Train robbery for Amazon packages? More common than you think
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The most extreme type of modern train theft occurs when thieves cut the air-compression brake hoses that run between train cars, thereby triggering an emergency braking system. When that happens, the engineer stays in the cab and the conductor walks the length of the stopped train, trying to locate the source of the problem. (Thieves can also stop a train by decoupling some of its cars.) Of course, if a train is miles long, that walk takes a while. In the meantime, the pilferers unload.
> "But over the course of the task force’s existence, which lasted nearly a year, only 34 of the roughly 700 people arrested or cited for stealing from trains were part of these organized crews. Many more were just passers-by or unhoused people living near the tracks in R.V.s or makeshift structures who just happened to pick up fallen boxes."
It's just one datapoint, but under 5% of the thefts this specific taskforce identified were perpretrated by organized groups. Most were essentially opportunistic thefts by individuals on the margins of society.
Although I never underestimate human stupidity or laziness for misrepresentation of numbers/statistics/etc, it's usually some poor SME that writes the report, and then the Manager sees the "60%", freaks out, asks the SME to rewrite making it softer, and thus the truth is (given a serious effort to be hidden).
I've been writing audit, security, and other reports a big part of my life. I tend to write numbers in the form of "5 out of 100 X (5%) examined, regarding the Y process, failed due to..". It freaks out anyone who reads my reports, but, hey, they pay me for accuracy and truth. Once I send it (and it's 'untouched' on my Sent Items), they can do whatever they want with it, as long as they put THEIR names & signatures in the bottom if they change a single word (sorry for the cynicism but there exists no corporate hill that I want to die on) - also you never know when a regulator will come back 6.5 years later and ask about THAT job scheduler that was transferring £€$5bn per day between X-system and Y-system.
I cannot recount the AMOUNT of times my report has 'softer' writing in the end, and it's their prerogative. But "it's not deliberate"????? No way in hell!!! Manager --> Director --> C-suite --> Audit Committee --> Regulator. EVERYONE will change a couple of words, and instead of a dumpster fire (Red) it will end up being Yellow.
Previously on reddit https://old.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/ree4ef/this_huge_...
5% of the people arrested, not 5% of the thefts.
“Less sophisticated thieves are more likely to be arrested” isn’t a surprising result.
Its not, though.
> Each theft event is a singular event composed of one or possibly multiple items being stolen.
Even if you ignore that the arrest rate likely isn't consistent between the two groups, that doesn't make the arrest proportion “accurate in the sense of oroxinate cause” unless you assume also that the organized vs. disorganized arrested parties are responsible for the same number of theft events per individual.
All the proportion of individuals arrested in the theft ring vs. not actually tells you is the proportion if individuals areested. It doesn't tell you the proportion of “theft events” or the proportion of $ valie of theft or anything else.
Perhaps some of what is happening is truly done by opportunistic amateurs, but the observation voted would also be perfectly consistent with a ground truth where every single case was done by an organized group.
I wonder if any of those 'fallen' boxes were deliberately dropped in an area covered by CCTV just to catch opportunistic thieves?
It would certainly be a good way to catch one type of thief while entirely missing the biggest heists.
Anybody who believes this is being foolish. Packages don't just "fall off" of boxcars. Those cars aren't open topped, the cardboard packages would be ruined by the weather if they were. The only way for a package to fall off a train is if somebody deliberately breaks into the train cars with those packages, and probably starts throwing the packages off the train.
The fact that they couldn't charge most people with that only highlights the inadequacy of their enforcement.
I could also see that people performing the crime might be unhoused, what are they going to do with 20 blenders they just stole? They will go to some organized group and sell the loot for some cash.
So on paper it doesn’t appear organized in practice it’s sort of is. If there is no one buying the 20 blenders, it’s not worth bothering jumping on a train for them.
Completely changed the way I understand society.
That something needs to happen again.
- Stable jobs with good salaries
- Home Ownership
- Salaries that increased as much as profits when productivity raised.
It was a good time, they told me.
We'd have to be careful about that since research shows that past a certain point harsher penalties do not act as a deterrent. It might be that being a little bit harsher improves the situation, but the tendency is the US is to go way overboard to the point that the US locks up more of its citizens than any other nation on Earth, and even an arrest is enough to cause someone to lose their job while a conviction can cause someone to because virtually unemployable for the rest of their lives.
