Flash mobs invade luxury L.A. retailers with brute force, overwhelming numbers
latimes.com
latimes.com
I don't think this is actually true. At least, it's never been shown to be true in any statistically significant way. It gets repeated because it "feels true"
They've already arrested several of these people. And they'll get more of them.
https://www.kuow.org/stories/seattle-city-attorney-promises-...
> Davison said her office has compiled a list of 118 people who together have generated more than 2,400 police referrals for misdemeanor charges in the past five years, all related to theft, trespassing, assault and weapons violations. While King County Jail generally declined to book people for non-violent offenses during the pandemic, Davison said jail officials have agreed to book up to 20 of the people targeted by this enforcement.
So here you have 118 people that have been arrested 20 times, or four times a year, over five years. They never do time, rarely show up for court, and are just released back out to victimize more people. It's a broken system.
Sometimes people are arrested multiple times in the same day: https://twitter.com/carmenbest/status/1187817532817846272
It's not just property crime either. There was a shooting in Seattle where innocent by-standers were shot, including a child, in a gunfight between two young men. They were later found to have been arrested 65 time prior despite being very young. And yet they were free to just roam around.
> According to court records, Tolliver has been arrested 44 times, convicted of one felony, 18 gross misdemeanors, and one misdemeanor. Records show Tolbert has been arrested 21 times, convicted of three felonies, and 12 gross misdemeanors.
... if only there was some warning they were dangerous to the public.
https://www.king5.com/article/news/crime/seattle-police-iden...
The issue is that we want all criminals prosecuted to the max but we don't want to pay to house them. This has caused overcrowded jails. Even now the prison system is so full that the governor has to figure out how to fix it. Imagine, if everyone has to post bail. It's not going to work.
For being organized they were very unorganized. Could've easily walked out with 5x as much in half the time, at least from the video I watched.
Just saying, again I'm not a crook just have an over active imagination.
If you rob a store and get caught and get a 100$ fine that's a bit different then if you rob a store and they cut your hand off for example.
That’s exactly like a prison, but probably with unconstitutionally poor conditions by design, not better than a prison, and probably unconstitutional mechanisms for sending people into them as well.
Better than prison (demonstrated, repeatedly) for dealing with addiction and related crime is funding community treatment for substance use disorders, with studies consistently showing both crime reductions and criminal justice cost savings of several multiples of the marginal funding devoted to drug treatment.
But “tough on crime” via greater criminalization makes an easier political soundbite, even if its manifestly worse at actually dealing with crime.
Is it?
In the US, there are pretty harsh sentences and yet a high incarceration rate.
Most crimes aren't committed for fun and harsher sentences increase the violence to prevent getting caught but don't prevent the crime a such.
One of the primary features of incarceration is that the crime has already been committed. A person is described as a criminal because they've already committed a crime, not because they are likely to do so again in the future.
Yes, jailing folks for doing crimes is likely to keep them from committing crimes out on the streets, and also to intimidate would-be criminals from committing crimes lest they are imprisoned for them. But if you keep imprisoning every kind of criminal, you're just creating job openings for more criminals out there, and plenty of folks willing to fill those voids. You've also got all the problems with prisons bursting at the seams. I don't believe that mass incarceration is really beneficial, overall, for the morale of a populace. You wind up with ugly stuff like organized crime and drug cartels operating with impunity from behind bars, too: great recruiting grounds.
The mechanics:
1) while states (or countries) may differ in what they call a crime and in how they decide upon codifying it, how to police crime is almost always decided on the local level.
2) An overwhelming number of cities is run by democrats (or left-of-center parties in western countries)
3) often on such a long timescale that the GOP (or right-of-center parties) has significantly scaled down operations or even stopped nominating candidates altogether. NYC and CA come to mind.
4) While the right certainly has its weak-spots with its clerics (say, smearing some government responsibilities as „socialist“ while a sane mind could call them conservative as well or … just sane) the left certainly has issues with their clerics. Specifically in this case: smearing enforcing the law as racist (while a sane mind would call public safety a social welfare which disproportionately benefits the poorest).
The historical precedent:
It was the American city which, ruled by democrats for decades, became synonymous with crime in culture, evidenced by countless songs, TV-series and movies (or anti-american propaganda by the soviets) of the 1970s and 1980s).
Crime became so unbearable, American city dwellers started voting another party for the first time in decades (NYC and LA come to mind), spawning a political shift into other western countries as well (London, Milan, Marseille, Hamburg, Frankfurt etc).
The “racist” smearing happened back then (in the US it was search and frisk ridiculed as racist despite most performing officers being of the same ethnicity; in Europe its people like Scholz with “racist” skeletons in their closet from their days in local government).
But unlike racism what actually did happen was that people felt safe enough that they moved back into cities effectively ending decades of urban sprawl and starting the great renaissance of urban centers.
And I want to point out that voting GOP (or conservative in other countries) nationally wont fix crime locally. Rather treating our civic duties to actually engage in local elections.
Urban voters, while often overarching on (inter-) national democracy issues are making a mockery of their own governance standards locally when the mayorship effectively gets decided by whom the democrats (SF, PS, SPD, SPÖ, Labour, …) nominate.
Personally, I like the freedom that a low-crime society brings; and would love to vote for a politician who understands this and is committed to bringing crime down, by harsh punishments if necessary.
The fact that 9 times out of 10, the same politician is also trying to enact intrusive big government control over people's medical decisions make this very difficult to do.
Harsh punishments, such as "the beatings shall continue until morale improves", are really not the pathway to a low-crime society. A low-crime society is one where people enjoy their lives and don't have wants or needs which can be best filled by turning to crime, especially the violent kinds.
it's almost as if people could easily afford a home, food, some leisure activities, and their monthly bills they find they have enough and don't need to turn to crime.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/06/21/inflation-he...
