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Comment by UI_at_80x24 | Hacker News Reader

First of all, no. Stop using this reasoning. Police only work _AFTER_ the car has been stolen. "Greater Police Presence" (that's one hell of a euphemism) only ever prevents crimes of opportunity. i.e. The Drunk Guy throwing a beer bottle at a window.

Police do not prevent crime, they apprehend people that they then accuse of doing the crime.

When you have somebody actively looking to steal $THING, they will find it and steal it.

You do not see these massive Kia/Hyundai thefts in countries that mandated immobilizers in all new vehicles.

So it is a failure of policy, not policing.

Adding some sources. https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/role-pol...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/07/over-past...

https://prismreports.org/2022/02/23/police-dont-stop-crime-b...

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> Police only work _AFTER_ the car has been stolen.

Right.. but the goal of the police work is to find the criminal and put them in jail for a while. This is meant to be a social deterrent, wherein, the punishment for the crime makes committing the crime not worthwhile.

> When you have somebody actively looking to steal $THING, they will find it and steal it.

Exactly.. which is why we use jail. You also seem to be suggesting that the lack of anti theft wouldn't matter to the overall rate, it just makes these particular cars more likely to be targeted. There are obvious and measurable problems with this idea.

> So it is a failure of policy, not policing.

Well.. if you don't have enough police to actually find and put criminals in jail, you can call that a policy problem, but the policy failure is simply not having enough police.

Not to mention incapacitation! It's really hard to steal cars from prison!

A very small percentage of people commit a shockingly high proportion of crime. In NYC, a third of shoplifting cases were committed by 327 people who were arrested over 6,000 times. That's just the times they were caught and arrested.

I can't find nationally representative data, but in Colorado, a news station looked at 10 randomly selected criminal cases for vehicle theft in 2021-2022. Every single one of the suspects had been accused of stealing cars more than once. Collectively they faced auto theft charges in 43 cases.

> You also seem to be suggesting that the lack of anti theft wouldn't matter to the overall rate, it just makes these particular cars more likely to be targeted.

I don't see that implication in the post you are replying to. The widespread dissemination of information showing how comparatively easy it is to steal these makes of cars may be expected to divert some thieves from targeting other makes to these particular ones, but it may also be expected to bring in others who would not have been disposed to steal a car until they learned of the relative ease with which these makes may be stolen.

> but it may also be expected to bring in others who would not have been disposed to steal a car until they learned of the relative ease with which these makes may be stolen.

The logical problem with this is, are there people, who, no matter how easy it is to steal a car, just would never steal one?

If those people exist, then you're misattributing the source of this crime to the vehicle, when all along, it was with the individual. While there are obvious "thresholds to criminality" involved here, if you can measure a difference in space (e.g. theft rate of Korea vs USA) you again can be pretty confident it's an individual issue and not a product issue.

The other side is, perhaps our crime reduction measures have worked, and prevent many people who /would/ otherwise steal or commit crimes prevented from doing so, and a single breach in this system reveals what was true all along. You haven't removed criminals, you've just reduced their incentives to a point where they don't commit crime.

All highly suggestive of what the actual problem is here.

The first problem with your argument is here: "The logical problem with this is, are there people, who, no matter how easy it is to steal a car, just would never steal one?" My post is not predicated on the assumption that there are no such people.

The second problem is here: "If those people exist, then you're misattributing the source of this crime to the vehicle, when all along, it was with the individual." This is an example of the "single cause" fallacy. From there on, all your claims fall like a line of dominoes.

Eh, I mean in this situation it's pretty cut and dry that Kia & Hyundai is doing something different as opposed to the police. I doubt close to 1/3 of all the vehicles in Milwaukee are KH but they make up 2/3 of the thefts. If the police are a contributing factor you'd expect it to increase evenly across brands.

But "Greater Police Presence" can deter crime depending on what police do. The presence of police cars on highways does slow down drivers. If you want a ton of traffic, I mean cars following the speed limit, then a "Greater Police Presence" archives that (until drivers recognize that cops won't pull them over until they're going +20).

I really doubt organized crime will steal powertools from home depot while a cop is in the same asile. Of course they may just go to the lowes down the street. GPP has both a scalability issue but also an enforcement issue; you can commit many crimes in the presence of a cop and they will do nothing.

"If the police are a contributing factor you'd expect it to increase evenly across brands."

