Before wave of train thefts, Union Pacific laid off some of its police force
lataco.com
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Eventually I inquired why the gas station had changed, and the man at the register explained that there were several armed robberies during the time period that I'd been living there. I was surprised; this gas station was in a fairly decent part of town near NASA, and there was a tennis club right next to the apartment complex. I used to walk barefoot from my apartment to the courts. I'd never heard sirens or ever noticed that anyone had been robbed.
It must have taken 6-10 young men fewer than a combined 60 minutes across several robberies to completely alter the dynamic of the gas station. Their hour's worth of work caused hundreds of hours in transfers, equipment moving, inspections, storage, and installation. The experience of shopping at that gas station became unpleasant, and I avoided the station when I could. Soon after, I moved to a richer, nicer, quieter neighborhood down the road (for unrelated reasons--the apartment complex had a pest problem.) But I often think about that shop; there are now children growing up in that apartment complex who think that "gas stations" include bulletproof glass and wary stares, instead of warm lighting and friendly greetings. That's their vision of society; even if those children are not criminals themselves, they expect to be treated like them. They're like children who don't remember plane travel before 9/11, except instead of the hold-up at the TSA, it's a hold-up in a gas station.
This is what I think about when I hear about large-scale property crime like these train thefts. Sure, it's just property. But it is the docile, rule-following, peaceful majority (to which I and the rest of HN belong) that creates and finances all the property that ends up stolen and destroyed; allow this stability of commerce to be interrupted by wanton theft or violence and they will flee, retreat into themselves, hire private security forces, and produce less. Poverty may encourage crime, but crime always creates poverty.
What policymakers and people who think they mean well need to understand is that the actions/policies they promote, believing that they're reducing the stigma or making it more "equitable" by reducing the penalties for crime, end up hurting most people instead of solving the problem. They get to feel better that they didn't lock up so many people of color (to use today's fad grouping), but the greater community who are poor and less privileged are actually the ones paying for the crimes now being overlooked/ignored.
The rich can/will move away and leave these places to suffer on their own. The poor, who most rely on government to protect them, watch as their concerns and safety get swept under the rug of feel-good defund-the-police policies as those in charge have no idea (or actively ignore) what they've incentivized.
Perhaps you are the one who needs to understand. What makes you the holder of Truth? The people you claim to speak for - why are you speaking for anyone? - they vote for these policies, overwhelmingly. They objected for generations to the brutal oppression of police and will tell you, if you let them speak for themselves, that police make them feel less safe. They will tell you that bail ruined lives of innocent people by keeping them imprisoned, costing people jobs, making them burdens on their communities.
> who think they mean well
You can make up characterizations, but the policies are based on, finally, listening to people in those communities.
Further, there is no evidence connecting the policies with crime increases. Crime has remained low overall, and the increase in gun crime and homicide has been spread across the country, regardless of local policies.
>>You can make up characterizations, but the policies are based on, finally, listening to people in those communities. Further, there is no evidence connecting the policies with crime increases. Crime has remained low overall, and the increase in gun crime and homicide has been spread across the country, regardless of local policies.
Nope.
You in fact are probably among those who believe they are the "holder of Truth" in how much you believe in your exaggerated position and its importance.
Most people of color are not being brutalized by police. Most are not being downtrodden and being imprisoned unjustly. Quite to the contrary, most in this country are law abiding citizens making their way up the economic and social ladder. Many are poor. And more often than not, need and value the protection of police and government for their communities.
You say you listened to the communities, but you actually just decided to hear the loudest/most vocal people who latched on to some headline-grabbing idea that doesn't represent the bulk of what daily life is in this country. And you overexaggerate the proportion of people of color who are experiencing these issues versus living normal, striving, lives. Of course you are -- only that story fits your desire to create disproportionate attention to the issue.
And you took that idea and thought that using it to upend the systems of law would benefit some small symbolic group. Yes there are some incidents of police brutality and misconduct, but you would no more say that that should be grounds to dismantle a system of law any more than you would say that a few bad apples should be used to prejudge a people.
I don't claim to speak on behalf of any community. You certainly do.
The dismantling of justice systems / overlooking of crime is not conducive to a good society. And your last sentence just illustrates the blinders you have on to evidence of increased crime in places with newly-tolerant anti-policing policies.
Don't be so self-righteous and confident in your position because you think you're morally correct.
The funny thing here is that your post is considerably more self-righteous, and it's also hypocritical.
You're saying that it's not conducive to society to overlook crime, while ignoring the fact that police are committing crimes with essentially no repercussions. We don't even have requirements to track the crimes the police commit.
This point is especially funny when you consider that crime rates are at historic lows, nationwide, but we still have the largest per-capita number of prisoners in the world.
> Most people of color are not being brutalized by police. Most are not being downtrodden and being imprisoned unjustly. Quite to the contrary, most in this country are law abiding citizens making their way up the economic and social ladder.
