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Change how you view police. They don't do very much crime prevention. Think of them as the people who come to clean up after the crime already happened.

I can't stress how true this is. I've never seen the police solve any crime they were called for. They just show up and shrug.

However I recently saw the police raid my neighbor in full swat gear cause someone on Nextdoor said they saw a guy walking down the street with a gun (it turned out to be a cane). About 15 out of shape suburban dads playing operator terrifying children and high fiving each other after literally doing nothing. I don't value this institution very much anymore.

Cynical view. I called the police for a theft, they found the guy and brought my goods back within 24 hours. I expressed amazement and they said "yeah this is our job we are pretty good at it."

Maybe depends on where you live. GP's experience rings true after living in SF for a decade. I've had a friend get punched in broad daylight by a homeless person, black eye and everything, and the cops responded "what do you want me to do?" Also know many startups with offices broken into, laptops stolen. Cops show up 4 hours later and say they probably won't recover the goods. When asked if camera footage would have helped, the answer is no - but you can stick up some fake ones as a deterrent.

So what do you want them to do? Interview every homeless person to find the culprit? What's the practical solution using reasonable resources?

Also most of the problems are due to a lack of prosecution (in the SF area). Police can't do much if criminals just get immediately released without consequence.

We could both give a description of the person, location where it happened, and there were many witnesses. Typical stuff cops ask on TV. I'm not face blind to homeless people.

TV isn't anything like real life. Was there photo or video surveillance? If not, how good was the description? Was the perpetrator still near the location? How many people do you need to search to find a match? How many cops and how much time do you expect to be assigned to this?

Like I said, even if the police do find and arrest this person, it's still up to the courts to prosecute. It's a lot of work between the court proceedings with testimonies and evaluations to get a conviction. Some regions like California are very reluctant to bring charges and just release them instead, which is why police will avoid dealing with the matter in the first place.

I am not sure what you are arguing for. We should not have asked a police for help because we should have known that their job is hard to do efficiently and their workplace contains office politics?

That's their problem, not mine. As far as I'm concerned, police should do what they say they do on the tin. What happened was my friend got punched in the face and what we wanted was for the police to at least make it appear like they were interested in reducing the ambient amount of face punchings in their jurisdiction.

I'm arguing against the many comments in this thread that called the police a "worthless institution" because of some anecdotes, which is analogous to saying "sql is slow" because you particular query is slow; instead both subjects require thought about realistic scenarios and expectations to understand why things are the way they are.

> "appear like they were interested"

They're interested but they're not there to appease. As I already said several times before, police need laws and courts to back them up or their work is ineffective. You should contact your maylor and local DA about why that jurisdiction has so many face punchings by the homeless in the first place.

Maybe it is regional? Where do you live that the police do a good job?

Buddy got his bike stolen. Granted, it was a very nice bike. Cops called 3 months later to say they found it for him. Didn't even arrest the kid riding it, because it was obvious he "inherited" it, and he didn't give them a hassle turning it over. Most of them are pretty good at their jobs. IME, barely most, but most nonetheless.

You have the most uncommon outcome. Count yourself lucky.

I was the victim of a home robbery a few years ago in Cleveland. Thieves hit multiple homes on my block in a few hours, TRASHED my house looking for valuables and stole about $1000 worth of stuff from my home (an easily identifiable bike, cash)

Cleveland PD showed up, shrugged their shoulders, gave me a police report for my home insurance claim (which covered nothing that was stolen) and said there was no chance the crime would be solved.

A few weeks later I had to contact the same CPD district office because someone I sold something to online threatened me with physical violence and showed up at my house at 11 PM to "settle the matter." I went to the police station and was again told directly by the police there was nothing they could do, even though the man was parked outside of my home at the time, waiting for me to engage.

Absolutely worthless institution.

Police aren't magic. Your anecdotal experience is unfortunate but it doesn't make them a "worthless institution". Property crime is very minor, and the resources it would take to systematically track down the thieves in your example is far more than the damages caused and would interfere with other investigations in far more serious crimes.

Property crime is not minor, it's what the common people paying taxes actually expect law enforcement to deal with. Like, being able to leave your bike and find it where you left it, you know

People expect law enforcement to deal with everything, especially if it personally affects them.

