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Comment by acangiano | Hacker News Reader

The sad part to me is that you need media attention (albeit new media in this case) for the police department to do their job.

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If you think about it, it's no different than reporting a bug. You and your team know you should fix it, but there are always more pressing issues on your plate. You probably won't move it to the top of your list until either a large number of users complain or a one user complains very loudly.

Pretty important distinction: The people reporting bugs probably aren't paying your salary out of their taxes, nor have they granted you and your team a monopoly on wielding the tools necessary to perform an essential service.

I don't know about that...

What if I find a bug in Mac OS X* that I need fixed yesterday. I file a bug, and hope that it gets fixed eventually. Now it is up to Apple to fix it and get back to me on their schedule.

I pay Apple for their OS, and they are the only ones that can fix it. I'm at their mercy to fix it, so I fail to see how this is that different.

* Could be anything that isn't open-source

> If you think about it, it's no different than reporting a bug.

It's no different than reporting a bug with a patch. If I go to the police with evidence of a crime and details to apprehend the probable culprit, I expect them to deal with it. Those are really low hanging fruits.

Josh told papers that the PR director told him that the force has 2400 reports of theft a month and is only able to conduct 3 investigations.

(from the article on Consumerist http://consumerist.com/2011/06/laptop-thief-caught-after-vic...)

The Oakland PD no longer responds to property crimes. This is a stopgap policy they started after they lost a large number of officers (100?) recently due to budget cuts.

This is just a laptop but really uncool stuff goes down all the time and there is not a lot the cops can do without a plate number or pictures. My dad's place in Oakland (Well secured warehouse) has had people try to break in five times over the last year and a half. The really fun one was 3 guys on the roof and one guy holding a neighbor kid hostage in the kids van so he would not call the cops. They are looking for pot grows and it happens all the time in Oakland. (They tried to drive their truck through the rollup doors of the neighbors warehouse) Not a damn thing you or a the cops can do except put up some cameras and shoot them if they get in your house.

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