You are equating abuse by law enforcement with criminality, which is the fundamental problem - privileged people think it only happens to criminals. You are right that they are law-abiding, and yet they still suffer abuse - that is the great problem of our society for generations, they've been saying it for generations, and people like you have ignored them for generations. I actually talk to people, not watch Fox News (or any other nonsense). If you think these issues aren't widespread, you live in a priviledged bubble. Go out. Get on the bus. Talk to people who actually live the experiences.
So after a while, people forgo their ideals and revert to the hard reality and elect someone like a Duterte who promised to clean up and he did -and but for the affected families, for the most part took the bargain. People will put up with only so much insecurity. Most tyrannies don't put up with petty crimes either because petty crimes can move people to seek change.
You say it's impossible, but do you have evidence to support that?
> elect someone like a Duterte
You're suggesting that for the United States? You think that was a success?
> People will put up with only so much insecurity.
Crime rates are low and dropping. Someone is working hard to create a sense of insecurity. Why? Isn't that the biggest threat?
However, removing all punishment for crime isn't a sane response. It quite predictably incentivized property theft that was previously at an acceptably low level, despite the broken system.
If things aren't rebalanced, vigilante justice might be seen as an acceptable answer, and it will probably bring strong racists themes along with it.
People want some peace --they will take a hit to civil liberties in exchange.
It's not even a particularly extreme part/position in that debate.
But watch this. If I told people I was a software engineering manager and I docked my employees' pay if they didn't complete sprint goals on time, HN would be outside my door ready to murder me. "Punishment doesn't work! How can you be so stupid? I hate you!"
Ultimately, we have to treat the cause and not the symptoms. If people have a purpose and their basic needs met, very few of them are going to jump onto a derailed train and steal random Amazon orders. But in LA, people don't have their basic needs met. They don't have a place to live. They don't get to shower in the morning. They might not even know where their next meal comes from. Sadly, prison is probably an improvement, and selling your $20 Amazon item to someone on the street for $10 guarantees that next meal. So taking some packages off a train is a win/win.
As a society, we can do a lot better than this. We don't need to sacrifice a $20 Amazon item to give someone their next meal. We could just give it to them for pennies on the dollar. We don't because... I can't even think of a reason. Puritan work ethic? A desire to punish people out of unfulfilled BDSM fantasies? I don't know. But it seems pretty fucked up to me.
Second, you may not put up with deadline punishments because you "have an out" (get another job). If we had 20% unemployment and you have 20 guys and gals in line for your job and there wasn't a social safety net, you'd be glad to have a crummy manager with crummy milestones and deadlines. So, punishment works --it doesn't work if it's subverted (i.e. options). How exactly do you think trannies and communist systems work, people volunteer?
But watch this. If I told that I am a hedge fund manager and steal from mom and pop shops for the thrill because my life is boring, HN would be outside my door ready to murder me. "You are a psychopath! How can you be so evil? I hate you!".
Ultimately I agree with you. We are fighting symptoms instead of the cause. We just disagree what the cause is.
For a psychopathic hedgefund manager, there will be a very different cause than someone hardly able to feed their kids.
I am for criminalizing the sale of hard drugs, but not the consumption. Criminalizing consumption is lose-lose. Recreational drugs like Alcohol and MJ and others, as long as they are regulated and not highly addictive for the majority of the population, I don't think we'd benefit from criminalizing (see Prohibition and War on Drugs results). We would benefit more from programs to treat addition as ineffectual as they are.
Alcoholism and gambling both fit the bill. Even for those, adequate counseling and social support don't exist, practically, in the US.
This is the infrastructure of society that bleeds when pressed, and many people could do with legal variants, or safe spaces to confront addiction.
Seeing what has happened on the streets due to meth, fentanyl, and heroin, if we are compassionate we have to pay for rehabilitating all that damage that drug use has caused. So…we make it illegal so we don’t have to pay those costs.
Unfortunately, anything short of a Singaporean legal solution probably wouldn’t work, which isn’t something our society can accept. So here we are.
What are you going to do with that? Fix the society? Well, yes, that would be ideal, but we haven't found a workable plan so far, despite lots of trying.
Failing that, what are you going to do? Let murderers go free? That actually can work, for those who just had a lapse of judgment. For those who are likely to try to do it again, though, that seems like a very shortsighted solution. Fewer people in prison, but more dead bodies on the street? That's not a good trade for society as a whole.
So, given the lawlessness in society, given the visible problems of not punishing crime, less punishment seems unwise.
Actually, less/more is not the correct axis. What we really need is more certain punishment. I don't care how many people that puts away, put away everybody who commits a felony.
But even that's not the whole answer, because we need to revisit things like decriminalizing certain drugs. Would society as a whole be better off, or worse?
The real answer is that we need a society where people restrain themselves, so that the law doesn't have to do the restraining. Lose that, and the only options left are anarchy and oppressive enforcement.
Fundamentally I agree. Once we stop relying on people’s self regulation and basic decency we have already failed. Overflowing prisons is a telling sign of that failure.
I guess one benefit of US being so large and states and municipalities having the ability to create their own laws, is that eventually we might learn what works best after observing results. How did the reforms in San Francisco or LA work? If they worked well, other states might rush to copy. If if didn’t, at least it’s isolated to a few areas.
https://financesonline.com/how-income-inequality-affects-cri...
