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Comment by tempfortwitt90 | Hacker News Reader

In 2020, I was in a parking lot in an SF Bay Area suburb. A guy parked his car in front of a store, and within 2 minutes the car was swarmed by 3 local police cars, gun drawn. The owner went back out to the car reluctantly.

Turned out the plates were reported stolen, by clerical mistake (typo?) and the towns license plate scanners picked up the car when he got off the freeway. The parking lot we were located in was two stoplights from the highway, and took about 3 minutes to travel. They picked him up that fast and basically drove around til they found the car (assuming off a picture/video feed since stolen plates won't be on a car that matches the original cars description).

That's when I knew we were definitely in a tracking nightmare most people don't even know about.

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I suppose it's only a tracking nightmare unless and until you're the victim of grand theft auto, or specific and tangible police abuse of this power.

I believe you're looking at the situation incorrectly.

An unoccupied car doesn't need to be swarmed with firearms. It's a car; its not going to shoot you. Its not great that the car was misidentified but the response by the police wasn't appropriate even if it was identified correctly.

Tracking nightmare is not the real problem; it's the abuse of power.

Well, if you were the police officer responding to the call... You assume you're about to encounter a felonious car thief.

Sure, a felonious car thief that is visibly not in the car. Who are you shooting with your guns out, there's nobody there!

They're not setting up a sting or a trap or anything; they're going straight for the kill. That's a problem.

If they were going for the kill... They would have killed the owner that approached them.

The guns are drawn in case they can't see the felon. For example, a felon sees cop cars approaching and ducks down to not be seen, while he loads his handgun.

Until they have a grasp on the situation, I can see why a person would want to protect themselves with a gun when approaching a suspected car thief.

Odds of having my car stolen feel a lot lower than the odds of my life being affected negatively by the government currently.

I have cars that I accept I can just lose. And the one that's so expensive I can't, I have insurance. I have little insurance against getting screwed by the government if I happen to be that unlucky. Just a general feeling, idk if rational or not.

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