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Comment by spullara | Hacker News Reader

He is saying that the police weren't interested investigating crimes.

OP is also raising the point that because only the police have the ability to retrieve Nest footage that pertains to them but is not owned by them, access to that data is gated by the police, who may not use that access evenly.

Coming from a small-ish area, how does this happen? Do they say "no" and then offer you the door, or how does it normally go? I assume it could be a manpower issue, if it is a city with more pressing issues, or a city without a detective unit maybe, but outright saying no is hard to justify. I can't imagine a situation that would make it normal to just say no with a straight face.

I live in Chicago. It’s not uncommon for police to just not show up when you call in a non violent property crime. If that happens you can go to the station and fill out a report but they won’t actually do any investigating. Sometimes they’ll be honest and say this isn’t going to go anywhere, but usually you’ll just get ghosted.

Manpower seems the most likely explanation. I have a friend who works in a bike shop. Recently, the shop was broken into and $20K+ worth of high end bikes were stolen, plus a fair amount of damage to the shop.

The next day, they found someone offering to sell the same bikes online (in the same geographical area even). They gave this info to the police, basically "hey here is someone trying to sell known stolen property" and the police told them to try and set up a meeting with the sellers themselves! Called back a week later, still had not even assigned a detective.

$20k is not pocket change, so it does make me wonder exactly what kinds of property crimes they do investigate, if any.

I have heard that in some cases telling the insurance company that nothing is being done might get some movement, but I'm not really sure what they could do that you can't. Call the Chief of Police?

Yeah calling him will fix it in no time. Assuming you "have his number".

> I assume it could be a manpower issue, if it is a city with more pressing issues, or a city without a detective unit maybe, but outright saying no is hard to justify.

Why would they need to justify anything? They have no one to answer to. Look at groups like the Uvalde police who are internationally known fuckups at this point and they’re still just throwing other people under the bus left and right in response. The police only do their job when they feel like it and that’s usually never unless it’s writing down that they went to guard a construction site for the overtime pay.

They get more state funding, grants and incentives for focusing on things like drug crimes. Enforcement and investigation of crimes are completely at their discretion, so they choose to go after "sexier" and "fun" crimes and criminals.

Here in Boulder most property crimes are ignored by the police. They'll file a report to give to your insurance company, but they'll flat out tell you that they're not going to do anything.

I think it's a few things contributing to it. First is not having enough man power. And also a lot of stuff isn't worth the expense of investigating. A stolen laptop, phone, or bike just isn't worth the cost of detectives hunting it down. $20k of police work to get a $1000 laptop doesn't make much sense.

And yet they choose to go after people for $20 worth of weed, coke, MDMA, etc. It's not about cost, it's about police discretion when it comes to the crimes they choose to investigate or the laws they choose to enforce.

Putting that body in a jail cell or prison is worth much more than $20 to those who have influence over how police spend their time. That's the point.

Because it’s easy to prosecute. You got the suspect dead to rights, with $20 worth of whatever on their person.

And it’s not like those cases even go to trial. I don’t have the exact data on hand, but I’d be seriously surprised if >90% of small-time drug crimes ended up with a plea deal that most of the time doesn’t even involve pleading guilty to a felony.

> Because it’s easy to prosecute. You got the suspect dead to rights, with $20 worth of whatever on their person.

Police regularly spend countless man-hours investigating people for selling $20 worth of marijuana. Those are not open and shut cases, they have to spend time building cases, use confidential informants or undercover officers to gather damning evidence that won't be thrown out in court, etc.

Drug cases mean seizing assets.

They regularly go after teens and young people with no assets who are selling pot to their friends.

And they cop a plea and tell them where they got the weed from in the first place.

It's not a coincidence cops spend a large portion of their time busting consensual drug users and enforcing traffic laws (while armed to the teeth). That's where the money is. Helping find my stolen computer is way more difficult and provides the department with nothing of value.

I had not considered this hypothesis. I think my area may be small enough where it's not just a crime against me, but a crime against the community. For what it's worth, I hope your situation gets better. That has to be unsettling.

> your situation

Unfortunately this situation is by no means unique.

> That has to be unsettling.

And now you know why there has been a growing movement predicated on the idea that the vast sums of money we spend on police may not be well-spent.

What's the alternative? Build a citizens' militia? Hire a private security firm?

Why pay cops to pull people over when a camera can do it for far less and not cost the manpower? Where I live, you get an automated ticket for even 3 over the limit. The neighborhoods are actually safe to walk around because people aren’t going 50 in a 30. The cops actually wander around and talk to people, helping them instead of being seen as ticket-givers and a potential bad day.

Because a camera doesn't have a boot to lick.

The police get a lot more leeway to do bad things because some percent of society just defaults to giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Police are revenue generators. It's the same in both big cities and small towns.

A town of 300 people I grew up next to, always had their one cop ticketing every car that didn't slow down from the posted 55 mph (but honestly, it was always faster) to 30 mph, or accelerated over 30 before they passed the city limits sign.

The city government loved that guy, because he brought in thousands of dollars every week.

When the NYPD threw a fit over de Blasio, they famously refused to arrest anyone unless "it was absolutely necessary". Why? The police union wanted to hurt NYC's[0] budget.[0] It's the same reason why civil forfeiture is so prevelant.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/12/the-ben...

There are some towns where the police have so little headcount that they have enough "real crime" to keep their officers as busy as they want to be and so unpredictably the officers would rather bust drug traffickers and respond to violence than write tickets. These tend to be poor urban communities where the cops (very much like teachers) only work there for a short time early in their careers.

But yes, in the general case you're right that law enforcement is a revenue generator.

This is especially true in jurisdictions where private prisons operate. Very (too) often the people who own the prisons and profit off of them have close ties to people of authority and power in local government. If you are skeptical, consider: otherwise the prison contract would have gone to someone else with closer ties or more leverage.

Corruption is rampant in the "developed" world but we just use different words for it.

Hmm, I think you're right. I was confused by the phrase "warrant or no", thinking it meant hedora had tried to get data both with and without a warrant and neither worked.

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