The contrast of what is actually available on an upward path is much more preventative of crime vs the marginal discouragement of more punishment below.
> The contrast of what is actually available on an upward path is much more preventative of crime vs the marginal discouragement of more punishment below.
Or, to put it simply, criminal intent is a cost-benefit analysis. And, despite you're implication, there isn't a particular level of income or lack thereof required to make that calculation.
Putting people into prison makes them (and their families) poorer. Should we put violent criminals into prison? Yes. Should we put shoplifters into prison? Probably not.
Most of the sentencing and prosecution changes that have been coming through are for crimes that are generally considered minor: shoplifting, drug possession, etc.
The reason you believe otherwise is because of police propaganda. A lot of their crime numbers are linked to these arrests, because these arrests are easy, safe, and require little to no investigation. The drug arrests tend to be associated with their profit centers too (traffic stops). They have a strong incentive to lie to you about these changes, because their jobs are tied to it.
I support helping people out of poverty. However, it will take decades. In the meantime, no more prosecuting of minor crimes, huh? That's sure to send some great signals to people who might be tempted to commit crimes. And to the people who obey laws.
How about people who shoplift try not shoplifting, to help avoid making their families poorer by staying out of prison for those and other crimes? Who knows whether you understand this idea. It seems that you rather sympathize with someone who commits crime rather than the 100x people in the same community who obey the laws and have to pay to clean up after that crime. And you occupy some reverse-logic-world where people committing crimes are being treated to some perverse injustice by being caught for those crimes.
It's an insult to the law-abiding poor person who pays in full for their purchases that you seem to care more about the shoplifter. That you're so eager to let the person jumping the turnstile not be punished, while the elderly pensioner scrimps and saves to pay her subway fare dutifully. Watch out for the backlash against what you think your policies are doing.
And btw I don't consume propaganda or get swayed by messaging. I don't believe what people say, of either side. I believe what they do.
You're missing the point and making this a moralistic debate, rather than one based on the best outcome. Yes, people shouldn't shoplift. They shouldn't speed either.
I'm also not suggesting that we don't punish minor crimes, only that we don't put people in prison for doing them. The punishment simply doesn't fit the crime. Prison is a life ender for most people. If you have a felony on your record, you can't get most jobs. It can make it harder to find good apartments. It makes it more likely they're commit more serious crimes later, because we're effectively forcing people into lifelong poverty.
In terms of turnstyles: get rid of them. Make public transportation free. No more turnstyle jumpers. A lot of shoplifting is due to people not having enough money to buy things: increase minimum wage and make education free so that people can get better jobs.
You're advocating for more punishment, which makes you feel better, but doesn't improve society. I'm advocating for improving society, which will reduce crime.
At first blush, you're crushingly obviously right. What kind of society do we have where people have to steal baby formula?
The real answer is much stranger: there's a lot of money to be made buying stolen baby formula and selling it to stores that won't ask where you got it. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/02/magazine/mone...
No, not to be sold individually is mostly from the manufacturer, and mostly about labelling requirements for sale. If the bundle meets the requirement but the contained packets do not, then the restriction is noted.
> as well as intended for sale at "Store Name"
That's mostly for advertising the stores exclusive merchandise for customer retention.
Only the Treasury is allowed to do that :) https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages...
"Federal Reserve notes are not redeemable in gold, silver or any other commodity, and receive no backing by anything. This has been the case since 1933. The notes have no value for themselves, but for what they will buy. In another sense, because they are legal tender, Federal Reserve notes are 'backed' by all the goods and services in the economy."
https://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/
Yes, so obviously an endeavor nobody would undertake without an eventual buyer. Nobody with a hungry kid is going to care about an obvious "FOR SALE AT CVS ONLY" sticker on their cheap food. It's called a "fence" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fence_(criminal)
But all you did was introduce one layer of money exchange, and money is super fungible. So the reason it’s sad literally hasn’t changed at all.
I hope that helps clarify things for you! The reason it appears sad at first blush is not true, even with any number of financial exchanges in between.
I found the article I linked previously to be highly educational on this subject.
I clearly have missed something.
It says that there is a significant enough segment of the market dependent on WIC to do so that it sets a price cap that drives market behavior enough to motivate sponsored theft by retailers as a means of keeping prices at a level that allow them to stay under the price cap of the WIC-dependent population.
Which is exactly saying that a mass of people can't afford baby formula and diapers, at prices the market sets absent theft, even with existing public assistance for exactly that purpose.
I think a lot of this discussion that is happening nationally about these specific crimes is happening outside the context of the specific neighborhood in which they are occurring. The few miles around Union Station are probably the densest population of homeless people in the country. People who have nothing to lose are much more likely to commit property crime. Maybe the problem here isn't that people are stealing property off trains. Maybe the problem is that there are thousands of people in that area in which stealing something off a train now seems like the best way to improve their life?
Do you have some data showing that homeless people commit more crime? That they are committing these crimes? What are the demographics of the criminals?
For example, maybe it's organized crime, in which case the perpetrators probably aren't homeless.
