| the streets for 18 years in a city with over 1 million (Top
| 100 by population in the US) and I haven't met an actual
| impoverished person that was not an addict. Our "poorest"
| citizens eat better than lower middle-class with EBT. They
| steal because its 1000% easier than any job on the planet.
| tashi wrote:
| All the poor children you've met were addicted to drugs?
| Seems odd. Are you counting sugar as a drug?
| erulabs wrote:
| Several issues:
|
| 1. Of course you can live in poverty without being an addict,
| that wasn't an implication of what I said.
|
| 2. Biochemistry is technology.
|
| 3. Tech will, has, and is 'solving' poverty.
|
| 4. My point is that it is not poverty driving people to strip
| copper from the walls, it is drug addiction.
| xeromal wrote:
| Poor people aren't stealing copper. Crackheads are.
| Teever wrote:
| There are a lot of people who steal stuff who aren't addicted.
|
| It's a quick and easy way to make money, so of course drug
| addicts will be drawn to it, but people who don't care about
| the moral issues with stealing, or find it easier than the
| alternative will do it too.
| imbusy111 wrote:
| Drugs are mostly a side-effect of other psychological issues,
| and it's in a control theory sense a positive feedback loop.
| You can't eliminate drugs, but you can work on the underlying
| problems.
| robocat wrote:
| Citation?
|
| Anecdotally the people I know that take serious drugs are on
| average as normal as anyone else. And I know plenty of people
| with psych issues that don't take drugs. Neither a necessary
| nor sufficient condition.
|
| Yes, we can work on people's underlying psychological
| problems, but we are far from having reliable solutions to
| resolve psychological problems.
|
| Your implied solution is that we can fix drug addicts. That
| is a long way from reality in my limited experience (and I
| have acquantances working in drug rehab).
|
| Watch one close friend go down the hellhole of drug
| addiction, and you can quckly discover for yourself that
| often (a) it isn't due to mental health and (b) there doesn't
| seem to be much that anyone can do.
| Kalium wrote:
| People espousing this theory usually point to rat park.
|
| Unfortunately, rat park is in no sense good or useful
| science. It's more useful as a litmus test for how
| sincerely someone tests their beliefs.
| henjodottech wrote:
| We're working on a startup for non-addictive pain treatment.
| Derived from new genetics (not papaver somniferum).
| mattlondon wrote:
| Get them hooked on social media _before_ they get hooked on
| drugs.
|
| But seriously, just regulate the recyclers where people are
| eventually taking this stuff.
| legitster wrote:
| A lot of this goes back to 2016 when states signed the Opioid
| compact that made it much harder to get Oxycontin
| prescriptions.
|
| There were a lot of addicts that were getting opioids
| prescribed to them by a doctor and paid for by Medicaid. Abuse
| was happening but few needed to turn to crime.
|
| Suddenly a lot of them lost their legal opioid prescription,
| and this is when we saw the explosion of fentanyl and the rise
| of drug fueled crime.
| legitster wrote:
| > But the combination of the economic ills and social malaise
| lingering since the pandemic and soaring demand for metals,
| especially for copper, has brought this street crime to new
| levels.
|
| Hmmm. There's something missing from this explanation.
|
| While I don't think these reasons are wrong, we are being gaslit
| about some of the knock-on effects of our sudden cultural
| attitude towards our justice system that happened at this time.
|
| Young people don't want to become police anymore and police don't
| want to police anymore.
| monkmartinez wrote:
| > Young people don't want to become police anymore and police
| don't want to police anymore.
|
| For good reasons too! It F**ing sucks dealing with ALL the
| problems of a city. Ask me how I know!
|
| None of us, first responders, are allowed/empowered to do our
| damn jobs. We have been effectively neutered by woke activists
| that think everyone is out to get them. All hell breaks loose
| when you ask, demand or otherwise force people to take
| responsibility for themselves and/or own their mistakes.
| spankalee wrote:
| The "woke" activists are demanding that you do not abuse your
| power, and if you do that you're held accountable. If that
| makes you not want to do your job, then GOOD.