It might be better to focus on making it more likely that people are caught at all for stealing packages than increasing punishments for the ones that do get caught.
I'm also quite confused as to how home ownership could ve causative here.
IMO the only clear window into this are victim surveys.
A look at the link[0] provided by GP provides the source[1] of the data, and AFAICT, both UCR and NIBRS statistics reflect reported crimes, not convictions.
So, no they don't. But feel free to ignore the actual data sources if they don't fit with your beliefs. Lots of people seem to do that. It makes life so much simpler, no?
Now we have more brazen smash and grabs with big hauls, idiots with trash bags an calculators being posted on social media, and porch pirates for which we see countless Ring videos?
> "When our men go as guards over the mail, that mail must be delivered, or there must be a Marine dead at the post of duty."
Because what you think is happening and what is happening likely differs significantly.
We evolved, beginning seven million years ago, from species that were already highly sociable and live naturally, gregariously, and peacefully in groups of dozens or even hundreds. Chaos and sociopathy are illnesses.
On top of that, we have the intelligence to reason about what works better (let's use it).
> species that were already highly sociable and live naturally, gregariously, and peacefully in groups of dozens or even hundreds.
And if you have a source stating authoritatively how society functioned seven million years ago, as we parted evolutionary ways with the baboons and chimpanzees, I would love to read it.
I take issue with "peacefully".
Hunter gatherer adult violent death rates are often estimated at 2% to 10% (googling seems to confirm my memory here). While people in developed countries have around 0.01% violent death rates.
Which species? Bonobos are fairly peaceful, but Chimps aren't.
Towards the end of last year, more than 90 containers were vandalized every day.How is this not policed?..
Look again: you missed the infinitely greater amount of footage of people behaving civily and normally. Or just walk outside and look around.
Not doing avout it anything hurts all the business that either have to refund customers or resend another item at their own expense.
I don’t know what other train companies are doing but Union Pacific cut a lot of its police force 3 years ago.
If they aren’t trying to hire more police, presumably they did the math and they must be making more money now than before regardless of any business they may now be losing.
The punishment for theft isn't the death penalty even in the US last I checked.
[1] https://reason.com/volokh/2020/06/02/are-people-allowed-to-u... [2] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+22%3A2-3...
As the system will be expensive, it will have to be state-subsidized, of course. At the end of the day, the parcels services are providing an essential service of first necessity, and it would only make sense that everything is done at a national level to ensure they are functioning correctly.
And why stop there? We could also ask defense contractors to design specialized trains. On top of absolute safety, it will have the added benefit of creating good job opportunities!
That would be theft not robbery.
> The Union Pacific Police department has jurisdiction over the 32,000 miles of track Union Pacific owns. Many of these "special agents" used to patrol this now infamous stretch of track. According to the source, the number of patrolling officers has been cut from 50 to 60 agents to eight, which the worker thinks has led to an increase in train robberies.
Yet nobody does nothing.
This is something I don't understand. I thought the $950 limit was the limit by which a felony charge had to be filed. But apparently, there's prosecutorial discretion in filing these felony charges even when above the limit? This felt like the biggest demotivators for cops and detectives: they could respond to 911 calls and take someone into custody, and then calculate the value of the stolen goods to make sure it reaches $950, and then just no felony charges afterwards?
Most three strike laws have to do with violent crime though.
25+ years is way out of proportion for the offense. Long sentences as a form of deterrence are not as effective as things like the likelihood of getting caught. https://www.ojp.gov/library/publications/five-things-about-d...
Incarceration without rehabilitation does not solve the underlying problems and leads to recidivism.
Ruining someone's life over a few Amazon packages makes no sense, ethically or financially.
By unjustly appropriating the fruits of other people's labor, thieves make it harder for all honest citizens to support themselves and their families financially. Of course they are a danger to society, and only someone in a position of extreme financial privilege could possibly think otherwise.
Heh really? Have you read Les Miserables? If one is hungry, go ask and SOMEONE will give you a loaf of bread (I cannot count the amount of times someone approach me/the queue in a food court of a mall asking for money and I've bought them some nice soup - and they actually sat down and ate it).