It's dangerous to stereotype and blame the 'other', people who happen to be homeless. IMHO, it's just raw prejudice. That's why we need data and facts, not assumptions that people unfamiliar (homeless, people with different skin colors, people of different economic situations) are a threat.
If you don't like homeless as that proxy, here[1] is a list of the median income of various LA county neighborhoods. Union Station is situated where Lincoln Heights, Chinatown, and Downtown meet. Those are ranked 250th, 263rd, and 265th out of the 265 neighborhoods that were ranked. These are incredibly poor neighborhoods, especially in terms of income inequality compared to the rest of LA.
Either way, I thought it was clear I was not "blaming" the homeless or the poor for these crimes. I am trying to highlight that these crimes are a symptom of a larger problem in which the people in these neighborhoods are the victim.
And if this were part of organized crime, that invalidates Union Pacific's entire point of blaming the lack of prosecution. The government is perfectly willing to go after organized crime. It is the lower level property crime that they are pushing back on prosecuting.
[1] - https://maps.latimes.com/neighborhoods/income/median/neighbo...
One important method is to not get swept up on in the mass paranoia and reactionary politics, but to actively demonstrate and spread trust.
Another is to assess risks realistically: One crime represents very little risk. It's like crime in large cities: It is low generally, and even the rash of homicides, while terrible for the victims and their families, are very rare and unlikely to affect you (especially people reading HN). There's actually little crime for people reading this, despite the hype.
> Poverty may encourage crime, but crime always creates poverty.
It seems like you're using two different meanings for the word 'poverty'. In "poverty may encourage crime", the word 'poverty' means a lot of people not earning enough money to live comfortably. And in "crime always creates poverty", it seems like the word 'poverty' means places being less welcoming, businesses spending extra resources, and public processes being less efficient. By using different meanings of the word in the same sentence, the sentence becomes difficult to understand correctly, easy to misunderstand.
Most property crime transfers wealth to poorer people, making them less poor and reducing poverty. Convicting and imprisoning criminals increases poverty.
Yes, if you move into a nice neighborhood and start sticking up the local residents and stores for material resources, you will increase your own material wealth and thus reduce your own poverty. Two decades from the start of you and your friends raiding the other town residents, you and your children will live in an economic dead zone. Smart and enteprising people will leave as soon as they can, and the peaceful majority that used to inhabit the area will never enter if they can help it.
This exact pattern has happened in every major American city, in Eastern Europe, in Russia, in China, in Central and South America, and in many African countries. Prosperity comes from people, and if people are threatened by crime, they will leave and create prosperity elsewhere.
> Most property crime transfers wealth to poorer people, making them less poor and reducing poverty. Convicting and imprisoning criminals increases poverty.
This is not true in the slightest. Don't rich people commit crime up one wall and down the other? Instead of sticking up gas stations, they're sticking up markets and foreign countries. Did having enough money to live comfortably stop them from committing crime? Of course it didn't. Transfer six hundred thousand US dollars to every member of a drug cartel. Will they become peaceful, moral, upstanding, and desirous of participantion in a pleasant middle-class lifestyle? Of course not.
This is true. Local economics are a large factor in poverty. It's a difficult issue with no simple solutions. The popular strategy of "punish crime more" has not been effective in solving crime or poverty in most places.
> > Most property crime transfers wealth to poorer people, making them less poor and reducing poverty. Convicting and imprisoning criminals increases poverty.
> This is not true in the slightest.
When someone gets a criminal conviction, their future job options get reduced, lowering their income and increasing poverty. When a person is arrested, they sit in jail waiting for arraignment, cannot go to work, and often lose their job. Later, they must take time off work to go to court. Many employers will just fire an unskilled worker rather than give them time off. When a person is in prison, they cannot work and cannot gain work experience. Many people get assaulted in prison and struggle with debilitating PTSD after they get out. This is how convictions and imprisonment increase poverty.
> Don't rich people commit crime up one wall and down the other? Instead of sticking up gas stations, they're sticking up markets and foreign countries.
So far, this discussion has been about theft, robbery, and poverty. White-collar crime is very different. Please don't pretend that they are the same. Please discuss with intellectual honesty.
> Transfer six hundred thousand US dollars to every member of a drug cartel. Will they become peaceful, moral, upstanding, and desirous of participantion in a pleasant middle-class lifestyle? Of course not.
This is a straw man argument. Go back and read what I actually wrote.
> Most property crime transfers wealth to poorer people, making them less poor and reducing poverty.
This is the part that I think is unequivocally false. If you live in poverty and you steal property, you do not then become "less poor" unless you subsequently use the property you stole to better yourself in other ways unrelated to the crime. It is not the transfer of wealth that made you less poor, it is your use of the wealth that you took, be it material or financial.
As an example, street gangs often "own" enough asset value in weapons, drugs, cash, and real estate to live in a better, less violent, and less poor life, but they and their families still suffer all of the symptoms of "poverty", because they do not use the assets they take to reduce their own "poverty" but rather to perpetuate the methods by which they acquired their property. There are some edge cases, but for the most part, property crime does not reduce "poverty" any more than caffeine pills reduce "chronic sleepiness".