The point is that property crime is still minor in comparison to how serious a crime is, for example homicide. It also means that resources will be less available as a result.

I got mugged and the police had the people who did it, and my property, back less than 10 minutes after I called it in. Chicago, fwiw.

I got my laptop back after a burglary in Newark. I had to do all the detective work, which was easy enough with Orbicule Undercover, but I did get it back.

To add another comment, pro-police commentators should look at clearance rates for crime in their areas. Police are generally very very bad at their jobs! I looked up SFPD clearance rates for the last year -- they solved about 10% of all bulgaries and less than 21% of robberies. 10%!

These organizations have enormous budgets and they can't solve simple, non-violent crimes. Why do they need more funding and resources? Is all of that double OT going to finally stop those "brazen" CVS pickpockets?

It could be incompetence, it could be lack of ressources, it could be that it’s just very hard to find the culprits and prove with high certainty they are guilty.

Also, excessive focus on proportions of crimes solved results in the worst sort of policing, where they push clearance rates by trying to pin lots of charges on one weak individual, decline to record minor crimes that probably won't be solved, and boost their overall clearance rates with easy charges for drug possession.

What's your definition of 'solve'?

I mean I could tell you who did a robbery, but proving it to the criminal standard of proof is a very different proposition.

Burglary isn't getting solved without a) CCTV and a subsequent ID or b) DNA or fingerprints.

I work on a busy (and I mean busy) robbery squad. An 11% detection rate puts us head and shoulders above the rest of the organisation.

i think the laypersons definition of solve is getting their stolen things back. That's what i would expect. How much, if at all, jail time or fine or whatever the person gets is between them and the state, i need no revenge

Good luck with that, then. Most stolen property is disposed of within hours.

Keep in mind that you have a very America centric viewpoint. Judging by your mention of CVS Pharmacies at least.

American police are hot, smelly garbage.

Most other countries have much more intelligent and professional police forces.

What you've described isn't an innate factor of law enforcement. It's a factor of shit quality, cut price, American law enforcement (the biggest factor is the absurd fragmentation of local police departments).

"Solving" a case in real world policing is much more complicated than you seem to think. Many crimes are not reported, solved off-record, or just prevented in the first place. Many are reported with no info to do anything with, and others take magnitudes more resources to solve then is practical.

I suggest you go for a police ride-along or listen to dispatch to learn what it's really like. And police are still at the mercy of the laws and courts which can make their efforts ineffective. You can catch all the criminals you want but it won't do anything if they're let out immediately with no consequences.

10% doesn't say much about the value that was recovered. 10% of burglaries could very well be 5% or 90% of total value recovered. Are they disproportionately going after grand thefts or petty thefts?

Right, also how does crime prevention make sense? I mean someone is innocent until he commits crime right? So it would mean arresting innocent people because "they were going to commit a crime".

This is a slippery slope, I can see it being abused real quick. So I tend to think that police isn’t meant to directly prevent me from getting killed. Police is meant for arresting the culprits, and that would indirectly prevent me from getting killed because it’s not worth the risk.

That's exactly what police are. "Law Enforcement", not "Crime Prevention".

Sending "death threats" is a crime, it just isn't Murder

I liked the quote by Octavia Butler: "The police don't protect you, they avenge you."

They don’t prevent crime, they prevent vigilantism.

in a lot of places they do crime profiteering.

"They don't do very much crime prevention. "

They do quite a lot of it. Everything from simply having police presence to keeping track of bad actors. But there's only so much they can do before a criminal act begins.

Law enforcement definitely oversteps their boundaries a lot, there is misconduct etc., But there is a difference between mass surveillance, laws that force companies to provide access to information while at the same time not being allowed to reveal this has happened, and legitimate requests for information relevant to solving a crime. I had a case in my broader circle of relatives that made me think about if or rather how access to such information should be available to law enforcement, and how that could reliably work internationally.