| BadHumans wrote:
| Blaming the "woke" people and not corrupt police officers
| that indiscriminately murder people or the system that
| protects them is pretty telling.
| mythrwy wrote:
| Can we blame both, but not use the term "woke"? Just
| "activists" is fine.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| It certainly makes it easier to ignore the people doing
| the complaining.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > All hell breaks loose when you ask, demand or otherwise
| force people to take responsibility for themselves and/or own
| their mistakes.
|
| But if you're police or some other first response, your job
| is literally to take responsibility for other people?
| recursive wrote:
| It's very hard to help people that don't want to be helped.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Maybe if so many people who have been granted significant
| authority over others, aka "police", hadn't abused their
| power over a long period of time, to the point of causing
| significant harm, including death, of presumed innocent
| people, those "woke activists" wouldn't be calling for limits
| on those powers.
| DEADMEAT wrote:
| Could you explain more about how first responders are not
| empowered at their jobs? I'm mostly curious if you see the
| cause as something local, or more like national policy that
| changes your ability to do your job.
| muststopmyths wrote:
| > All hell breaks loose when you ask, demand or otherwise
| force people to take responsibility for themselves and/or own
| their mistakes.
|
| Said without any irony whatsoever
| iamacyborg wrote:
| > We have been effectively neutered by woke activists that
| think everyone is out to get them
|
| Do you actually believe that or do you think there are
| perhaps broader issues at play?
| recursive wrote:
| Both can be true.
| legitster wrote:
| Believe me, I see it from both sides. We need police who are
| empowered to do their own jobs.
|
| However...
|
| > All hell breaks loose when you ask, demand or otherwise
| force people to take responsibility for themselves and/or own
| their mistakes.
|
| The irony of this statement is that the entire collapse of
| trust with police in America was refusal for departments or
| unions to hold individual bad actors responsible. The
| reactionary response of police unions and the whole "thin
| blue line/sheepdog" attitude made it clear that also police
| don't want to take responsibility for mistakes.
| octopoc wrote:
| These woke activists go by the term "community organizers,"
| which is especially ironic considering how dysfunctional they
| make communities. Multicultural societies are easy prey for
| them.
| 486sx33 wrote:
| Exactly.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Speaking of people not taking responsibility:
|
| https://www.divestspd.com/p/no-discipline-for-detective-
| arre...
|
| > The OPA could not sustain any allegations against Belgarde
| because the four-year deadline for discipline established in
| the police guild contract had passed.
|
| When police unions decide to protect the bad ones, it
| obviously reduces their credibility and hence society's trust
| in them. Might have worked for decades in the past due to
| lack of information, but people know this stuff now.
| yard2010 wrote:
| I always find it amusing that everyone hates the police but
| no one hates the firefighters. They both save people lives,
| yet some are bastards and some are heroes.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| You seem to make the point that the problem will be solved with
| more police, even though part of the cultural attitude you
| mention vs police has been a direct response to the
| militarization and brutality, yet at the same time indifference
| of the police force. The BLM movement was triggered by police
| brutality, but your take is that we need more and more active
| police?
| DeRock wrote:
| I don't know where you got the argument for "more police",
| but the direct quote from the GP:
|
| > police don't want to police anymore
|
| Seems to contradict that being an argument.
| legitster wrote:
| Bingo.
| 486sx33 wrote:
| This is true. More work a desk than anything anymore and
| when they are on patrol or driving too and from the station
| they try very hard not to look at anything. A horse with
| blinders on
|
| The courts are a mess, people get 1 overnight and get back
| out. There are no penalties anymore for crime so we get
| this.
| legitster wrote:
| It was always a false dichotomy.
|
| The core issue was America needing better and more
| accountable policing.
|
| "Defunding" the police was an extremist, fringe position that
| hijacked the situation.
| krapp wrote:
| No one would even be talking about "needing better and more
| accountable policing" if "defund the police" as a position
| didn't shock people who have no reason to fear the police
| into realizing how dire the situation was for those who do.
| The "hijack" is walking back a revolutionary ideal to
| something palatable for the mainstream that doesn't
| threaten the status quo.
