This also has obvious workarounds, like targeting residential neighborhoods with cars in driveways instead of cars on the street.
The guaranteed return is citizens not having their cars broken into. Better tourism, better economic opportunities (you can do a lot more business when you’re not worried about a degenerate breaking your windows).
And anyway, you probably need closer to 10 cars. You don’t need very many high profile prosecutions before the average person gets the message.
I'd assume no one is risking stealing $30,000 cars to sell internationally.
> The guaranteed return is citizens not having their cars broken into. Better tourism, better economic opportunities (you can do a lot more business when you’re not worried about a degenerate breaking your windows).
TFA is about stealing cars, not smash and grabs.
> The guaranteed return is citizens not having their cars broken into.
How?
Stealing a car is already a high risk crime. If there is a less than .1% chance of encountering a bait car, and you are a desperate person, you probably aren't going to care much about the risk.
> high profile prosecution
If we were talking smash and grabs, there isn't going to be high profile prosecutions, and it doesn't seem like this is true [1].
[1] https://popcenter.asu.edu/content/sting-operations-page-5#:~....
Not in SF, according to my several friends who have had cars stolen there recently. The cops don’t even care.