I do not disagree that convicting and imprisonment increase poverty; I am openly in favor of prison reform and am aware that any criminal charges can seriousy impact lifetime earning potential.
> So far, this discussion has been about theft, robbery, and poverty. White-collar crime is very different.
No, it is not. Rich criminals have the same instincts to win, dominate, hurt, steal, lie, and otherwise oppress other people that poor criminals do. "White-collar" crime is blue-collar crime committed by more intelligent, well-connected people. Blue-collar crime in the case of theft and robbery uses the threat of personal violence to extract wealth from a person or a person's business; the white-collar crime in the way I mentioned it uses the threat of state violence to extract cash from an institution. Both are lawless--one is below the law, the other above the law. Your and other people's inability to understand this principle is the source of a massive road block in societal reform.
> This is a straw man argument. Go back and read what I actually wrote.
This I concede; you did not say this. However, your belief that white-collar crime and blue-collar crime are fundamentally different and your statement that "property crime...makes them less poor and reduces poverty" make me suspicious that you actually do think that a simple transfer of wealth from rich to poor is enough to reduce both poverty and crime to a degree where it does not bother the rest of society.
"Poverty is a state or condition in which a person or community lacks the financial resources and essentials for a minimum standard of living." [0]
Your non-apology and speculation about my beliefs are boring reading. Also, you listed some reasons why white-collar and blue-collar crime may be similar, but you ignored the many ways that they are different. You can do better. It might be a good time to review [1].
What if the second richest man in the US is robbed? Should we care? What about the third? What about your rich neighbor? What about that other neighbor that has 2 cars? What about that guy who has a job?
Railway, especially freight railway, provide such a huge backbone to the US’s logistical network that this can have some repercussions on things that may be needed to provide for the very impoverished communities that soft on crime stances purport to help.
I fear that LA might snap and elect a right-wing strongman who campaigns on law and order and subsequently brings on other rather terrible policies in exchange for the city saying “enough” to the rising crime rates.
When the LA Prosecutor has made it clear that they aren't prosecuting the thieves, it almost doesn't matter how many or how few patrol officers Union Pacific has. If there are no consequences, catching someone in the middle of a theft is only a minor delay and inconvenience.
I'm not an expert on what's reasonable when it comes to railway security (and neither are you), but from my layman's take on it, firing 85% of their security, and observing a 160% increase in theft seems like a "Union Pacific problem", not a "me problem".
They do seem to have a financial incentive, to the tune of 52 salaries to try to turn it into a "me problem."
Union Pacific is also turning information over and helping get people arrested, but they're back on the street within 24 hours.
These are the same thing though. The former is the incentive mechanism to achieve the designs of the latter. It's just filtered through enough layers like Vanguard and Berkshire and friends that people don't notice. Hands up if you've worked somewhere funded by In-Q-Tel, for example (I have!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel
https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bont... "Over the course of the investigation, $1,874,633.65 was seized from the defendants’ various bank accounts."
Yeah, if a two-million-dollar crime organization is supposed to be some "gotcha" then let's compare their possible ratio of crime-boss versus street-thug pay to the ratio of Silicon-Valley-engineer TC versus Tech-CEO TC. Do yours first :D
While organised crime is demonstrably capable of engineering situations beneficial to their ongoing criminal endeavours… it’s important to remember that the organised crime rings involvement may just be an emergent property of crime being allowed to happen enough that the people involved in it begin to organise.
Of course the situation may devolve from that point but the organising force coming from within before being co-opted is still reflecting a different situation than one where the whole endeavour was started and run by some kind of gang/kingpin/mafia to begin with.
IMO regulations that allow such a fragile system still make it artificial, just minus all accountability. Supply chains can't be an "act of god" (in a tort sense) when it's a concept humans made up.
If you haven't noticed, the median transient is a drug addict (mostly meth/opiates) and the typical drug addict chooses not to participate in society, inasmuch as you can accept that they have any agency at all. Some may think they are being compassionate with this victim-coddling but this only makes sense if you take the view that the victim-criminals enjoy their situation, since the coddling isn't elevating any of them out of poverty.
Even CDC readily admits this: https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/11778/cdc_11778_DS1.pdf
"Males and females have reported using methamphetamine for increased energy and productivity, its low cost, self-medication for depression or attention deficits, and the euphoric high"
"Males have reported using methamphetamine […] increased energy to work multiple jobs"
To me it feels like your comment is the one taking "the view that the victim-criminals enjoy their situation" if you think people choose to drop out of society even when there are bootstraps by which they could pull themselves up v(._. )v
I think when choosing between "unhoused, with access to drugs" and "housed but no access to drugs", many (not most, and not you!) choose the former. It's empirically true: most shelters don't allow drug use and so addicts turn them down in favor of camping.
You are projecting your own relative values if you think no one would ever make this choice. You are also over-weighting your own experience when you say that all drugs are a coping mechanism for all people all the time. Different drugs affect the same person differently; the same drug affects different people differently. Caffeine, Adderall, LSD, coke can all be productivity enhancers and are on average less destructive than meth. With all these tools at one's disposal, and plenty of precedent for successful straightedge approaches to life, suggesting that the meth problem is a result of people earnestly trying to survive the rat race is poorly supported by logic.
