[theturtletalks]

I had the same bike stolen twice and was able to find it on Facebook marketplace both times. The key is to file a police report and make sure you have the serial number of the bike. Without these, the police will not help. Once you find your bike, message the person, negotiate, set-up a meet up, and then get the police involved.

Although we caught the guys selling the stolen bikes red-handed, the police couldn’t do anything. The guys just claimed they bought it from someone else and were trying to flip it for higher.

[CodeWriter23]

Convenient how the police just skipped right over how receiving stolen property is a crime.

[nostromo]

It's not so easy -- you have to prove that they know (or should have known) it was stolen, which isn't easy.

People like to blame the cops for everything, but the prosecutors are where the current breakdown in law and order is happening.

[theturtletalks]

It was a different person selling the bike both times. I think the police got their info, but if they didn't have a history of stealing, they let them go. If they are caught again, I hope the police charge them.

[lostlogin]

How does FB marketplace avoid liability for this sort of thing? As far as I can tell, a meaningful amount of stolen stuff is traded there.

[rolph]

where i am they let small things slide, for a while, then they switch from intell mode to enforcement, and do a crime suppression sweep, that goes right up to the persons that "govern" that economy.

[chroma]

So the police didn't do any detective work, didn't help with the sting operation, and they didn't punish the thief. It seems like it'd be more fruitful to get a few of your friends and solve the problem yourself. It's not like the thief is going to go to the cops.

[aidenn0]

> It's not like the thief is going to go to the cops.

That's a rather bold statement. A friend was sexually assaulted in a public bathroom, punched the person who did it, and then my friend had assault charges filed on him by that person. My friend was able to plea to non-criminal charges, but it certainly wasn't a pleasant experience.

[vorpalhex]

One of the hallmarks of a justice system is the presence of a neutral judge and a defense attorney.

Mob violence is most certainly not just.

[chroma]

I agree with you. The legal system's job is to substitute for vigilantes. In this case the legal system doesn't provide certain services adequately, so the incentives favor vigilantism.

[curtisblaine]

Also the presence of an executive part of the government which enforces law. If that is missing, the justice system is broken just the same. I don't understand why often we find it unfair when mob justice is administered (and it is unfair) but we don't find unfair that the police refuses to administer justice.

[michael1999]

The police already foreclosed any access to your justice via budget priority. Now we're discussing various flavours of injustice.

[kelnos]

Vigilantism isn't ideal, but what else is a person to do when law enforcement refuses to do its job? Not sure "just let it go" is a great answer to that.

[nitwit005]

In that case the US didn't have a justice system until 1963, as that's when people gained a right to a public defender: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_v._Wainwright

Although since the states rarely fund it adequately, you often basically don't have one.

[marcosdumay]

What, if you take the GP's comment as true, is very troublesome. But you didn't invalidate the GP in any way.

[mrexroad]

Had same story, except at the meet up, the cops arrested the bike thief. It might have helped that the cop recognized both the thief and thief’s “back up” muscle guy hanging out ~30’ away, ordering him by name to walk away as he approached.