Who gives anyone the right to steal something I purchased, and I am expecting it for personal or business purpose? How would you feel if I come to your house every day and steal something - whatever I want and sell it on eBay?
Yes you are annoying :)
Essentially, the life of a robber is immeasurably more valuable than your amazon box, so unless they are a threat to human lives, you do not kill them to defend property. Arresting them is fine, but killing because of stealing is a nono.
Other thing would been if the robbers were armed and thus dangerous to the conductor and the like, in those cases, lethal action may be justifiable as a form of self defense.
It's been argued[0] that most of us don't commit three felonies in a lifetime, but three felonies a day.
While that may be somewhat hyperbolic, it also points up something important about our society. If I were you, I wouldn't be so excited about sticking "three time losers" in prison for decades. It could be you -- for what you did yesterday.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6611240-three-felonies-a...
I'd like to see you, with a conviction for a nonviolent drug crime and no college degree or tech experience, try to get a job and provide for a family.
The "rules" of the US are intensely stacked against poor people while allowing the wealthy to almost fail upward.
It wouldn’t be that hard to stop emoloyers from asking if you served time and do background checks for this. In theory, you did your time, you’ve paid your debt to society. I feel like, at leastbin the US, you’re pretty much screwed if you were ever convicted of anything.
It would not be hard to find a job in construction even with a drug offense and no degree.
It is kind of arbitrary, there's nothing so magical about it. Two or four would be just as good or at least not a whole lot worse; one seems overly harsh, and five seems overly lenient. Social policy is not an exact science, and we make these decisions democratically; most people seem to have a sense that people should get a few chances, but there should be a point at which they get the book thrown at them. Better to try and draw the line in a place that makes sense, and tweak it if necessary, than to be paralysed by indecision because you can't decide exactly where the line should be.
No. I don’t have a preference for the specific number.
I am asking by which reasoning we decided on three. If it is just “baseball” then I think we can do better.
In other words do we have a framework for deciding on additional punishment for repeat offense?
it's a good chance, don't worry too much about where the line in the sand is drawn. I've seen multiple teams at work also bogged down by this. if there were a name for this phenomenon, I'd love to know
Very few crimes should be able to get you more than 5 years at once.
But being caught three times…
And while it seems disproportionate, it might motivate others to not risk 25 years in prison for a $100 online order…
That gut feeling resonates with so many that few care to question it. It just feels right. Problem is, it feels right to the kind of person that habitually weighs the benefits and drawbacks of their actions, is able to reason about consequences and has a good grip on their impulses. Those people would be unlikely to steal Amazon packages even if the sentence was a fine and 30 days of social work because they are usually in a different place in society anyway. (Don't get hung up on exceptions)
Those that decide to steal anyway are often those that think they won't get caught. It doesn't matter if they don't sit in prison for 2 years or for 25. I'm sure there are other dynamics at play as well. Unfortunately I can't cite research to support my claims but then neither can you. So I just invite you to consider them.
The insignificant fear of losing an Amazon package makes unbelievably comfortable people absolutely hysterical. It's got to be performative, it can't be real.
In the case of Capone, it was just easier to prosecute tax evasion; "here's his bank balance, here's the tax we think is due, here's the tax he paid". In the case of shoplifting, plea-ing out a misdemeanor is probably easier than convincing a jury of a felony charge.
Like, all they probably have is a grainy video of the suspect. Are you convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that that's the person sitting in the defendant's chair? If one juror thinks "no, I'm not sure", then everyone who commited the crime goes free.
Also, realistically, $950 shouldn't be the threshold between a felony and a misdemeanor. That can't be a number that was adjusted for inflation. $950 isn't much money these days.
The article meanders around the point without getting to it. But our society just really has no effective way stop nonviolent crime. The police have bigger problems. The train and shipping companies would rather just pay for the insurance. The only people who care are the insurance companies but they have no authority.
If you ask the question - how much crime could the average person get away if they wanted to, the answer is a lot. In a way it's almost reassuring how little crime there is right now.
At the same time, as a law abiding citizen this coming down hard on crime sure makes my life easier. My TJ Maxx doesn’t have boards on the windows and they don’t have off duty cops posted at the door, unlike the Target I visited on my trip last year to the SF Bay Area. So the question is which society do we want to live in, or is there an optimal middle ground?
