I tracked thieves stealing my car in San Francisco | Hacker News Reader

I tracked thieves stealing my car in San Francisco

sfchronicle.com

27 pointsbelter21 comments

The continual lack of police action wasn’t super surprising, but as someone who lives in SF, it does bum me out. The supposed inability to enter based on reasonable suspicion or make arrests in certain situations also baffled me.

I definitely wouldn’t want an unnecessarily brutal police force, but I wonder if we could empower them to do just a tiny bit more and be more generally useful to those who live and work here.

Are we certain that they aren't empowered? I suspect the police department refuses to do their job to put pressure on the public and gain leverage for things they want, whether or not those things are necessary to address specific cases they're ignoring.

If the issue is that they need a warrant to enter someone's house, perhaps they should simply get one. I'm not a lawyer but it seems to me that find my iPhone reporting that someone's phone was in someone else's house would constitute probable cause.

My gut reaction is to agree, but after a deeper thought I'm not sure. Let's say you wanted to weaponize this. How would you do it?

You could follow someone with a nice bike, throw an airtag on the roof and claim that the bike was stolen from you. Most people don't have specific enough proof of purchase to refute this.

You could actually commit a crime, as happened to the author, and then throw her keys on the roof of the house of someone you didn't like, framing them.

These both seem like inevitable outcomes if the policy was reversed.

From my 25 year old civics class, I seem to remember 4 reasons police could enter a home:

1. They have a warrant

2. They are invited in by an occupant

3. Reasonable belief that someone's life may be in danger

4. Reasonable belief that they may intercept a crime in progress

I certainly don't know California's law well enough to say if #4 would apply; the theft has already happened. If the owner asks for their property back you might be able to justify "withholding stolen property" but that seems like a stretch.

> The supposed inability to enter based on reasonable suspicion

I think this is an issue where the courts and police have not caught up with technology. Two decades ago geolocation technology in-use with cell phone triangulation was so obtuse that you could maybe get to the block where a stolen thing was. A decade ago with GPS you could get within meters, enough to know if it was in a specific house given enough separation, but, not nearly enough for an apartment building with vertical considerations or row housing / townhouses.

Today, with AirTags at least with Ultrawideband stuff, you can fairly definitively say that an AirTag is in a specific apartment and even more precisely. I think many cops and courts still have a view of geolocation as it was 10 or 20 years ago. If something is geolocated with an AirTag and Ultrawideband it should meet probable cause requirements for a proforma search warrant application able to be issued over the phone by a judge.

The moral of the story seems to be that if you don't get lucky and find your property is not abandoned by the thief then knowing where your property is doesn't help much without the capacity to bring the requisite violence (or credible threat thereof) to take it back into your possession or the government (i.e. the police) being able (a resources issue) willing (a policy issue) to do so on your behalf. *shrug*

San Francisco's police department needs to have approximately double the workforce, given the high daytime population, tourists, and people who come into the city from elsewhere in the Bay Area for the purpose of committing crime.

Make it legal to shoot car + bike thieves and the problem will solve itself. I don't think SF government has any interest in improving conditions, this all pleases the accelerationist set.

Yes, let's solve bike theft by replacing it with murder, that'll surely make the world a better place.

Maybe we could be merciful and just cut off their hands so they can't do it again, I hear that worked just great in the middle ages. I wonder why they stopped?

Right, because nobody ever misses with a handgun, and civilians are great with rules of engagement. Do you know anyone who was ever gravely wounded by a stray bullet? I do.

I recently had my Amazon package stolen off my porch by a neighbor who brazenly opened the box, took the expresso machine I had ordered and left the Amazon box (with my name on it) and the packaging outside their house for me to see! At least they could have hidden the box, the balls!

I called the police via non emergency number and all they could do, when they finally showed up, was write a report. I understand the limitations of policing, resources and priorities that come with it - but it seems like thieves are truly emboldened now knowing that unless you steal from a corporation - police are inclined not to pursue the case at all.

It’s truly frustrating and my experience matches the OP.

Absolutely don’t pursue a stolen vehicle with an AirTag. I had a moto buddy whose bike got stolen in Manhattan. Same story, he called police, but they were too busy doing more important things. Long story short, he follows the bike up to the Bronx, confronts the thieves, and they beat his ass and rob him a g a I n. A block away from a police station.

Not worth it. Just insure the shit out of it and move on.

The police’s job is to protect the public space as in “to serve and to protect” the government property that is paying its salary.

This is why “stand your ground” laws exist.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-your-ground_law#:~:tex...

Privacy advocates will roll on the floor and scream like angry toddlers, but really, in 2022 every car should have remote tracking and disabling features shared between the registered driver and law enforcement. If a leasing company can remotely disable a vehicle, why can't I or the police acting on my behalf?

Every car owner who wants this can have it right now. Why force surveillance on those who don't want it?

Right, I'm going to install a tracking device on my car and give the login password to the local police department. I'll just say "If I report my car stolen, please log in with this password and track it's whereabouts, and at your convenience go retrieve it and impound it until I can reclaim it". I'm sure they'll be glad to write all that down, and file it in a file cabinet marked "crazies".

No, you do what the car rental companies do. You sign up for a monitoring service, like OnStar, who will contact the police for you and give them the relevant information.

> Privacy advocates will roll on the floor and scream like angry toddlers

If not wanting my car to be remotely disable-able by a hackable system makes me a screaming toddler, consider me a screaming toddler.

https://archive.ph/IGgzb

Don't go to SF. The voters sympathize with criminals more than honest people who earn an honest living. The voters view thievery as a valid tax.

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