I can't even guess what you think the alternative to "earning a living" should be. The default should be to provide unlimited benefits for those who have no interest in contributing to society? Great, that's what we effectively are doing, so you must believe the status quo is ideal. But if you believe these people aren't living their best lives, then maybe consider that the current approach (extreme coddling) isn't helping them.
Victim-blaming is about blaming the vulnerable and powerless. Union Pacific might be 'victims' of crime, but they are not vulnerable and powerless. As one dramatic example, we wouldn't be talking about this issue if it was a vulnerable, powerless individual; they have the power to get their point of view into the public eye.
Oh please. We're attempting to redefine victims based on power theory just like we tried to redefine racism based on power theory? Please don't do this.
It entirely isn't a factor whether you have power or not when determining a victim. (Or are we going to say men can't be raped because they could have resisted?)
There's no reason to think a sexually assaulted male is in a position of power.
A stirring description of this mythical group. If you pay Amazon for something and it's stolen in transit, Amazon still owes it to you. You don't lose anything.
> Insurance premiums will go up and guess who's footing the bill...
UP will foot the bill.
Regardless, we should work to reduce crime, including against UP. But jailing innocent people because they are poor or minorities is not a solution, and hasn't worked in the past. Do you want to return to that?
In any event, this outlet was likely on the "defund the police" bandwagon, and now, they have the gall to say, oh, it's because you reduced policing (despite the fact that the DA is not doing their job making the argument moot.)
And of course the cops would have a cop bias, and teachers have a teacher bias, and service works have a service worker bias and on and on. Everyone looks out for their own across all cross sections of their identity.
What’s different is it seems cops get no additional cross sections anymore. Once they are a cop their ven diagram shifts to 100% cop and now they are vilified.
You find it reasonable for people to be paid and not do their jobs? They're not paid to administer justice, they're paid to do what they're told.
I’m honestly not even sure what you are advocating for. J walking is a good example of something I expect them not to bother with 99% of the time but it is a law nearly everywhere. To enforce that in a major metro could use all the cops every day. Huge waste of time.
What happens after people are arrested is not relevant to the police, and they have no training or authority to make decisions about it. We elected different people for that.
Along that same line of thought is that it is not relevant what the DA thinks about the law. The powers that be created the law and the DA should prosecute it every time there is an arrest and let the courts figure it out.
Also in your job you are given priorities and you work on the lowest ones last. And if you always have more priorities than hours in the day then the lower priority ones don’t get done. Based on the laws that are actually on the books there are more law breakers than police officers so they have to pick and choose their priorities. That’s still a reasonable thing to do.
I do not think cops are more or less corrupt than the average, but I do believe a corrupt cop has more impact than average. And because of that I do think they need higher standards and more accountability. I do not think they as a group need to be the “them” in the “us vs them” mentality.
> If the DA openly says they won’t prosecute a certain crime why would I expect the police to arrest for it?
Can you cite which DA said that about what crime, other than marijuana possession?
> Once they are a cop their ven diagram shifts to 100% cop and now they are vilified.
Let's not turn them into powerless victims, act like that is the only response police get, that they are such vulnerable people, or that it is not partly a consequence of their actions. They get all sorts of responses from lots of people, and as public officials, criticism is a part of the job. Arguably, if they did their jobs better, they wouldn't be criticized as much.
But rather than changing the subject, a far more important issue is police abusing civilians: The police have a lot of power, well beyond criticism, which ruins lives. Far more important than protecting the suddenly fragile police officers' self-esteem are justice and freedom.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/17/magazine/george-gascon-lo...
Do not persist in your unbelief, but believe!
> https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/17/magazine/george-gascon-lo...
That isn't in the article. Have you ever seen evidence supporting your claim, or are you repeating what others have said (perilous, esp. on the Internet!). Here's what the article says:
He mandated an end to seeking cash bail, the death penalty, the sentence of life without parole and the prosecution of anyone younger than 18 as an adult. And in a rare, if not unprecedented, move by an American prosecutor, Gascón declared his intent to effectively end very long sentences ...
The article also links to a memo from Gascon regarding sentencing enhancements.
Among the crimes Bragg said his office would not prosecute: marijuana misdemeanors, including selling more than three ounces; not paying public transportation fare; trespassing except a fourth degree stalking charge, resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration in certain cases, and prostitution.
With that said, as you did change the subject, I do think there should be more accountability and reform and I’m not a fan of immunity. Not because they are all bad and we need to “put them in check,” but because most are good and we should have a system in place we all feel safe having, both “us” and “them.” Why can’t you be pro reform and pro police?
Did someone say you couldn't? I can understand some people, having experienced generations of life-altering brutality and oppression, might distrust police; I'm not going to tell them what they should think.
Also, what exactly does "pro police" mean? Supporting their long-standing practices? Supporting people who abuse civilians, others who cover it up, and yet more who protect the system that enables them? That might be hard to reconcile with reform - you have to recognize the problems to reform them. Not hating all individual police? Sure. Personally, I think any hate is a flaw of humanity.
