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Comment by Overtonwindow | Hacker News Reader

IANL: What is the rules for use of force for railroad police, or railroad authorities protecting cargo? It seems people are breaking into these cars without fear of force, or prosecution. Combined, those are like a powder keg of lawlessness.

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> What is the rules for use of force for railroad police, or railroad authorities protecting cargo? It seems people are breaking into these cars without fear of force, or prosecution.

You can use whatever force you want to respond to piracy on the open sea, including killing the pirates. But that hasn't been done even when we had a lot of complaints about active piracy.

It seems possible that Union Pacific worries that municipal authorities wouldn't be any happier with the idea of UP defending itself than they are with the idea of prosecuting the people UP hands over to them.

Denmark recently killed four suspected pirates in Bay of Guinea (actually five as it was later discovered). The Danish forces were fired at while trying to apprehend the suspected pirates so you can argue it was self defense and the intent was not to kill.

https://www.reuters.com/world/danish-frigate-kills-four-susp...

Russia is well known to simply release pirates they catch with a bucket of fuel, only for them to end up "disappearing" hours later. Coincidentally, hijackings of Russian vessels basically don't happen anymore.

i could see a market for remote operated, boxcar mountable, high volume pepper spray devices. You'd have to staff operators but at least they'd be sitting in an office instead of wandering up and down the tracks.

maybe even a boxcar escort service via drone with pepper spray paintball guns.

Killing pirates has been done relatively recently. There was even a movie starring Tom Hanks based on one such incident entitled “Captain Phillips”. Also, that was not the only nor last incident when pirates were killed.

I recall some documentary I watched about a German/American citizen captured by pirates and both nations refused to help him.

He eventually got free thanks to crowdfunding or something of the sort. What a world we live in.

You probably mean Michael Scott Moore, and I'm not sure "refused to help him" is entirely accurate. Governments were involved, but also don't just provide and hand over millions of ransom (the US has a very explicit policy to never do so, Moore reported some surprise at the fact that his kidnappers didn't know that), which limits what they can actually do.

UP police are subject to the same use-of-force rules as any other peace officer in California.

https://calmatters.org/justice/2019/08/newsom-signs-landmark...

> IANL: What is the rules for use of force for railroad police, or railroad authorities protecting cargo?

Also NAL. Force has to be proportional. That means that an unarmed trespasser stealing property can't be shot, only detained.

> It seems people are breaking into these cars without fear of force, or prosecution.

I'm sure they have some fear. I doubt that they want to get caught, since it's at least a few hours or a weekend in jail to get processed. As far as prosecution goes, if I were a criminal, I'd either naively think that I'll never get caught/prosecuted, or just accept that it might happen at any time, but I prefer theft now over avoiding maybe-prosecution in the future.

> Combined, those are like a powder keg of lawlessness.

There's no powderkeg here, so long as we don't escalate. If prosecutions don't start, the likely thing to happen is that the railyards will improve physical security (e.g. razorwire fencing everywhere, reduce trains at rest), improve their security forces and response times, and pass any remaining expense onto the customers.

> It seems people are breaking into these cars without fear of force, or prosecution.

What is that based on? I am aware that's a trendy thing to say about crime, but many trendy things have no basis in reality. What is the factual basis for the criminals' motives and perspectives?

It would be a bad idea to use force against train robbers. They would just start packing guns themselves. Often times these robberies are coordinated by organized crime who control robbery rights over certain sections of track.

Are you suggesting people should not defend property because the attackers will just escalate force and continue their crimes?

Then by that logic, I now understand the push to reduce the punishment of so much crime.

Imagine if the military had this mindset.

'We should surrender our lawfully owned territory in case force might be used against us in the future'

It's not the military in this case. It's loss prevention. The protocol of every single major retail corporation for theft is to just step back and not intervene or be a hero, because an employees life is ultimately not worth the $30 in loot from Target or whatever is in that Amazon bubble mailer.

These appear to be two groups, opportunistic, and organized. I imagine some basic security hardening would deter the opportunistic ones but different strategies would be needed for organised groups.

> Often times these robberies are coordinated by organized crime who control robbery rights over certain sections of track

That doesn't appear to be the case here from all accounts I've read - do you have any citations for that?

Everything I'm reading is pointing the finger addicts, the homeless, and homeless addicts...

The letter mentions they are opportunists and organised. I'm reading that as 2 classifications of criminals.

It could also be a bad idea to be a train robber because the enforcers could start packing guns themselves. Why does the advantage go to the bad guys?

I guarantee you arming random train yard workers or whatever you are envisioning is going to just lead to them being killed before they hear a peep and their guns being stolen, serials stripped, and sold. The bad guys will have the drop and the good guys aren't going to shoot first. The only good guys with guns that are able to stop bad guys with guns are SWAT who come in and can create a controlled environment to conduct a controlled response. Arming security guards and your average grunt cop just does more harm than good. Taking a gun out into the field should be a thoroughly planned affair like how SWAT operates.

> They would just start packing guns themselves.

what makes you think they aren't already doing just that?

They would be charged with a weapons enhancement instead of just petty theft

Basic criminals don’t like being shot. Large reason why gun free cities are so dangerous.

Are gun free cities more dangerous? Could you provide a source for the claim?

A cursory look at San Francisco and Oakland should be adequate proof.

Look at Chicago.

Google suppresses nearly all pro gun or right wing content, so searching on mobile is difficult.

Pardon my skepticism, but "Look at Chicago" is not compelling evidence, nor is "all of the real evidence is censored." Surely there's a reputable collection of documents and research you can provide that would back up your claims?

So why don’t you search with something else? And it should be rather trivial to find the most violent cities and towns in the US and look up gun laws there.

Or you just stop watching right wing media that contrary to evidence paint all democratic run cities as violent hellholes.

Section 28101

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/28101

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