|
| It isn't a false dichotomy, but simply a difference in
| interpreting what the core issue is. Some believe the
| police can't be reformed and can't be held accountable,
| because the core issue is systemic racism and white
| supremacy, and the only option is to tear the entire system
| down and rebuild it from scratch around truly anti-racist
| principles.
|
| Obviously if you don't accept the thesis, you can't accept
| the conclusion.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _" Defunding" the police was an extremist, fringe
| position that hijacked the situation._
|
| I think it _sounded_ extremist and fringe, if you assumed
| it meant completely gutting their budget and placing police
| officers on a trebuchet aimed at the nearest shoreline.
|
| But the _actual_ "Defund the Police" proposal tried to
| shift some of that funding to non-armed responders, to
| better community services, and other things that have been
| proven to work better at improving outcomes and preventing
| crimes than a man with a gun showing up to deal with every
| conceivable scenario that someone found unpleasant.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Part of the original problem was too many of the wrong kind of
| people becoming -- or remaining -- police in the first place.
|
| For example, we go through great lengths to ensure that doctors
| are suited to their job. Why? Because they have the power to
| kill people with their mistakes or poor judgement.
|
| It's reasonable to apply that same high bar to police, who have
| much greater latitude in exercising that power, up to and
| including the power to kill their fellow citizens, than doctors
| do.
|
| I don't think any young person who likes the idea of being able
| to walk around with a gun on their hip, being a police officer,
| anymore than I think any young person who likes cutting people
| open should become a surgeon.
| legitster wrote:
| The solution needs to be some sort of "Teach for America"
| equivalent for police where non-traditional, college-bound
| candidates receive funding to be placed in under-served
| communities.
| gmd63 wrote:
| The original problem is that news consumers and police spend
| the majority of their time scrutinizing the smallest and most
| radically terrible segments of each other's populations
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I disagree that this is the "original" problem. Police
| misuse of power has been a problem long before the current
| era of mass/social media.
|
| I do however agree that it's a problem (it's just an
| orthogonal one).
| DaoVeles wrote:
| It is things like this that make me occasionally think we are in
| the modern version of the library of Alexandria.
|
| We have the peak of technology and knowledge and yet the core
| base of the society is rotting away, alas we know how it ended
| last time. Perhaps we to go the way of the neoplatonists?
| asdff wrote:
| When has the core base of society ever not been rotten? I think
| what is changing now is that people went from a few happy go
| lucky decades of being flabbergasted that anything bad can
| happen, to the media pendulum swinging the other way of showing
| us the ugly truth too much and assuming things happen even more
| often than they truly do, at least in terms of your real
| personal odds of risk.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Looking at crime in general around cities and not just metal
| theft, I think that it's the result of a mismatch of incentives
| and disincentives.
|
| If you are in poverty in America and want to get help, it's
| pretty easy to get. You can get food stamps to buy food, to go a
| shelter or section 8 for housing, we have welfare and many other
| programs to take care of folks who ask for it.
|
| But each of those programs has rules, you can't buy booze with
| your food stamps and you can't bring drugs into a shelter for
| example. Some people don't like this tradeoff so they resort to
| theft, whether breaking into a car or stealing the copper wiring
| out of a lightpole.
|
| And that is where the issue is, while we are pouring tons and
| tons of resources into the inventive, we as a society are
| neglecting the fact that you also need disincentives. We need to
| make sure that we show people that we have incentives to get them
| back on their feet, get them healthy and get them fed but we also
| need to show equal disincentives if they choose to break the law.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _If you are in poverty in America and want to get help, it 's
| pretty easy to get._
|
| No, you're wrong. The only thing one can say is "many programs
| exist" but they are altogether inadequate even without their
| restrictions (which you're minimizing).
|
| Most places section 8 housing is nearly impossible to get with
| years waits common. Shelters have extremely restrictive
| conditions as well as being very unpleasant (being around
| people destroyed by the system isn't good for even those not
| yet in terrible condition).