They can still be a contributing factor without being the differentiating factor.

Canada was one of the countries to mandate immobilizers, in 2007, and car theft has not stopped: thieves found ways around the immobilizers.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/anti-theft-immobilizers-in-cars-a...

https://globalnews.ca/news/9392427/vehicle-theft-canada-secu...

> For example in Toronto last year, there were 9,439 reports of auto theft — a jump of nearly 45 per cent from the previous year. Toronto Police Service records show that auto theft has increased annually every year since 2018.

Once Kia and like manufacturers put immobilizers in their American cars, thieves will target the most expensive car rather than these brands, but that will not stop car theft.

I can say I've hot wired 1970s boats-of-cars (usually had permission, one of these cars didn't even have keys) and it is a lot of fun but I've never messed with a car that had a locking steering column or immobilizer.

Good to know, thanks for the links.

So basically your claim is that noone evaluates possible consequences when deciding whether or not to commit a crime?

It seems totally reasonable to me to expect that the higher the chance of negative consequences the less people commit the crime. Basically, police should lower the expected value.

In US States that have the death penalty, have murders stopped? And more to the point, are they significantly lower % per capita?

Policy change that requires the manufacturer to install a part (that is a $~200 option in the USA) would have practically eliminated the car as being a "target" object.

Getting caught is always secondary in consideration to reward. If somebody is desperate enough, then it doesn't matter how risky it is.

Car theft isn't new. There being a punishment for stealing cars isn't new. What makes the Kia/Hyundia situation so significant is how EASY it is to do. Make it more hard to steal, and make that a mandatory policy.

The thieves will find other ways to steal cars, but it might stop the easy theft. More cops won't do that.

It's pretty clear that while some people will ignore deterrents, the lack of a credible deterrent causes people who would otherwise not commit crimes to begin to do so, hence high rates of smash & grabs and shoplifting in SF.

You're basically supposing a supply-and-demand curve (threat of punishment lowers demand) for crimes but rejecting the notion that the easily-hackable Kias aren't increasing supply?

It's a straw man argument that the implementation of a punishment will eliminate the crime. The goal is to act as a deterrent. Safe countries like the Gulf States have the death penalty, have strong security, and it works quite well there.

The US has many issues that are independent of the penalties.

Large corporations are more likely to comply with a policy, so I think that would factor in to when and where policy is more effective than police, no?

What I don't understand about your point is that policy already makes stealing cars, murder, etc. illegal. What do you see as the difference between a policy that forces a car manufacturer to implement some technology that hinders theft vs. a policy that makes theft illegal?

I agree with you that the technology is probably beneficial on the whole and more effective than having police running around attempting to stop every car theft, but you're making this into a debate about policy vs. police, and I'm failing to make sense of how you distinguish one policy (regulating car manufacturing) from another (stealing cars is illegal).

My point is simple making it more difficult to steal by default is preferred to "hope we can catch them after the fact".

Another [very flawed] analogy; Let's say that all guns were banned. All guns disappear. Now 'easy' crimes involving guns disappear. If nobody has a gun, then somebody couldn't get shot.

If we move the burden further upstream and closer to the source then everybody downstream benefits. Make the manufacturer build "good locks" so that bic pens don't work.

I see your point, although you also need to consider the millions of vehicles already on the road. But let’s say we snap our fingers and equip every car with an immobilizer. Do people stop committing property crime? Or do they look elsewhere? Do I also need metal bars on my windows? Steel doors? Should I avoid carrying valuables on the street? Do I need to buy a Cybertruck with reinforced windows in case somebody holds me up with a sledgehammer at a traffic light? Should I just avoid traveling without a security detail? At some point, deterrents seem more effective against individual actors in creating the society I want to live in.

can't they just hide an air tag deep inside the car in random locations so you'd have to disassemble the whole car to find it, and then there could be more than one, who knows? Air tags are like under 20 bucks probably a lot less if you're a big car manufacturer who can source them directly from China

You're describing judicial punishment such as incarceration, not policing. Police do bust crime rings, given the resources and intel they have.

I actually agree that consequences can be an effective deterrent. Usually the naysayers share examples of recidivism to contradict this, not first-time offense. Seems kind of obvious and non-controversial that repeat offenders would not be deterred by possibility of jail once they're in that world and have nothing to lose. One need only look at all of east Asia to get a sense that harsh punishment works, it's just that you then have to deal with the other pitfalls... such as harsh punishment being applied in areas you don't want.

