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Comment by chaostheory | Hacker News Reader

This alongside with Citizen’s gig security signals the decline of local government police forces. I would argue that the prevalence of Ring is signaling the same thing.

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> ... signals the decline of the local government police forces.

I don't think it's something you can lay at the feet of the SF Police Department. I asked Pete McLaughlin, SFPD (retired), why the police don't go after bike thieves more aggressively.

"Our hands are tied," he said. "They [the thieves] know the most we can do is give them a citation, and they'll be out that afternoon."

California has a history of being lenient with non-violent crime, which is appropriate in some cases, but maybe not in others. Maybe leniency is the wrong approach for some of these bike thieves.

But it's complicated. I heard Jerry Brown (former California Governor) talk about how ~10% of the state budget goes to prisons, and he's not comfortable with such a large amount, and I agree--throwing people in jail is expensive!

Lastly, when the SFPD was needed, they move fast: I had a home invasion a couple of years ago (a guy kicking in my window, trying to break in), and five police were in my apartment within minutes of the 911 call. Worth 20 stolen bikes IMHO.

Another issue is the police can only ever tackle the very leading edge of the problem due to the scope of their jurisdiction. Realistically the trafficking of stolen bikes, bike parts, cars, car parts, etc, takes place over city lines, county lines, state lines, probably also national lines. Good luck ever making a dent on organized crime if a key piece of that operation takes place within a jurisdiction staffed in the low dozens (quite often the case in fact with cartel drug labs and illegal grow operations in rural California). You really need the FBI, but their hands are full just indicting local government officials in my city for corruption, let alone going after the bike thieves.

That being said there is a lot to be done at that leading edge, especially when its not uncommon to see someone with a dozen bikes in varying states of disrepare piled amongst the detritus outside their dwelling. It seems like that should be considered probable cause to me and worthy of more investigation vs just letting that continue unhindered. There is some line between the cops I was familiar with in the midwest (who would search your vehicle and throw everything on the side of the road on the grounds of smelling of pot if they just didn't like the look of you), and the ones here in california who are more concerned with catching snorelaxes (1) than enforcing the law.

1. https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5q593/lapd-officers-ignore-...

Was there a glorious past when bike thefts were taken seriously?

Or is there also an element of a widening gap between rich and poor here, where the rich will be further insulated from the impact of failing public services?

this line rankled me: "baffled city leaders for years"

as if city leaders have ever considered cyclists anything more than an annoyance

Never. It's even odd when burglaries were taken seriously. I don't know the mythical past that reactionaries reminisce about, although my age says that I lived through it. The past I remember had years old stacks of unprocessed rape kits.

Rape kits go unprocessed for many reasons. The accused confesses, for example, or dies. Or the victim's story/claims are directly contradicted by hard evidence, like cell phone/financial records or numerous witnesses placing the accused somewhere else. Many victims recant their stories, for varied reasons, many of them unfortunate - but that still make the case non-prosecutable.

It's not just a matter of funding; there's only so much lab capacity.

Rape is a tiny fraction of violent crime - barely a few percent - and spending millions processing rape kits unnecessarily is virtue signaling that does nothing to reduce the bulk of violent crime. The only reason it's getting so much attention is because it benefits a politically privileged class.

> It's not just a matter of funding; there's only so much lab capacity.

Lab capacity is a matter of funding.

Some things cost infinite money to do in x time, but would be free if you waited longer or got rid of the regulation making it impossible to do.

(i.e. you could have more lab employees if housing was cheaper.)

I don’t know. Hard to answer.

However, there is a stolen bike store near where I live, everyone knows they sell bikes they’ve stolen, they’ve been busted selling stolen bikes multiple times, and they’re still in business today.

Perhaps this has always been true, but it feels as if we’ve completely given up against low level crime.

There was certainly a past where there were fewer open addicts on the streets. To be fair drug addicts have been around in cities for hundreds of years, but they've always been cracked down upon and generally not in any great numbers. Versus today, where I kid you not I see kids who can't be older than 16 smoking meth about twice a week in the train station on my way to work. Of course there is a crisis of bike theft in this country. There is also a crisis of catalytic converter theft and theft of just about anything carryable with scrap value, because all of this theft is going on to afford the crisis of drug addiction we continue to evidently just pretend does not exist in this country versus face head on with public treatment programs and institutionalization.