|
| Also, drugs and alcohol are often by homeless people to get to
| sleep in circumstances where it would be otherwise impossible.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| I'm not sure "pretty easy" is fair. In my city, there's a
| lottery for Section 8 housing. The applications are regularly
| closed. I think our applications might've been closed since
| 2020 (https://www.kcha.org/housing/vouchers/lottery). The
| people who got on that list before 2020 are periodically chosen
| in a lottery when vouchers occasionally become available. Once
| they have the voucher, they are then responsible for finding a
| landlord that accepts Section 8 housing vouchers and has an
| availability.
|
| That's not to say that there aren't many options for aid, but
| many of these programs are much less available than you'd
| think.
| monkmartinez wrote:
| Let me ask you a question; Why doesn't Singapore deal with this
| type of crime?
|
| We, as a society, have stopped demanding people to take
| responsibility for themselves. We don't hold anyone accountable
| for their actions. We ostracize the basic enforcement of
| accountability and those that are charged with upholding law.
| We are soft AF as a society.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Don't like 3/4 of Singaporeans live in some form of
| subsidized public housing? I would definitely support heavily
| funding the same solution here, if that's what you're
| advocating.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Yep! HDBs are the norm for Singaporean citizens.
|
| That said, they will also prosecute anti-social behavior in
| an extremely putative manner.
|
| In Singapore (and also Japan and SK), it's the carrot and
| the stick that runs the social contract.
| soperj wrote:
| Sackler family is likely the most responsible for this.
| Severian wrote:
| Prosecute the scrap metal yards more harshly, have a "police
| book" like used car lots and pawn shops. Document the person
| selling, get a photo of the same with the persons face, etc, etc.
|
| Only allow maximum amounts of metal to be recycled unless said
| person has a registered business, per day/week/whatever. Regulate
| it.
|
| There isn't an incentive if you can't sell it. As a commentator
| indicated below people were scrapping fire hydrants. Wouldn't
| this be a huge red flag??
|
| "Oh yeah, I see you have 5 hydrants here to sell. I can't think
| of where these could have possibly have come from."
| h2odragon wrote:
| quick look at my usual place shows them paying $0.15/lb for clean
| lead, 3cents less for batteries; and up to $2.20lb for clean
| copper.
|
| At the peak in 2007, lead was worth at least 1/3rd more.
|
| https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lead
|
| ... so i dunno about "soaring demand for metals", cuz the market
| doesn't seem to show that.
|
| copper is higher than the 2011 peak, but not that much more.
|
| https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/copper
| mythrwy wrote:
| I replace my HVAC system last month. I did it myself (yes, this
| can be done with some research!).
|
| I took the old one to a metal scrap yard, inside unit and
| outside. They made me go back home and cut some stuff apart for
| "top dollar" (which wasn't worth it really but I did it anyway).
|
| Very surprised at what I received. I had over 200 pounds of "tin"
| (they called it) which was basically scrap steel. That fetched
| around $10 at $.04 a pound. The aluminum radiators fetched $.37 a
| pound coming to nearly $20. The old copper refrigerant lines
| however fetched around $3.50 a pound (nearly $60) and they were a
| small part of the whole system weight-wise, but most of the
| money. The owner got visibly excited when he saw the copper lines
| so I assume it's pretty profitable on that end too.
|
| Overall I got close to $100 which wasn't worth the work, but it
| needed to be disposed of anyway. It was also "interesting" as I'd
| never been in a scrap yard before. Lots of shady looking folks
| coming in (some on bicycles) while I was there.
|
| The disparity in metals pricing was surprising, with copper being
| worth more and aluminum way less then I'd thought. Also
| interesting was it was pretty close to a 10X ratio for each
| metal. Copper = 10X aluminum. Aluminum = 10X steel.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Copper theft is totally a thing in Europe too, in many countries.
|
| First country I find by googling is Germany but copper thieves
| are stealing cables alongside railroad in France, Belgium, etc.
|
| https://www.recyclingtoday.com/news/copper-railway-theft-eur...
|
| And it is regularly disrupting trains.
|
| These thieves do not care for the community. They do care about
| fake Luis Vuitton caps (convinced they're highly stylish with
| their Luis Vuitton caps and Luis Vuitton manpurses) and the
| latest iPhone though.
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