Even if you do increase prison time, it would have to represent a worse enough fate than what would-be criminals are living that they would wager differently. If crime scales with poverty, it's because poverty sucks. Jail sucks, but it tends to be a revolving door.

You're ignoring incapacitation. If someone is behind bars for stealing car #1, they can't steal car #2.

The application of Broken Windows Theory[1] and Terry Stops[2] are the only things that have ever worked in New York.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_stop

WTF? No, those things never worked! (Not even when you ignore the costs in bias/ unconstitutionality.)

Major crime stats were already dropping beforehand, and that trend continued with no correlation to the policy... not even a blip when stop-and-frisk was abruptly stopped for legal reasons.

Just because a politician says something when bragging about their job-record doesn't make it true.

___

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/09/22/donal...

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/09/stop-and-fris...

Wow, is that why crime went back up when they stopped?

Crime was "already dropping" because of Bill Bratton.

It's actually curious that anyone would believe it, "never worked". What, you think Terry Stops made crime go up?

> crime went back up when they stopped

Citation needed. What statistic, in what time frame, relative to what baseline/context?

> Police only work _AFTER_ the car has been stolen.

They can also take proactive measures, like leaving bait cars and arresting the people who steal those. There was a very amusing television series made out of the footage from this.

> When you have somebody actively looking to steal $THING, they will find it and steal it.

The goal is to remove these people from the general population. I don’t actually think deterrence works; these people just need to be identified, caught, and incarcerated until they outgrow their antisocial behavior.

> When you have somebody actively looking to steal $THING, they will find it and steal it.

Perhaps less people will be actively looking to steal $THING if they know that that they might be apprehended and accused of doing the crime.

Police can use bait cars to crack down on crime rings, which I would count as work done by police before a car is stolen.

I remember a time when police used to stop people who they thought did not "fit" into a particular area of town. This both affected thieves (and non-thieves) from poorer areas driving in affluent areas and it also affected people driving up-market cars into poorer areas (usually looking to score drugs or a pick up a prostitute or sometimes just visiting relatives/friends).

This is not done as much any more. I recall getting pulled over over the years and being asked by police "where are you going?". Obviously one does not have to answer, but it gave them the opportunity to smell for weed or alcohol use and also see what was in the car (possibly prohibited or hot goods in the car)

"Greater Police Presence [..] only ever prevents crimes [..]"

"Police do not prevent crime"

So which is it? In one sentence you say police prevent crimes of opportunity, then in the very next sentence you say police do not prevent crime.

You are misreading it.

“Greater Police Presence [..] only ever prevents crimes [..]” - Kia/Hyundai take, claiming that increased police presence leads to higher rates of crime prevention.

“Police do not prevent crime” - police, in its current state, is not that effective at preventing crime (as opposed to a situation where police presence was increased).

I don’t have a strong opinion on this at all, and for all i know Kia/Hyundai take might be incorrect. But there is no inconsistency in what they are claiming.

TLDR: first statement - their cause-and-effect claim, second statement - “the current police crime prevention rates are bad [which is why police presence should be increased according to our earlier claim about increased police presence increasing crime prevention rates]”.

This is quite right. Similarly, speeding cameras are incapable of stopping speeding until _AFTER_ the speeding has occurred. Speeding cameras do not prevent crime, they cite people who are accused of speeding.

That's why when a speed camera is installed, it makes no difference whatsoever and everyone goes exactly the same speed they would have gone before.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20927736/

> Police only work _AFTER_ the car has been stolen

That sounds like lax policing to me. (Which itself derives from policy.)

Counter point: there are safe countries that do not have these car thefts regardless of the immobilizer policy. E.g. UAE.

>Police do not prevent crime, they apprehend people that they then accuse of doing the crime.

Do you think there would be more or less crime if there were no police officers

Also what is this 1984 double speak "apprehend people that they then accuse", are you talking about suspects lmao?

But police are a deterrent. If a thief is more likely to be apprehended they will be less likely to steal.

I do not want a car that’s capable of deciding I’m not allowed to drive it.

That's cool and everything, but I do not want a car that's not capable of deciding that someone else is not allowed to drive it.

I just don't want a key that I can't get wet that costs hundreds of dollars to replace.

This is a very certain statement from someone who's policies have totally fucking ruined SF.

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