It was a French woman who used some app to track her running habits that also had a social component, where you could interact with people in your area, compare stats, message them etc. There was someone on there who messaged her a couple times asking if they could run together some time, but apparently in a really creepy way, so she declined and later ignored it. She'd run in the evenings along the Rhine river, and one evening she hears someone catching up to her from behind, and next thing she remembers is she's lying in some bushes, a guy standing next to her saying he already called the cops as he saw from a distance someone knock her out from behind, then pulling her off the walkway. The guy started shouting like crazy that he'd already called the cops, and the attacker ran away immediately. When she made her statement a couple hours later at the police station, the suspicious profile on that running app was deleted. The French cops then contacted the company behind the app to get any information possible about that user, some US startup, which denied the request due to privacy concerns. And that's the end of the investigation. It's the closest they ever got to that guy.

The police have limited resources and they can’t go after everything.

Online stuff is hard because it usually requires cooperation of multiple police forces in different jurisdictions. I think it often just comes down to there being easier things to go after closer to home.

I don’t know why Facebook does nothing though.

And a lot of people here would probably be screaming if you did prosecute some immature 20-something picked at random and tossed them in prison for ten years for an ill-considered social media post.

And, so what?

Because tossing people in a hole at random to set an example is not, in general, policy we want to encourage maybe?

Having kids intimidating strangers by throwing around death threats isn't something we should encourage either.

No one is talking about encouraging such behavior. But if the FBI undertakes a serious investigation to track them down, when they get tracked down, they may well end up in a Federal prison for a long time--especially if they can't afford a few hundred thousand dollars for the best legal support. Maybe they deserve to have their life ruined for probably poorly considered juvenile behavior but I'm not sure. There are societal costs associated with pursuing and prosecuting every crime to the max.

Folks aren't asking for people to be locked up forever for this. A comment in the thread mentioned about first offenders getting no jail time, but needing to publicly apologize, do community service, etc. Repeat offenders should likely serve some jail time, with each offense bringing stronger punishment.

Doing nothing about this does encourage its behavior, especially since there's entire communities around doing it (kiwi farms being one of the worst).

It's the kind of stuff they did to "hackers" back in the 80s and 90s who were just phreaking phone lines.

In many countries the first time offender 20-something would spend a night in jail, be arraigned the next day, and likely enter a diversionary process where they need to face up to what they did. Perhaps a conference with the victim. Do some community service. Etc. 9/10 this will give someone the chance to seriously rethink their behavior.

Many countries they would be beaten or killed. It really depends on what many countries means to you.

Just to be clear, I think the clear reading of what is being discussed is "a specific and targeted death threat, either alone or in concert with others", not a hot take that fails to age well.

> The police have limited resources

This is strictly not true. The police choose not to have resources dedicated to many kinds of crimes. US police funding exceeds what almost all countries spend on defense. Police in America act as a significant source of revenue for many communities (through tickets, fines, and forfeiture).

That doesn't change the fact that it's still limited.

Also the US is the 3rd biggest country in the world with a very complex blend of groups and cultures. It's obviously going to have more funding in general by sheer size.

True. There are limited resources.

For example, https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article24376685... documents the purchase for a 90,000 resident city in NC of Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles for $500,000.00 each.

“I’d rather have the armored capability and not need it, than to need it and not have it,” [Concord Police Chief Gary J. Gacek] said in an email to The Charlotte Observer.

Sometimes you just gotta choose what you go after.

What do you want facebook to do? Helping people without monetary gains? Ha!

"Pretend I'm a major shareholder's brother. Now will you help?"

> It's weird because they seem like the type of thing you'd want to ban for SPAM/harrassment.

Social networks show their true colors by way of the decisions they make about what to prioritize removal of and what to actively ignore even once they are made clearly aware.

The nuance this misses is scale. FB wouldn't just need to block people who are reported, they would need to have a team to manually investigate all claims. Otherwise it's just another tool in the harassers' arsenal. Their automated systems (which exist) haven't caught this, or they wouldve been disabled already. Alternatively, the number of people needed to investigate every reported account is absolutely massive.

Source: Used to work in this exact team at FB

In China 2 million people work directly on this.

And yet, some stuff does get blocked, and even manages to get blocked routinely or on a hair trigger. I thereby stand 100% by what I said and whatever moral implications might be inferred... but can now add that those same decisions / priorities--during the time when you were part of that exact team, though accepting some generous room to quibble if you explicitly quit in protest or spent your time on the inside fighting for some kind of change (and with maybe a narrow exemption for "I really really needed the money", as I get that some people are stuck)--also show your true colors (which you likely, or course, already realize, but I think should always be explicitly stated).

