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Comment by heavenlyblue | Hacker News Reader

Wouldn’t your friends then end up in jail? Or is that the type of crime that is not prosecuted unless “charges are pressed”?

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I’ve never known cops to investigate theft unless you basically hand them the culprit yourself. You just get your police report and hand it to insurance, if relevant. That’s their whole and entire role in the process. Even where there’s a 99% chance there’s, say, a gas station with video of the thief and their car (=license plate). They don’t even bother to check it out. You really do have to give them everything yourself to get them to maybe do anything.

> Even where there’s a 99% chance there’s, say, a gas station with video of the thief and their car (=license plate). They don’t even bother to check it out. You really do have to give them everything yourself to get them to maybe do anything.

You might as well have declared your location to be San Francisco Bay Area.

True in Seattle as well, and Portland too from what friends tell me but I don't have first hand knowledge of that one.

Had my wallet stolen at a community rec center in the Northgate area (a few miles north of downtown Seattle for those unfamiliar). There was video of the thief taking it. I was able to find out from regulars his name + phone number + address, from which I found his facebook account with several public pictures of him that made it clear he was the same man from the security video. Also was able to find some public police reports of prior arrests of the same man on various counts of theft/larceny, although no convictions that I could find. Gave all of that information to the "detective" assigned to my case. Nothing ever came of it. As best I can tell, nobody did anything beyond write down some of the information I gave them.

It's not even an urban thing. I used to live in Woodinville, across the lake from Seattle, which for the uninitiated is one of those vast suburban sprawls with a Starbucks and a Mongolian Grill in the middle. Someone broke into my car and stole my wife's purse, and we tried contacting the police for hours to file a report. Their office was closed in the middle of the day, the person who answered their phone wouldn't connect us to anyone, and we finally ended up following a cop car to a sandwich shop and flagging the driver down when he got out.

Someone did eventually take it seriously when the thief stole thousands of dollars from a series of banks with my wife's checkbook. I guess cash is king.

Also anywhere in the Netherlands

It also describes the New York City I grew up in. Total apathy on the part of the police to most crime, and definitely toward property crime.

Hahaha, nope. Not in any of the major tech hubs. I think it’s true in most cities.

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

Property crimes typically have a 10-20% clearance rate. Police are too preoccupied writing traffic tickets and/or harassing poor people. If anything, reported property crimes track against unemployment/economic prosperity-- probably much stronger than police payroll.

The FBI's UCR is even more accessible at https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/ -- where you can look at crime rates, clearance rates, types of crime all the way down to the municipality level.

I've lived in places where cops don't even show up for theft and burglary. If you want a police report, you're visiting the station where they begrudging take your report and roll their eyes at any implication that they should investigate the crime or look for whoever committed it.

What were the biggest line items on those municipalities' budgets? Police salaries, benefits, pensions and the purchasing and maintenance of law enforcement equipment and assets.

If you visit the police departments' Facebook pages, they frequently celebrate months long investigations on literal children who sell pot to their friends. There's apparently no time to solve potentially difficult-to-investigate crime when there are easy targets out there like kids smoking pot and people speeding.

If somehow the IRS found out that you and your buddies were doing this elaborate stealing-to-borrow plan, they could slap down tax evasion charges on you since that's definitely breaking the spirit of the law.

But that's a pretty big if ;)

Yeah, the way I read it this allows them to prosecute tax evasion in addition to theft for all property stolen in the previous years that wasn't declared to IRS as income from illegal activities.

Is that a common practice?

It has been used several times against organized crime, most famously against Al Capone.

You can't prove they did anything illegal to profit, but the IRS can audit them and prove they have not paid taxes on all their assets.

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