[plingamp]

My car got broken into in Oakland, California. Multiple pieces of luggage stolen (yes, my fault for leaving it in the car in the first place). Luckily I had an AirTag that showed the exact location of the stolen items. I called the police but they said they couldn't do anything. Apparently, even if I had the location the thief would have to invite them in. Regardless, I was put on a waiting list, they finally called me back 3 days later. I promptly left the state a few months later.

[ahmeneeroe-v2]

It's not your fault for leaving your property in your car. Wild to say that.

[poulsbohemian]

Ahem. There are neighborhoods in the US where you leave nothing in your car because otherwise your car will become a target. It's often "the rule" in these places that you also leave the doors unlocked because that way "they" won't break your window trying to get in. They open the door, see there's nothing of value to steal and move on. In other places in the US it's (still but fading) normal to leave your car doors unlocked because "everybody knows everybody and no one would steal from each other." Code switching is knowing which of the neighborhoods you are in and how to adapt.

[cptcobalt]

The point of the comment is that this is not something we should have to tolerate or worry about in a seemingly high-trust society.

[poulsbohemian]

I totally get and respect the perspective of the parent poster, I'm just keeping it real that the US is generally not a high-trust society. If it were, we wouldn't have disclosures and disclaimers and limits of liability for everything we do all day long.

[mlrtime]

>I'm just keeping it real that the US is generally not a high-trust society.

Completely false, you mean Urban areas are not high trust.

I live in a place (In the US) where kids walk to school, don't lock bikes and our downtown has free umbrellas to take and give back whenever there is rain.

[ghaff]

Outside of some bad areas of some cities, in New England leaving property in cars is perfectly normal.

[JKCalhoun]

Lived in the Bay Area for over two decades. Yeah, leaving a visible item in your car is just bait for the smash-and-grab crowd.

It sucks but once you know it, it would be like thinking you can just leave your wallet sitting on a counter.

[aikinai]

You can also do that in high-functioning societies. In Japan people leave their purses, phones, etc to hold their seat before ordering in a café, going to the bathroom, etc.

[whateveracct]

In Japan, they also had to segregate subways by sex to deter groping. And the men just got on the woman cars anyways.

High-functioning society lol.

[boingus]

In Japan, there's so little crime that they make an effort to crack down on things like creepshots. The desire to tackle stuff like that is more than most countries do, where it's swept under the rug and ignored.

In America, you can proudly say you grope and molest women and it's considered presidential behavior.

[justinator]

Love to live there but chances they'll let me are roughly 0%. It's convenient (for them) that racial discrimination isn't a crime in Japan.

[matwood]

It’s a little more complicated than that. The subways during rush hour are packed liked sardines - nothing like the US. Groping or not, women do not want to necessarily be squished from all sides by men.

[pixelpoet]

I'm pretty sure the men aren't elated about getting squished by men either.

[plingamp]

For what it's worth, everything was in a locked truck with no visible way of seeing any items.

From what I heard from others, apparently the thieves have a device that allows them to detect electronics (I had two laptops, cellphone, and a few other devices). I'm not sure how accurate this is, but i'm not sure why my car was the only one on the street that was targeted as there were no visible signs of valuables in the car (nothing visible from windows etc.) Funny part is a few weeks later nothing was found except for my Kindle which a kind citizen found and returned to me. Apparently thieves don't like to read?

[jasonfarnon]

not "fault" in the sense of legal or ethical blame, but "fault" in the sense of stupid vs. smart thing to do

[thih9]

But it’s not a stupid thing to do either - if anything, normalizing crime sounds not optimal.

[elzbardico]

There’s no such thing as normalizing crime by simply taking sensible steps to protect yourself from it.

[thih9]

For a society that does this long term, giving away your rights is literally how crime gets normalized.

[elzbardico]

Fault doesn’t necessarily imply guilty. People need to understand that. “I should have known better” means while I am not guilty of what happened to me, I could have avoided it by not doing X. So, the real world is messy, and next time I will ac accordingly for my own good.

