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Comment by avar | Hacker News Reader

Reading this article is honestly a bit of a domestic culture shock for me, where does this guy live in The Netherlands?

Here in downtown Amsterdam we called the police because the rear window of someone's car had just been smashed outside our office, and the police's response was "Has anyone been hurt? Nope? Then we're not coming".

Meanwhile, wherever this guy lives they're sending officers because some BMW call center calls the police in the middle of the night telling them that some car reported unspecified distress within some radius, and they sent officers to search the whole neighborhood for the car and locate the owner.

I guess the next time I need police help I'll use a burner phone and tell them a BMW is in distress.

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> Here in downtown Amsterdam we called the police because the rear window of someone's car had just been smashed outside our office, and the police's response was "Has anyone been hurt? Nope? Then we're not coming".

Amsterdam currently has a big police shortage, that's why. It's not normal, it's just a problem in Amsterdam.

https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2018/07/amsterdam-is-not-lawle...

What? I though they were bored stiff. Every time anything happens - even the most insignificant accident - you’ll see a flock of police offices taping out the scene, parading numerous vehicles and generally making much ado about nothing :)

Well, if you're bored, one of the ways to have fun is to gather up with some friends (other officers) or staying home because you're lazy :P

> It's not normal, it's just a problem in Amsterdam.

Right, the two times we needed police in Limburg (Echt and Maastricht, few years apart) it didn't happen either. It had to be life-threatening and the people didn't literally shout "we'll kill you" so the police wasn't gonna bother.

Meanwhile on TV they're cycling through parks to fine people some 99 euros for not having a well-behaved dog on a leash (could have used discretion there), or fining some poor dude 370 euros for standing literally 2 minutes on a disabled spot to pick someone up.

Poor dude? You don't park in a disabled spot unless you have a right to be there. That should be common sense.

Standing is not partking.

I think his point is that there are much bigger problems that they should be tackling especially since a disabled person can easily give a good old honk to tell the person to move if they came around and actually needed the spot.

It was wrong and s/he was caught, but that fine is just ridiculous. Sure, someone who stood there for 2 hours in a busy spot where disabled people were indeed turned away, then they definitely chose to risk that fine. But when someone was standing with the car (not even parked) for 2 minutes, I might (as police(wo)man) decide to give a warning instead. That fine is disproportionate. Most people on HN probably earn enough to sustain it easily, but for many people, that's an entire month's worth of food that just went down the drain. Sure, it's a good deterrent, but is it fair and just? Should we just give exorbitant fines on every petty crime just as a deterrent? That's not the kind of country I want to live in.

The problem with discretion is how do you recognize or punish repeat offenders? How do you know the dog is well behaved? How should they know?

And standing still for two minutes is parking. And someone who is actually disabled cannot park there, and cannot see (and request) for the person to leave.

> Amsterdam currently has a big police shortage, that's why. It's not normal, it's just a problem in Amsterdam.

Or maybe Amsterdam has an excess of crime.

not just Amsterdam. I had a car accident on Route 128 in Massachusetts during rush hour. I called the state police - they asked if anyone was hurt and when I told them no they said 'just exchange information with the other driver'. The opportunity here is for fraud prevention. Maybe that's what will eventually drive our desire for ubiquitous surveillance.

Why would you need police for an accident? Your insurance companies negotiate liability based on your statements. It's a civil matter, unless want to request criminal charges for reckless driving?

Depends if there's damage to the road and/or disruption of traffic I would imagine.

In Germany, a police report is generally recommended in case somebody decides to change their statement. I don't know why you wouldn't call the police. They're also there to settle disputes, or at least establish a protocol for a potential court process.

And if you drive for a company, protocol dictates that you call the police even in the most minor accidents for insurance reasons.

Most rental companies in Europe require a police report for any kind of accident, their insurance won't pay without one.

You would be surprised how much effort businesses put into building a relationship with local police, that is a big part of a security director's job. The more people they have on site, or the higher their inventory value, the more they are willing to spend on the local PD. I've seen areas built on company property that are effectively police sub-stations, giving cops a place to do paperwork and take a break, in order to cheaply keep them nearby. I've seen off duty cops hired for show up jobs, just to guarantee timely incident response. I've seen local PDs negotiate a fee schedule... it ain't a bribe if there is a "fee schedule". No, companies aren't doing this in order to break strikes or otherwise oppress employees - there is just a ton of risk when you concentrate hundreds of people in a small place that you're legally responsible for. I have seen some interesting results come out of it though: one holiday night a copper thief got onto the facility roof to plunder the AC units, one call from the off duty officer resulted in the immediate dispatch of a police helicopter and nearly a dozen cruisers. This is from an American perspective, but I'd be surprised if it was different anywhere else in the world.