That's not strictly true. Usually there are terms attached to insurance agreements, and there's a lot of flexibility there in terms of discounts you can provide to insurees who employ useful mitigations.
The biggest problem is of course, societal. One anecdote from an anti-theft taskforce in the article showed that less than 5% of the thefts were prepretrated by organized groups, and the other 95% were from "passers-by or unhoused people living near the tracks in R.V.s or makeshift structures".
People on the margins of society, who see an opportunity to make some money.
Ideally, we'd fix the problem of unhoused people on the margins of society and we'd eliminate the vast majority of thefts like this.
But of course, that's a much harder problem to solve.
Much easier, then, to respond with bigger locks, and more security cameras, and GPS trackers and more security guards in vulnerable hotspots.
While those measures might work (to an extent) to solve the immediate problem, they don't work to make the society that I'd like to live in. I'd much rather live in a more equitable society that works to eliminate homelessness, and the conditions that lead to this type of theft, then one that just prevents it with punatitive measures and thorough enforcement.
I don't see any evidence of this.
The article did point out that only 5% of the arrests were organized criminals, but I would expect the organized ones to do more than their fair share of total thefts. I'd also expect them to get arrested less often than their amateur counterparts.
But more importantly, your proposal assumes that eliminating poverty would eliminate crime. That makes intuitive sense, but I don't think it's true. I've heard that many of the package thieves in my neighborhood are middle class people who just steal opportunistically.
> I've heard that [...]
This kinda sums the whole discussion really. We have an article that doesn't really go deep into the issue, and let's everyone come up with their own "all my homies say that XXXX" version of the root causes.
The best answer is probably that it's complicated, poverty plays a role, but so do many other critical factors (e.g. a decent summary of the studies in the field: https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PA00XGJN.pdf )
It's definitely anecdotal. But I think it justifies my skepticism of the claim that eliminating poverty would "eliminate the vast majority of thefts..." The parent comment didn't provide any data to support that thesis, and it doesn't align with my experiences.
> The best answer is probably that it's complicated, poverty plays a role, but so do many other critical factors
Yes, exactly. But that's what I'm arguing: poverty isn't the only factor in property crime. And while it's nice to imagine a world in which poverty doesn't exist, I think that cultural factor combined with inequality and opportunism will cause theft to remain.
I think "give people something to lose" is an underused and underrated crime deterrent.
The same thing is happening in agriculture, though it’s really under reported.
> your theory assumes that people are always at their 100% and thus can work to improve their lot
It's not obvious to me at all that a person needs to be at "100%" to improve their lot (and avoid criminality). I would never get out of bed if that was the case.
Is what you want really to make the cargo less valuable in comparison to the wealth of the people near its route?
I suspect that even with full employment, there will still be theft.
I think even in really decent societies like japan, there are still homeless people, and also the yakuza.
If they arent going to pay for bulls, the railroads can pay the extra insurance premiums. Private railroad police (bulls) were once common. We can bring them back. Public, sworn, railroad police are common in some cities and could also be expanded to police cargo trains.
>> Through his detective business, Allan Pinkerton met George B. McClellan, the president of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad and Illinois Central Railroad, as well as its attorney, Abraham Lincoln. With Lincoln's encouragement, Pinkerton began supplying detectives for the railroad.
"Homeless" has a kind of stigma to it (maybe you picture a dirty bum on the street), while "unhoused" doesn't because it's so new. It simply sounds like a category of analysis devoid of emotional judgment. (Like maybe they're unhoused because a hurricane just blew down their house, not because they don't have a job.)
If "unhoused" comes to replace "homeless", I'm sure we'll get another term to replace it, once "unhoused" has acquired the same stigma that "homeless" does now.
Though I've got to say that "unhoused" is a particularly uncreative term! Essentially a literal synonym of "homeless". It's like they didn't try at all this time...
My favorite offshoot of this is when I heard a Brit say, “don’t mind that guy, he’s currently experiencing Frenchness.”
Yup, plenty of people say that's the entire reason for the euphemism treadmill. You look good using the new terminology but nobody is helped.