It is not smart to die or have your things subtracted just because you want to make a point of how things should be, a point that nobody will care about.

[Terr_]

I often like to highlight the difference words that we tend to smush together and treat as synonymous.

For example, something can be your responsibility but not your fault, or vice-versa. Responsibility is literally just the duty to respond.

[matwood]

I grew up in a small city in the US and was taught early on to never leave any property in view in your car. The US also has a worse issue than other parts of the world because people often leaves guns in their cars.

[SirMaster]

I grew up in a small town and we didn't even lock the doors to our home. Never had anyone come and steal anything.

[sejje]

Why does people leaving guns in cars make the stealing worse?

[matwood]

Guns are a high value item that can then be used anonymously to commit further crimes later on.

[lostlogin]

Because the thief gets a gun.

[sejje]

Sorry, let me rephrase to what I meant: why does it make it a more common problem?

[sitzkrieg]

did you feel really smart putting that totally made up "because people often leaves guns in their cars" in there?

[matwood]

Not made up at all. In large parts of the US people leave guns in their cars all the time. It ends becoming one of if not the largest source of stolen guns.

https://everytownresearch.org/report/gun-thefts-from-cars-th...

[rdtsc]

> did you feel really smart putting that totally made up "because people often leaves guns in their cars" in there?

I can’t tell if you think people obviously do leave guns in their car, and GP should know better than add the phrase in, or, that nobody does, and GP should know better.

I can tell you have seen people do both in different parts of the country.

[I_dream_of_Geni]

You obviously didn't Google this, since there are states in America where the people are PROUD to show off the guns and gun racks in their trucks. Yes, they proudly display these guns. (Texas, looking at you)

[edm0nd]

It 100% is if you live in or operate in a high crime area known for vehicle break-ins. Like OP of the comment.

[srj]

Sure but in a less broken society thieves would be apprehended and theft risk would be low. Instead the police do nothing and honest people live like a school of fish trying not to stick out for fear of the nearly-authorized property theft rampant in SF.

In many parts of the world, including major cities, it would be okay to leave your belongings in a locked car.

[Spooky23]

Cool, leave your MacBook on the front seat then.

[Amezarak]

I regularly leave my backpack with my laptops in it in the front seat of my car in the south US and nothing has ever happened in ten years of doing this.

It's crazy to me other people just live with this. Dramatic action is needed and possible.

[sejje]

Same. I try to remember to lock the door if I'm in a bigger city.

I don't own the key to my house, it's not something we think about here (US, south).

[plingamp]

Shared this in another comment, but my luggage was in a locked truck, nothing visible from the back windows. They broke in by smashing the windows, unlocking the door and using the latch to fold the back seats down to expose the trunk.

[renewiltord]

I imagine they see it the way I do: the SF Bay Area has thieves like this because it's part of local native culture. You get the good with the bad. Sort of like going to the elephant graveyard and being eaten by hyena pack. Sure, it's not your fault for walking around graveyard and getting eaten by hyena. But this is where hyena is. I have lost (and sometimes recovered) many items to these hyena. Ultimately, they are not people or anything. They're like hyena. You don't say it is fault of hyena. It is animal and local culture is animal lover. Why stress about it? Like many, GP decided that he leave hyena here and go elsewhere where it is people and not animal.

[trollbridge]

But the thieves actually are people, not "wildlife". And there is no reason to tolerate this kind of quality-of-life crime. Nobody is better off for it.

[renewiltord]

One way or the other, local culture is to do this. Yes, I agree it’s a negative sum choice. But they like it. It’s the same school of thought where a prison abolitionist didn’t report her gang rape: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/why-i-didnt-report...

It’s a coastal elite view.

As for whether they’re people and not wildlife as you put it, I suspect I’m more right than you are. Some of them have almost been acquitted because after killing people while robbing them it was offered as an explanation that they are too stupid to know that killing was bad.

https://sfist.com/2024/09/20/sf-jury-convicts-two-for-2017-m...