That's my take as well. Police have carved a lack of accountability for themselves, and so the social system is starting to route around them.

Police are generally pretty bad at theft cases, but there's also a prevailing idea of social justice in many areas that prevent the police from accomplishing anything. It's not the police that decriminilized petty theft in San Francisco, that's the politicians and people who voted for them.

reality continues to approach snow crash burbclave police force...

snow crash was written in 1991 as I recall

The prevalence of Amazon Ring is in large part because local police subsidize them and give them for "free" to underinformed citizens, and then access their private data without their consent pretty much at will.

Any proof for these claims?

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ring%20selling%20data%...

There’s a USENIX paper floating around as well. Known for several years now. Wild OP is getting downvoted, this is known research for a few years.

There was an article on HN about the lack of consent part a few days ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32081900

There's lots of firsthand evidence online about the free cameras themselves. It's not like they were particularly secret about the initiative.

When I read articles about this sort of thing, I wonder if the reporters and readers are aware that when there is a (violent) crime in public, (at least in my area of the US) it is ordinary practice to go around to private businesses with nearby security cameras and request footage.

I'm not minimizing the issue of consent, I just wonder if outraged people (especially HN types) are aware of how things are normally, and either way, are/would be outraged about voluntary cooperation.

Is it generally considered ok to put up cameras and voluntarily help the police out of a desire to protect the community?

He/she specifically said without consent.

Just because the camera owners consent doesn't mean the people caught on tape consented.

Just because someone is angry about one thing doesn't tell you if they have a problem with something related, but slightly different. Which is why I was asking.

Just wait for the Pinkertons to make a comeback out of the shadow of themselves and back into the local protectors.

The police are there to protect the rich and oppress the plebians. Any crime that the police prevent or resolve for the general public is only an aftereffect of protecting the privileged.

It has always been thus throughout history.

This is why the vast majority of police need to be disarmed.

I'm rich, the police still didn't do anything when someone broke into my car.

"Rich" is not merely "high income" nor "upper class".

You're not in the club if you have enough free time to spend commenting on HN.

There are commenters here who are definitely rich.

HN works fine on yachts and Gulfstreams from what I'm told.

I don't know man being the kind of sheltered person complaining that the police doesn't drop everything for your meme e-bike sounds rich enough for me.

> You're not in the club if you have enough free time to spend commenting on HN.

Musk has enough time to spend on Twitter. Don't see how "being rich" precludes commenting on teh interwebz.

Sure he shitposts, but he also manipulates billions of dollars of stocks too.

If you have obligations that prevent you from doing whatever the fuck you want with your time, you're not rich. Rich equals does not have to work.

"you don't need a million dollars to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin: he's broke, don't do shit."

I take it you've never spent time with rich people.

They are always on two kicks: self-improvement or making more money. If they have "free time" they are travelling and reading books, not spending time with not-rich people, except perhaps as a safari to understand them better.

I take it you don't know what "obligations" are. Hint: they're not something you do as a choice.

Not rich enough, evidently.

You aren't rich, if a stolen car was a concern.

Police forces were literally created to protect capital, and then back ported to supporting local communities. The parent poster is correct, police exist primarily to protect the interests of capital - that's literally their history.

Police in the US exist to protect themselves. They don't care if you're rich or the embodiment of capital or not. They won't do things that would put themselves at risk, and they won't get fired for not doing their jobs.

Saying "thing A was originally B therefore A is secretly B now" doesn't seem to usually be true.

The minimum bar of richness is probably when the police chief is a buddy of your buddy. A couple millions in assets isn't enough.

Are you talking about SF exclusively?

All the anecdotal evidence I have (US, non-SF) suggests being connected or related to the local police is a blue collar signifier.

I'm not arguing that it isn't some sort of privilege, but suggesting that you also have to have "a couple millions" first sounds peculiar to me.

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