Maybe unions should stick to the private sector, or at least jobs where there aren't so many highly visible bad actors with obvious political motives.
We are in the midst of a transportation crisis. Any available vehicle should be rolling. Otherwise, inventories run low, prices creep up, and people have to do with less.
A store containing tens of millions of dollars of merchandise and “guarded” by a fewer and fewer underpaid employees eventually becomes a sitting duck.
It’s the same explanation for why our supply chains were so brittle in the face of the pandemic: years and years of streamlining.
Could there be societal or enforcement issues? Sure! But let’s be at least slightly skeptical when images of a few hundred yards of junk-strewn railway are plastered across every headline and trending list out there. The reality is often much more complicated.
Locally politicians run on not prosecuting certain things and there are many news stories about repeat offenders not being prosecuted or getting comically gentle sentences. For example a young man with a history stole a car and then crashed it into a police car before they apprehended him and he got two weeks house arrest. A teenager getting caught smoking a cigarette wouldn’t be surprised to get a worse punishment from their parents.
Hypothetically, you could model it off of migratory wildlife enforcement, with dual jurisdiction, where a violation of a relevant state law automatically becomes a federal offense, and vice versa, and agents are typically officers of both the state and federal government.
Then the federal judiciary could fulfill the need where locals fall short. No private prison or judicial system needed.
But it would be much more ideal if the prosecutors would just do their jobs.
Gated communities in some places also have sworn private security.
Regardless, let's assume Los Angeles was such an economically desolate place for the poor. Well, it turns out that train robberies still aren't a common occurrence in even much poorer places so there must be something else going on too.
Without any actual consequences for getting caught, it's basically a minor inconvenience for the thieves. More officers just means slightly more inconvenience.
Half the people commenting on this post don't understand that railway theft is a federal crime which is handled by federal prosecutors in federal court, and has nothing to do with the "liberal governor" or "lazy California prosecutors".
On nearly anything related to societal matters not of a technological sort, HN commenters tend to demonstrate quite a bit of ignorance of the basic facts of the matter at hand.
Also: obviously you don't just patrol 36,000 miles of track: you patrol where the thefts happen (piles of packaging by the tracks), and on the trains. Since you know the schedule of the trains, you even know when people will be trying to do the robberies...
Consider you may be misinformed.
Very few people (you plus one other) have mentioned that messing with interstate transportation is a federal crime. Which makes me think there is more to this that meets the eye.
Why have the news been focusing on local prosecutors if this is a federal matter? Why haven't federal prosecutors pressing charges?
The trains are in longer segments than ever before with the move to "precision scheduled railroading":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqdsQ8pFM2s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_railroading
Sixty-eight thousand American railroad jobs were lost between 2015 and today due to PSR, from a local-maximum* of ~210k in April 2015 to ~142k in December 2021:
https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES4348200001?amp%25253bdata...
[*] Down from 2.2 million railroad jobs in 1920, but BLS data only goes back as far as 1947.
This feels analogous to leaving a laptop unattended in the back seat of a parked car and blaming the government for not stopping it from being stolen. Union Pacific has responsibility to do at least the bare minimum to secure their own property and news of these layoffs seams to indicate they abdicated that responsibility in the hopes they could put political pressure on the government to do that work for them for free.
We all have property rights, even businesses believe it or not.
Theft is a violation of property rights.
If you don’t believe in property rights then I’ll take the keys to your house- thanks
Prosecution is not the only punishment. Getting arrested or getting in a confrontation with security are still negative outcomes that still occur and people will want to avoid. If you allow people to just walk into the area and walk out with the stolen property more people are going to do it. Making the act of stealing more difficult (or even just appear more difficult) will reduce theft regardless of the punishment.
>We all have property rights, even businesses believe it or not.
>Theft is a violation of property rights.
What did I say that makes you think I would disagree with this.
>If you don’t believe in property rights then I’ll take the keys to your house- thanks
My point is that Union Pacific has a responsibility to lock their house. If I leave my door unlocked and my house gets burgled, I have some responsibility in contributing to that outcome.
To some degree, that's reasonable, but it also illustrates how low a bar Americans set for their society. Everyone is so numb to the existence of petty theft that we immediately blame the victim for leaving something in their car, or locking their bike up outside instead of bringing it inside.
But I live in a major city where I routinely leave my laptop sitting on a table at coffee shops unattended while I run to the restroom, or lean my bike against the wall outside a restaurant while I go in and have lunch. School kids walk or ride the metro home by themselves after dark. People turn in lost and found wallets and cell phones. If you lose something on the metro, there's actually a good chance you'll get it back.
Why do we act like ubiquitous violence and theft is just part and parcel to living in a modern city?
Why would people care about fake cameras, or real cameras for that matter, if they won't get trouble no matter what the image shows?
Fake cameras are only a deterrent because some of the camera looking objects are real. And real cameras are only a deterrent because getting caught doing something bad on them lead to bad consequences.
> This feels analogous to leaving a laptop unattended in the back seat of a parked car and blaming the government for not stopping it from being stolen.