Should live-streaming without moderator approval on social be banned? On Twitch, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok etc. Yes. We have seen so many issues where live streamers cause riots or commit serious crimes.
It needs to be regulated. If they want to regulate crypto, they need to regulate live streams.
If a video stream is going to move forward it needs to be approved and vetted for crime or privacy abuse.
I guess there's an argument that live streams encourages others ? Well if that's significant it's not the "live" bit that matters, it's the ability to make a video of the event available to those who are interested relatively soon after the event, good luck putting a cap on that unless your name is Xi.
Like what? Please share a handful.
> If they want to regulate crypto, they need to regulate live streams.
Those have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
Seems we have the evidence we need
Here is a news article from San Francisco, 2011, at https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/the-evolution-of-flash-mobs-... :
> And just this summer, “flash robs” in Maryland, Philadelphia, Chicago and elsewhere took the joyous spirit of flash mobbery and turned it toward dark ends.
> Earlier this month, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter ordered 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday curfews for minors after a string of flash mob attacks by young people who used email and social media to organize violence, police said. ...
> On Aug. 17, CNN reported on a flash mob in Maryland that suddenly assembled to rob a 7-Eleven. Surveillance footage from the store shows several dozen teens pouring into the store and cleaning it out like locusts in a field. ...
> Flash rob: When the concept of the flash mob is applied to petty larceny.
That was when BART security shut off its underground cell phone service to try and break the ability to organize via phones.
More info about flash robs in the 2012 law article "E-Incitement: A Framework for Regulating the Incitement of Criminal Flash Mobs" at https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=15...
... if the people involved in them were sent to jail.
It's so bad that cops in Southern California try very hard to find evidence that will allow them to hand a criminal over to the feds -- because federal prosecutors will actually prosecute, but state prosecutors will not. (Source: I'm friends with a cop in socal who specializes in theft crime rings)
We need to throw out these inept district attorneys and never elect such people again. A bigger question: how did they get elected en-mass in the first place?
It's a reaction to unjust laws, for-profit prison systems, lack of police accountability, and high rates of recidivism from not treating the cause of lots of crime.
https://abc7news.com/international-fencing-operation-sf-boba...
Guess who declined to help with the logistics of this operation? Surprise, SFPD:
https://sfist.com/2022/05/23/report-sfpd-refused-to-particip...
It's extremely easy for cops to do nothing and then blame the prosecutor when people complain, giving themselves significant leverage over the political process with the headache of electoral accountability. There are a lot of bent cops to go round.
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/fbi-pittsburg-antioch-...
Recall that an executive administrator of the San Jose police union was arrested earlier this year for running a fentanyl dealing operation out of the police union HQ.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/san-jose-police-union-e...
This is not to give a pass to DAs, but to suggest that your characterization of the issue is overly simplistic.
The point being made is that the current structure gives people a free pass for this behavior, hence they engage in it.
Some of them are already in jail.
Use the sheriff's website. You'll find them there. It looks like all 3 have bonded out on 20,000$ bond.
They've already caught some of them. This simply isn't true.
But the real prevention is "make living your life possible for everyone". People whose needs are met don't generally go on risky crime sprees like this.
Make housing, healthcare, and food affordable. Give childcare, support education. Crime will plummet.
My mom sold men's clothing at Macy's in the sleepy city of Manchester, NH and (circa 1990) one day after she left a whole family came in and the father distracted the sales clerk while mom and the kids cleaned out a few rows of suits. The security guard came running but they were already gone when the clerk realized what happened.
She talked frequently with the security guards about the problems they faced: one was run over by a car by an escaping shoplifter. They weren't allowed to fight back under any circumstance because Macy's could be sued by anyone who was attacked by a security guard.
This book
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/black-ma...
has an excellent description of an organized shoplifting network in New York City in the 1970s that would sometimes steal goods from delivery trucks behind shops and then fence them at stores in Harlem. (It's a great book, it has descriptions of street life and police corruption that are right out of KRS-One's albums like Criminally Minded.)
We had no security guards, although we did have a Loss Prevention specialist who would visit on occasion, so basically it was up to clerks and managers to detect any shoplifting.
Of course we were absolutely forbidden from pursuing anyone beyond our front door. Yet, while I was employed there, at least one clerk rushed outside and tackled a thief, recovering the goods. He was roundly praised, but I felt that was a bad idea, because he'd violated policy and could've gotten himself and the store in a lot of trouble.
Being a CD store, we had shelves chock full of high-value, high-demand, small and concealable merchandise. I can't remember the exact nature of our anti-theft measures, but they were minimal. Tower soon went out of business anyway, so perhaps they simply didn't care anymore.
I think sadly that's what well see here too.
This timeline hasn't exactly proven stellar so far.
You're right though - California did a good job restricting guns. Until that gets overturned (which at this point, I think it will). On the other hand the reason California is so for gun control was originally to prevent the Black Panthers from marching with guns (seriously - gun control in California is deeply racist in origin).
Given all this I just think we'll get there and we'll get there faster than we expected, and we'll all have to pretend to be shocked and then it will become normal.
That said, the number of cops were need to prevent stochastic thefts like this is far, far too many. Cops are not the answer here, fixing the reasons people turn to crime is.
If they are comfortable stealing on camera, expect worse there.
This video does nothing to support that crimes are no longer being reported at any rate differently than prior years.
For a greater picture check out unemployment, unfilled municipal employment, homelessness. For extra credit check out the ever increasing number of citations for squatting and trespassing.
How do you know? Law enforcement figures, filtered and spun by your preferred media?