And the people actually affected by the problem generally aren't consulted, and don't care at all about the terminology because it's the least of their problems.
So I would argue that being unhoused is a more accurate description of many people's experiences and feelings than being homeless.
You can't just solve the problem by sticking them into flats; that might technically make them not homeless anymore, but at the same time fixes basically none of their problems.
The NY Times says it's not the fault of criminality, but of income inequity!
> But filched cargo can be hard to get a handle on; it shape-shifts, in effect. If you’re buying brand-new speakers from someone’s trunk in a parking lot, you can probably deduce that there’s a good chance they were ripped off. But the anonymity of the internet essentially launders stuff.
What a bad example! The "Speakers from the van" scam usually involved cheap "AliExpress" Speakers that the seller makes the buyer _think_ are expensive, misappropriated speakers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_van_speaker_scam
It's sad what's happened to the NY Times. I dropped my subscription two months ago -- and I had subscribed continiously since 1980.
The actual issue here is train companies have cut staff down to almost nothing while simultaneously increasing train length to miles and miles. (And they are trying to cut staff even further).
A train with 2 miles worth of cargo and 2 people to defend it ends up being SUPER easy for a thief to target and rob. It takes an hour just for someone to figure out what's happening to the train.
What's the solution? How about the train companies employ more people, install more cameras, or shorten their trains? Or they can use their insurance to cover the cost of lost goods (as they are almost certainly already doing).
Train companies are trying to operate like the dollar general and are putting on surprised pikachu faces when they get robbed like a dollar general store. Almost certainly what they want to happen is the offloading of their security problems onto the public. We the public should not be subsidizing private monopolies because their bad business decisions make them particularly vulnerable to crime.
A company that earns 25 billion dollars of revenue a year can afford moving back to older business practices to avoid theft.
Law enforcement is the state’s job, and companies do pay taxes. Blithely ignoring train robberies on the premise that if it gets bad enough, the company will hire private armed forces won’t lead to the kinds of societal changes you’re hoping for.
The kinds of theft happening in LA on a regular basis are essentially unheard of in places like Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong or Taiwan. Any such occurrence would be shocking news and police would be all over it.
It doesn’t appear the system has been very effective in recent years, compared to other approaches internationally, unfortunately.
It doesn't seem like they hire enough people.
That's more likely because these places (as does Europe, by the way - we also don't have people burglarizing trains!) have robust social security networks for their population. The homeless get at least basic assistance, the mentally ill get taken care of.
The US does neither. People who have fallen through the cracks simply don't get any help at all (except from some charities), and mentally ill people don't get any care.
With the exception of Japan, every one of the places I listed spends less on social security and welfare in general as percentage of GDP than the US does. In most cases, dramatically less.
The train companies already have their own police forces, but if they can't get convictions in court, all they can do is scare away the least coordinated thieves. So it's hard to understand what security investments are supposed to achieve.
Rail companies go in, apprehend the homeless for trespassing and then complain that county won't prosecute them. And no, the county sensibly doesn't want to fill it's jails with vagrants just 'cause the rail companies don't park their trains where they're safe.
All this is part of the "supply chain problems" of the last few years but the thing with those is the large carriers (shippers and railroads) actually made profits by a legal situation wound-up as "our losses are your losses, our gains are ours". They cried all the way to the bank.
Given limited resources and varying priorities, public law enforcement follow-through can range from helpful to apathetic to non-existent.
Even major, national retail chains with clear video evidence of organized theft rings can have issues getting local PD to pursue prosecution.
Edit: Courtesy of dwater's note up-thread, railroad police can indeed be empowered by states as law enforcement. Though I expect at some point prosecution still reverts to state/federal authority. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_police#Jurisdiction...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_police#Jurisdiction_a...
So this wind-up being as if Fedex, to save money, eliminated their own parking lots and parked their trucks in the sketchy parts of town - and then demanded the cities eliminate the homeless 'cause their truck kept getting broken into.
1. Why should individuals and companies be responsible for their own law enforcement? That's literally the point of government.
2. They still rely on the court system and prosecutors. The railway companies aren't allowed to execute looters on sight.
My understanding is that they can pursue drug crime or break up organized fencing operations. But at the low level most of these train robberies are happening they probably don't waste their time.