> Decuir and Mims were convicted last year of armed robbery, but a jury deadlocked on the first-degree murder charge, leading to this second trial… Attorneys also argued that she had a low IQ…

[opello]

> One way or the other, local culture is to do this. Yes, I agree it’s a negative sum choice. But they like it. It’s the same school of thought where a prison abolitionist didn’t report her gang rape: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/why-i-didnt-report...

How are gangs of thieves reasonably justified as part of culture? Surely civil society frowns on theft?

I read that article and I can (somehow) appreciate an ideal of prison reform so strong that it precluded reporting a crime--I think anyway--however, I did not see an explanation of what sort of remedy or justice this practitioner of a belief "in the abolition of police and prisons" would prefer. What is the appropriate punishment for such a crime? This is missing in the perspective presented. There is a description of a want for the perpetrator to change but no mechanism described for forcing the person to begin to change, just a reconciliation that every situation is different enough to avoid prescribing a template solution.

In the theft context, tolerating people that steal seems to enable theft. Humans can reason and are a product of the choices they've made. One ideal of the courts is exposure to alternatives, in the case of your deadlocked murder case, there are annoying factors from my arm chair: perhaps first-degree was too high a bar, the use of IQ in a legal setting in 2023 is annoying because without knowing how it was measured it should be assumed culturally biased and pointless, what levels of decision making abrogate personal responsibility--in managing a disease or making choices that lead to finding oneself in a particular setting. The resulting life in prison without parole sentence is probably just, but as with the Las Vegas story, I think that's up to those most affected by the crime to decide.

[renewiltord]

> How are gangs of thieves reasonably justified as part of culture? Surely civil society frowns on theft?

Theft is considered acceptable in coastal elite culture so long as it is from a multi-store chain. I haven't yet figured out how many stores transforms a chain from independent (theft-unacceptable) to corporate (theft-permitted, perhaps even encouraged). It is somewhat underspecified but at a sufficiently franchised operation, it is considered moral to steal.

> The resulting life in prison without parole sentence is probably just, but as with the Las Vegas story, I think that's up to those most affected by the crime to decide.

In this case, the person most affected did not make a statement as to his intended outcome. This is probably because he was killed in the commission of his crime, but we have no peer-reviewed studies that have proven that so we must consider it speculation.

[viraptor]

> the SF Bay Area has thieves like this because it's part of local native culture

You mean like Coast Miwok or Pomo?

[renewiltord]

I’m with you but local culture is to run arbitrary tests to see if you’re a “native” or not. The tests usually go back to high school or something.

[shibapuppie]

I'm sure if you were to "take your gun" to where the AirTag is located, the police would care a ton more.

[fsckboy]

>the thief would have to invite them in

it wasn't your mistake calling them, but be thankful you escaped: those police were apparently vampires.

[fortran77]

> (yes, my fault for leaving it in the car in the first place).

It's not your fault. It's California's fault for tolerating a culture of criminality.

[trollbridge]

I generally believe it is not a crime victim's fault for being a victim of a crime, and the police services need to stop saying things that perpetrate this mindset.

[gruez]

>Apparently, even if I had the location the thief would have to invite them in.

I mean, isn't that good? 4th amendment, warrants from a judge, and all that.

[cbolton]

Presumably they could easily get a warrant with that information, if they cared to ask.

[trillic]

Victim meets with police, signs affidavit, prosecutor goes to judge with affidavit, warrant written specifically for those items only. Should be simple and even digital if we wanted it to be.

[wildzzz]

An airtag alone will never be enough for a search warrant. They are not accurate enough and don't prove any actual crime was committed (maybe someone found your looted backpack in the trash). If there was security camera footage of the theft or you knew the thief and the cops could verify where they lived, that could likely be enough.

[jasonfarnon]

I guess the question would be how easy it is to fake this evidence. I don't know this tech. Could I throw my airtags in someone's bag and just take that to the police station and say look here on my phone, that's where my bags are, and then it's a he said/she said? Then the airtags aren't really adding anything to just your word "they took my bag".