>I'm kinda surprised that police don't get warrants for death threats.

Sounds great until you find out the threat was sent by someone in a different country halfway around the world. There's a finite amount of police manpower, and I'd be willing to bet that most death threats are practically impossible to prosecute even with a warrant.

Police don't prosecute. Police drive/walk around town grabbing people they don't like or can shake down for money.

Police are local, and have no effective jurisdiction online, excxept when they have a local victim and local suspect.

You need the FBI.

and for every murder with an online threat, there are a million "free speech" death threats with no murder.

You're right, but your comment got me thinking. Police don't investigate online threats because there's nothing for them to gain, but that is not a given. Like if you were some prolific web personality, wouldn't you want to move somewhere you could report threatening comments to the local police, have them issue requests for information, track who is making repeated nasty comments etc? Either through higher taxes, direct user fees for police investigation, quid pro quo, etc.

Online forums generally don't adjudicate whether subpoenas meet some objective standard of jurisdiction. It's not so much that police cannot investigate a crime for a local victim when the suspect could be in another jurisdiction, it's just that it likely won't lead to a prosecution. But I'd bet that a nastygram on a police department letterhead would go a long way towards discouraging most internet haters.

I'm not pointing this out as a desirable state of affairs (it's essentially government-capital synergy aka fascism), but rather a possibility of where things might head. Burbclaves applying their customary/statutory powers to interactions in the interconnected world, and offering their services up as a point of competition.

My brother who has an intellectual disability recently called the police because he was being prolifically harassed on instagram. Being sent stuff with death threats / necrophilia etc. The cop had to explain to him that they cant do anything about it and that he is worried for his daughter who is online as well.

Then i remembered the geofencing warrants and surveillance platforms they have access to. I remembered nearly going deaf when the police fired a flashbang at my head for getting too close to a group of nazis that myself and other locals wanted to shoo back to the state they came from.

I remembered the police arent here to protect the vulnerable, they are here to protect freedom of speech.

Dont worry i grew out of my juvenile delusion that i have any ability to influence or refuse to tolerate certain discourse in my city.

Nazis rallying in your city is just a sign of how well protected and safe you are i guess. Ill make sure to stay home next time.

I'm sorry for your experience.

> I remembered the police arent here to protect the vulnerable, they are here to protect freedom of speech.

The police, like every entrenched power structure, are "there to" serve their own interests. Sometimes that's expressed in terms of lofty ideals, but it's fundamentally about power relationships - for instance their casually attacking you with an explosive.

If you were someone "important" - politically connected, rich and looking like it, or even just upper-middle but persistent, it's likely they would have responded to your brother's issue with more attention. And if they mistakenly judged you and didn't, you would escalate to their superiors. That dynamic isn't a free pass, but it informally goes a long way.

My point was this attention could very well shift to putting a priority on policing online threats, perhaps even to the detriment of investigating physical crime.

Well put, and as you say theres a tradeoff somewhere in what they can pay attention to. I dont deny that and i also dont really know how they "should" be handling things. Its just pretty bizarre when you and your friends have no expectation of privacy, the police have palantir, and the munitions are for defending nazis.

Strangely enough am family friends with the person likely to become chief. I doubt ill ever raise the issue because i dont think he would be able to have any positive effect without losing the position.

Entrenched.

Regardless of whether the police care, you could hire private investigators to look into each threat

I’ve always believed that situations like that happen because Facebook would rather be able to keep an eye on those people than send them to somewhere they can’t.

Reading this comment makes me wonder, "How long until Facebook lobbies for prisons to give inmates access to FB?"

Maybe the government is trying to discourage awareness or curiosity into their own back doors, trojan horses, and spyware in every computer and phone. Powerful legislation in that direction may open doors that the government would remain to keep closed.

Taking the tinfoil hat off, I genuinely think that federal governments are disinterested in small time, low hanging fruit.

I also consider the police to be first responders at best. Once a crime has been completed, the perpetrators are likely to straight up just get away with it due to the ineptitude and bloat inherent in a police force.

I wonder if civil lawsuits would be effective here. If you can squeeze $10K out of a third of the trolls that should cover the legal costs.