It is different.

Where, in the Netherlands? I can't think of a way to say this that doesn't sound rude, so I'll just say it: how informed is your opinion? Roughly how big a company are we talking? Have you managed security, or managed security managers?

I ask because a long time ago I worked at a multinational that had facilities all over Europe. I'd have remembered if we got pushback from local management on this matter, but then I suppose they always could have been lying about their security programs... there isn't really a good way to audit law enforcement outreach - until something goes wrong.

In Sweden. I have worked at two of the largest companies, never seen anything like that.

The message received from the police was:

The message they passed on was that there was either a burglary attempt or that my car was involved in an accident. They gave the police the exact coordinates of my car...

So I would hope that when presented with an automated report that the car was involved in an accident along with the exact coordinates, that they would come investigate to see if the driver was injured in the accident and unable to call for help.

I can believe that if someone witnessed a car break-in, that they'd give that a lower priority and if the thief is no longer there, that they wouldn't come out at all since there's not much they can do about it other than agree "Yup, someone smashed your window, now go clean your glass off the sidewalk".

> So I would hope that when presented with an automated report that the car was involved in an accident along with the exact coordinates, that they would come investigate to see if the driver was injured in the accident and unable to call for help.

Exactly this. Also, I have some family members working for the police in Dutch rural areas, at 3 am they'd happy to head out, because they're usually just waiting for something to happen.

Several years ago someone tried to climb into our apartment window in Amsterdam (with another guy waiting with a motorbike as getaway vehicle on the street). He was standing on the windowsill and tried to break open the window (it was open but we had one of those locks that limits how far the window opens, so he didn't fit through the gap). They fled once we noticed them.

When we tried to report that incident to the police their first question was: Did they manage to get into the apartment? When we said no they told us there's nothing that they can do as the people who tried to break into our apartment weren't doing anything illegal.

Standing on someones windowsill isn't illegal?

He was just doing isometric exercise. Nothing illegal about exercise.

Probably trespassing but that's no reason to send officers after the event has occurred.

You sound frustrated, like you think it’s a bad thing that the police has time to respond to these types of incidents. When you’re not in one of the big cities, it is in fact common that police has time for this type of stuff (I live in Zeist myself and could see this type of thing happening here).

I think this is rather a signal that the police in Amsterdam is underfunded, and/or the types of crimes they deal with are much more severe.

Also keep in mind that it’s not a “search a whole neighborhood” situation, they got the exact GPS coordinates.

I think it's great that they have time to do that. I'm happy that somebody in this country has working public services.

I'm just honestly surprised. I've only lived in Amsterdam inside The Netherlands and wouldn't expect the police to respond to something like that.

    > it’s not a “search a whole neighborhood” situation

In retrospect I may have misread this:

    > They gave the police the exact
    > coordinates of my car and it only
    > took the surveilling car 5 minutes
    > to get to the car

I thought they had somewhat correct coordinates, but took 5 minutes to drive around the area to locate the car, as opposed to 5 minutes from wherever they were located before.

In any case, it doesn't make much difference. I think if someone called the police here in Amsterdam with the exact location of a broken-in car they'd say tough titty and have the owner show up at the closest station and file a police report.

Well the call center said it was a break-in or an accident. I'm sure the Amsterdam police would come if it was an accident and someone could have been injured.

So all I need to do to get Amsterdam police to care about bicycle theft is to install some sort of ribbon that'll get torn off if the lock gets broken, which'll be indistinguishable from the frame getting broken in half ("an accident"). Hook that all up to a GSM modem and a call center and suddenly my local cops will care about crime.

Also known as crying wolf.

Don't you have insurance for theft? Kind mandatory in Amsterdam.

Pushing the problem to insure is blaming the victims, making the pay for crime.

Given that there's hundreds of thousands of bikes stolen a year and the chance of the theft being solved is very, very low, it's very much a "prepare for the worst and hope for the best" thing.

Also, in Amsterdam, don't get a fancy bike.

> When you’re not in one of the big cities, it is in fact common that police has time for this type of stuff

I didn't do a nationwide survey, but you can add two places in Limburg (Maastricht and a small town near Echt) to the list of understaffed places since they also wouldn't respond to anything that was not life-threatening (literally asked whether we were threatened with our life).

For added fun, you should try calling the local police on a public holiday. Better have a good reason for bothering these busy bees when they're all out on parking meter patrol!