Train companies do have police forces but since the advent of "precision railroading" they have been cutting all staff to the bone.
> but if they can't get convictions in court
Why wouldn't they be able to get convictions?
Because the prosecutor doesn't want to prosecute (since the California electorate doesn't want them to).
For example, if a company chooses to ignore a RCE vulnerability in their software for years, are they to blame when that vulnerability is exploited? I'd say absolutely they are.
One question though, what are the laws like surrounding security for trains in the US? In Canada, security employed by rail companies actually have actually been granted all the powers of a police officer by the government.
1. we do expect people to take preventative measures. I think this is more like someone being blamed for a burglary because they left their house unlocked. I have had car insurance policies that excluded theft resulting from leaving the key in the car.
2. Businesses are not individuals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_police#United_States
Your analogy doesn't quite hold up here.
This is exactly like shoplifting at Target — thieves now know the employees are not allowed to violently engage them, so there's absolutely no deterrent. If you think 4 unarmed railway employees are going to take it upon themselves to defend train cargo against cartel thugs or mentally ill and drugged out looters, you are insane.
With that said, it makes less than zero sense for Target to ask retail employees to risk their lives in order to stop someone stealing a cart full of Tide or pockets full of sonicare replacement heads. Not to mention, the potential for interventions to quickly escalate and become a danger to other shoppers.
Until then, this is a no-op.
However, if it gets expensive enough, I would expect that the parent companies will start to self-insure.
In other words, they have to move more freight... but it's after-tax profit neutral for them whether they have a huge amount of theft or a little.
This reminds me of patio11’s assertion that the optimal amount of fraud in a system is not 0 because the marginal price of reducing fraud to 0 is far higher than the amount lost to the hardest to eliminate fraud.
The key is to make sure that the costs of eliminating theft are internalized. So as long as the train company reimburses everyone fully then I would imagine they will quickly figure out what the correct level of security is.
Come to think of it, that may be why this behavior is being encouraged. "the people" insisted we militarilized to protect their stuff.
I am off to ground my tinfoil hat now.
He noted that rail companies are actively trying to lengthen trains, and reduce the staff to 1.
Edit: I think there may be 2 staff, but they're trying to change it to 1 and you basically aren't allowed to ever call in sick or else you're fired.
They train companies should still have crew, but they should be for use on secondary lines and the crew lives near that line and just works 1 week a month (most of that time doing mandatory training). With a little work on scheduling they can find local farmers looking for a side job when there isn't farming to do.
This is so out of left field. In what sort of dystopia do we confront the end of scarcity with... more mandatory training? Also, why do you assert 1 week a month? Wouldn't you need four crews to work this section then?
You can walk into an apple store and walk out with a $100 power supply. I assume that happens so infrequently that they just don't care.
At the local flea market, you can see people selling stolen stuff from the local pharmacy. There are obvious 4 or 8 packs of razor blades that are stolen (with the sticker that says "For sale at Shoppers Drug Mart only" on them).
If Amazon is going to exist off the largess of society's hard working public workforce they should pay their fare share in taxes.
If there are now have literal railway bandits - does that not make you take a step back? Like is this acceptable to you? And if it is - how can those of us who don't find it acceptable separate from them physically, and as fast as possible? Because I will never accept this. I'm not a pig, and I do not relish rolling around in the mud.
>I left the encampment discombobulated by the mismatch between the perpetrators (down-and-out men living in tents stealing goods someone else had already nabbed and discarded), and the victim (a multinational company valued at more than $1.5 trillion). The stuff had been taken unlawfully, yes, but part of the reason these companies manufacture items for so much less in Asia and then transport them thousands of miles in ships and trains and trucks is so they don’t have to pay the costs associated with adhering to environmental and labor laws here. Also, I was flummoxed trying to imagine how a man living in a tent would go about selling a stolen pet-grooming vacuum cleaner. What even is a pet-grooming vacuum cleaner?
Good to see them reaping what they sow, even if it’s only a pinprick.
If they have a phone I presume they could list it on ebay or facebook market for some portion of its new cost and take it in a shopping cart to a pack and ship place or haul shit to an unscrupulous pawn shop.
There was a pawn shop owner in WA who was actually sending out homeless folks with shopping lists of things to steal.