[kbos87]

I'll offer a counterpoint - I live in a nice building in a bit of a rougher part of a major city. I've learned that the police do show up thankfully, but it takes a very long time unless there's literally a life on the line. (Which, I know, is better than some other major cities.)

The couple of times I've interacted with them, it's been painfully obvious to me that they feel like they need to put on a performance for me, even if it's clear that it's an unsolvable crime. (In both cases, it was a property crime worth reporting, but also one with literally no evidence to follow up on.) I honestly wonder if some of the less well resourced people in my neighborhood even get a similar time of day from the police - my impression is that they probably don't.

[hcknwscommenter]

Given that 99% of the crimes are committed by repeat offenders, a simple dusting for fingerprints (costs pennies) could likely identify the culprit. But they don't bother. And they act like we've seen too many movies/tv shows. But when an "interesting" crime happens they do in fact dust for fingerprints (cheap!) and do all sorts of swabbing and testing (expensive). The police are lazy in CA especially. And yet they are also extremely well paid in CA. Someday, hopefully, this will change.

[sokoloff]

> simple dusting for fingerprints (costs pennies)

If a cop is making $30/hr, and we allow "pennies" to be as much as $0.25, they would have to complete the entire dusting for fingerprints process in 30 seconds.

[Spooky23]

Remember the DA is part of the equation. For low priority crime, there’s a lot of risk with using fingerprints. They won’t take a case they may not win.

[mcny]

I’m not holding my breath. Things won’t change until there’s a price to pay for corruption.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurie_Smith

[ForOldHack]

There is so much more:

https://www.kqed.org/news/11988510/case-of-former-san-jose-p...

[Angostura]

The dust isn’t the expensive bit

[sharpy]

Or different departments pushing responsibility to each other...

I had a break in. Thieves took my check books, and tried to cash one in at a payday loan place at a neighbouring city. The payday place called me, and of course, I told them not to.

I called my police department with additional information, and they told me to file a report in the neighbouring city instead... And of course, the other police department told me to file with my police department as the original crime did not take place in their city...

And oh, I also had airtags that were taken so I knew which building the thieves took my stuff to. But because it is a multi-tenant building, the police wouldn't do anything. I offered to trigger the sound to narrow it down, but they didn't allow that either... Eventually, the thieves found the airtags and threw them out.

Anyway, I contacted my representatives to give police more help to help in cases like mine, but crickets is what I heard back. Not even an acknowledgement.

[LorenPechtel]

Yeah, search warrants require probable cause to search a specific place. Air tags and the like are simply not accurate enough to pinpoint a specific unit in dense areas. I think the real answer here is to change how search warrants work: Allow a judge to approve a warrant for wherever the tag is--the police show up with equipment that can localize the tag. They do so in the least invasive manner they can, but the warrant gives them the power to go wherever the tag leads them.

[jorvi]

There is a very simple hack to that: tell the police that you think you saw the perpetrator and are going to beat the hell out of them.

The same thing works with stolen goods tracked via AirTags: the police will almost laugh in your face when you request their help with retrieving the gear, but if you call the police (not 911) and tell them you are about to confront the thief in a physical altercation, they’ll be there within five minutes.

[wdb]

Yeah, fingerprinting and report that’s what they did when my house got broken into in Westminster London.