> the types of crimes they deal with are much more severe.

Not just that, because of tourists misbehaving everywhere, there are also just way more crimes/disturbances than in normal city/town.

Plus the fact that the number of policemen available is set according to the number of inhabitants, not the number of actual people (e.g. tourists).

As an American, I'm glad I'm not the only one :)

That said, I thought that car theft was all but gone in the US, at least for modern cars, whereas in Europe it still seems common. (Eg, if you follow international forums for newer car models, nobody in the US talks about theft anymore, but our European counterparts talk about these highly complex theft schemes). But then someone was posting about theft in Sacramento, so, I don't know.

I think it is easier to sell vehicles stolen in Europe. All a thief needs to do is drive the vehicle to Eastern Europe and there will be a buyer. Selling a stolen vehicle in the US is a lot more difficult.

Or getting it to Mexico, I suppose.

There's a huge difference between the US and EU in this regard. If I steal a car in California and try to sell it in Nevada, I can expect to be arrested.

If I have a car stolen in The Netherlands and it's being sold in Romania, and I find out who's selling it and where, I'll be told that I have to travel to Romania and file report with the local police there before they'll do anything.

The only inter-state enforcement we have in the EU is Interpol, which doesn't care about anything like that, they only handle the likes of violent crime.

So it's kind of like expecting to recover your stolen car from Mexico or Belize, except crossing the border is a lot easier.

Interesting because stolen cars are sometimes broken for parts, but perhaps there's no profit in that in US? There was an 'OEM+' car modding craze here a few years back where certain top-end Audis were being targeted solely for their front seats, which would then be fitted to older VWs.

And back when the S2000 was new, people were stealing them for the seats, and so on. But overall it seems like auto thefts have dropped precipitously since the 90s. Likely a combination of coordinated efforts and computerized DBs across states, cars getting harder to steal, etc, making it less worthwhile. Whereas, if parent is correct and it's easier to "get away with" in Europe, the remaining hurdle is technical, and quite an interesting problem to work around, even to this non-thief :)

Parts-related theft is here, but it targets a fairly different set of cars - generally somewhat older (so needing replacement parts) highly common cars. See: https://www.statista.com/chart/6551/the-10-most-stolen-cars-...

I suppose these make for less interesting news stories since they aren't nearly as tricky to steal.

Actually you would just have to file a theft report with the local police and the car would not even enter Romania without the driver likely arrested and the car confiscated, as there is a real time db of cars reported stolen that is shared among the EU members and more. I imagine it could take a bit more effort to actually get the car back. You would probably have to worry much more about the car being torn apart and sold for pieces or leaving Europe through Rotterdam.

Romania is not in Schengen area so they shouldn't get there, the farthest they would get to in that direction is Hungary, at least in theory.

Anyway a few year ago my car was stolen in Slovakia (the insurance paid out so my loss was minimal) and was found after a year in Hungary - the thieves were trying to sell it but it was found out they tried to change the VIN. Because apparently you can't register a car with a stolen VIN in EU. And that's nothing to do with Interpol as far as I know.

> Romania is not in Schengen area so they shouldn't get there

Why is that? Plenty of stolen European cars roaming in Algeria and Tunisia. And with the help of corrupt officers they are registered here.

As I said, in theory, it should be very hard to get out of Schengen with a stolen car. But of course corrupt officials can help. Registering a car with a stolen VIN should not be possible within the EU. Of course "should not".

If the old "Top Gear" shows are to be believed, eastern European countries are full of cars stolen from western European countries. Then there's this: (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1999-12-27/news/991227006...).

Just got outta jail (again) couple days ago, Vista Detention Facility. Plenty of people were in for GTA (g-ride) or joyriding. My roommate is being bailed out of Banning tonight for joyriding.

The key point isn't the BMW, it's the unspecified distress. Lives could literally be on the line, and a fast response might make a difference.

Intelligent design by BMW. Keep it vague, even though it should totally be able to differentiate between a sudden G-force, a button press, or an electrical issue (wire cut), but the car/call centre doesn’t specify the exact causative issue.

A simpler explanation is that BMW doesn't want to be legally liable if a car crashes but the special sensor algorithm reports it as a break-in, or vice versa.

After all, they're just sensors, and they're still just guessing. Far better for them to report "something is wrong" than to file a false report.

>because some BMW call center calls the police in the middle of the night telling them that some car reported unspecified distress within some radius

Isn't that much more severe than "window smashed"?

It's "Burglary in process, or someone might be dying, and you haven't received a 112 so no ambulance is on the way."