Or the analogy is that someone stopped your car grand theft auto style and took your laptop from your bag.
>Fake cameras are only a deterrent because some of the camera looking objects are real. And real cameras are only a deterrent because getting caught doing something bad on them lead to bad consequences.
As I said elsewhere, jail isn't the only deterrent. Being arrested is also deterrent. Plus not getting the stolen goods is a deterrent. If a guard comes and chases these people off before they can grab the property, there is no reason to try to steal anything.
>Or the analogy is that someone stopped your car grand theft auto style and took your laptop from your bag.
These aren't old west style train robberies where people on horseback are chasing down moving trains and holding people up at gunpoint. These are trains sitting on the track for sometimes hours unattended, someone walks onto the tracks, pops the lock, and has the time to sift through all the property looking for something valuable. The trash in the area should be an obvious indicator that there is no time pressure to these crimes. It isn't a smash a grab. People are taking their time looking for the best stuff to steal and discarding what they don't want.
Many of us do want to leave in a society were you can indeed leave your laptop unattended on the back seat of your car. I don't think that's unreasonable at all.
And they deterred several times more than arrested, imagine how much more effective deterring would be with ~10x more officers.
That's not what their letter actually said, IIRC?
This increasingly smells like a company trying to save money by firing their security force and passing sole responsibility for thefts off on publicly funded law enforcement.
But yeah, blame the rail company, I guess?
But yeah, blame the state, I guess?
I admit I am making an assumption that they are doing this with the belief that it will solve some of society's problems. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt that they are not actively trying to make things worse.
What’s your plan if the jail is at capacity ? Stop enforcing the law? Anarchy?
>The letter also attempted further to politicize L.A.’s no-cash bail policy / Special Directive 20-07
Is this supposed to be bad? It seems to be bad faith to accuse someone of "politicizing" something when it's plausibly related to the topic being discussed.
>(“Studies show that prosecution of the offenses driving the bulk of misdemeanor cases have minimal, or even negative, long-term impacts on public safety.”)
...with no sources provided.
>Even though, according to LAPD data, property crime is down.
That's not really as slam dunk as it suggests. If the government openly states that they're not going to bother prosecuting minor property crime, it seems reasonable that a fair chunk of the victims will be dissuaded from reporting the crime, driving property crime statistics down.
>“These individuals are generally caught and released back onto the streets in less than 24 hours. Even with all the arrests made, the no-cash bail policy and extended timeframe for suspects to appear in court is causing re-victimization to Union Pacific by these same criminals.” Community activists think otherwise, supporting the DA’s no-cash bail policy
this... doesn't say much. I'm sure for any topic you can find "community activists" for your preferred side.
>stressing that further criminalizing people of lower socioeconomic status for non-violent crimes isn’t a real solution.
The criminals criminalized themselves when they committed the crime, not when the law decided to prosecute them.
>A connection worth questioning can be found with the controversy surrounding Emanuel Padilla.
No, I actually don't see the connection here. Are they accusing UP of falsely accusing/prosecuting people? Are they just saying the previous DA sucks and the current DA is good? Are they just bringing it up because the case has something to do with trains?
The main reason people report property crime is because insurance requires a police report. If you were a victim of property crime, your odds of ever seeing your stuff back a decade ago, and today aren't meaningfully different.
Also, you realize that in general police rarely investigated burglaries, and even in the case of serial burglaries, few are solved. Arrests are rare. It has absolutely nothing to do with lack of prosecution.
I've been a victim of burglary in the past, and when the cops came, they walked around, and took some pictures. They questioned us, because we were young and our place didn't have a lot of valuables, and they suspected us to be drug dealers. I asked them when we could expect any followup, and they literally laughed, then said "we're probably not going to bother investigating because the investigations rarely find the perpetrators. we're here so that you can file an insurance claim."
We had more quite a bit more than $1000 of stolen goods and damage, and we were poor at the time.
>...with no sources provided.
In the original directive, "the offenses" in this quoted sentence refers to a basket of crimes including "unlicensed driving, sex work, drug possession, drinking in public, and trespassing" -- it does not mention theft explicitly:
https://da.lacounty.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/SPECIAL-DIRE...
Considering that it is questionable whether sex work, drug possession, and drinking in public should even be criminalized at all, this seems like a fallacy of composition.
>>Even though, according to LAPD data, property crime is down.
>That's not really as slam dunk as it suggests. If the government openly states that they're not going to bother prosecuting minor property crime, it seems reasonable that a fair chunk of the victims will be dissuaded from reporting the crime, driving property crime statistics down.
Special Directive 20-07 went into effect on December 8, about six weeks ago. I'd be surprised if there are even reliable data available, especially since the on/off lockdowns act as a large confounder.
This is a PR story, meant to distract you from the fact that the company has opened themselves up to these thefts, and is using cop propaganda to do so.
Lots of folks here blaming lack of jail time / LA DA's actions.
If we look at the history of the railroad, they are more than capable of protecting their interests - and it hasn't historically been via fear of jail time. They deserve zero sympathy thanks to past abuses and can stop this in an instant if they wanted.