The BMW just reported some ambiguous state of distress, whereas a person calling the police and telling them that some car has had its windows smashed in in downtown is by all reasonable criteria equivalent to a burglary in process. If someone's not stealing from that car now, they will be in 5 minutes.

>The BMW just reported some ambiguous state of distress

It reported damage to the car severe enough to sever the door frame!!

Exactly this, not sure what sort of speed of impact you'd have to be in with an F30 3 Series to bend the window frame significantly enough to break that wire, but you'd have to imagine very high.

Don't you read the news? There have recently been articles in the international press that Amsterdam is a jungle right now:

> Official ombudsman, Arre Zuurmond told Dutch paper Trouw that "the city centre becomes an urban jungle at night". He added: "Criminal money flourishes, there is no authority and the police can no longer handle the situation."

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/amsterdam-tourists-...

That is a British tabloid.

Here, have a Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/04/amsterdam-brit...

A most damning indictment indeed.

No it is not.

I was in Amsterdam last weekend, at the party mentioned at the very end of the article. Thousands of people packed into the square on a Friday evening having fun. Minimal police and security guards present.

On the Saturday, hundreds of thousands of people visited Amsterdam to watch the Canal Pride on the Prinsengracht. The police reported minimal disturbances, and arrested a grand total of 25 people, 17 of which were for pickpocketing [1]. That is a substantial reduction on prior years.

[1] https://www.politie.nl/nieuws/2018/augustus/6/05-zakkenrolle...

You miss the implication of the comment I was replying too.

The comment I was replying too was able to dismiss the legitimacy of the offending 'news' article with a simple observation.

I was commenting on the efficacy of such pity denigration, not the quality of Amsterdam's nightlife.

That’s how you sell newspapers and clicks.

Im in Amsterdam quite often, it just a short drive from where I live in Germany, and it’s a safe and fun place to be, if you take into account that it’s very touristy. I’ve been watching the canal pride from a park this year and was amazed that people even actually cleaned up their mess. Very unlike than at home, unfortunately.

This article and the other one quoted from the Guardian are cherrypicking quotes to make it sound far more dramatic than it really is.

Total crime numbers in Amsterdam are down substantially on prior years (https://www.ois.amsterdam.nl/popup/1663). The number of Dutch prisoners have halved over the last 10 years. Dutch prisons are now so empty the space is being rented out to other countries (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-37904263).

At the same time, the number of tourists to Amsterdam has increased 60% over the last 10 years. It is not surprising the numbers are sometimes difficult to manage.

But, speaking as someone who since 2000 has lived in Amsterdam or visited at least monthly, I have never felt safer in the city.

The quote is specifically about a few areas like the red light district that see so many drunk and/or high tourists that the situation gets too unwieldy. Quite a specific situation that's not saying too much about the general crime level.

It's rich that a British paper publishes an alarming story on this since British tourists are a huge part of these crowds.

They didn't search the whole neighborhood. They got a call about a potential accident and ofc checked it out.

> The officer I spoke to was unable to tell me which phone number or external call center it was, but that it was, in fact, a call center. The message they passed on was that there was either a burglary attempt or that my car was involved in an accident.

That last bit is key: "or that my car was involved in an accident." An accident means people could be hurt which is something the police have to respond to.

> "Has anyone been hurt? Nope? Then we're not coming".

Sounds like San Francisco as well. Petty crime and theft go uninvestigated and run rampant.

The BMW customer engineers are smart: perhaps by design, their system doesn’t know if someone is having a heart attack, or a broken window, so they can push the emergency services to respond quickly and find out.

I had a camper stolen from in front of my house in about 30 minutes. The police never even bothered to show up and only put an alert out a good 5 hours after the theft, by which time I suspect it was either out of the country or parts in some chop shop's bins. Highly annoying. For all the cameras and tracking going on it is surprisingly ineffective to actually do something about a crime.

Why should the police be sent to a smashed window? Not much they can do at that point unless you caught somebody red-handed. "Yup, that window is totally smashed. OK, just file a claim with your insurance company."

Maybe I read too much about fooling fingerprint readers and think this is easier than it really is, but isn't it easy to check for prints in the car? In the general case, a shattered window means someone stole something and must have touched something in the car.

Of course not everyone is in the database, but if they are ever caught with anything they will be.

I suppose that cross-checking hundreds of possible prints against those of the owner and legitimate passengers would be quite a lot of effort for the slim chance of the burglar not having used gloves...

I know the guy, he lives in Utrecht, west of the A2.

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