If true, I'm pretty sure this wasn't in San Francisco or Oakland. I could maybe see one of the smaller Peninsula PDs helping out like this.
Confronting a thief in person is pretty dangerous (if the police weren't there); there's a non-zero chance of a fight, possibly involving a knife or gun. If you theoretically have a CCW and can be legally carrying a gun for self defense, it's still physically dangerous, and legally risky (a lot of legal/self defense advice is that if you're going to confront someone like a cheating spouse or whatever, you should not have even a legally owned gun with you, since if things escalate, it can get much worse.) Even a "righteous" self defense shoot in California is probably going to cost you $50-100k in legal -- absolutely worth it to save your life or the life of someone you care about, not really worth it for anything else, including breaking up strangers fighting on the street.
Much safer to just gather information and give it to the police.
I don't know how much risk I'd be willing to take for a $350 camera. (if it had a 5.0 f/1.0L or 1200mm, capture/torture/killing might be appropriate, though)
> Much safer to just gather information and give it to the police.
The police won't help you recover your stolen property: it's not their job.
> Confronting a thief in person is pretty dangerous...there's a non-zero chance of a fight, possibly involving a knife or gun.
Every day walking around a city involves a non-zero chance of a fight. Every day interacting with other humans in civilization can involve a knife or a gun. Meeting someone who opportunistically boosted your DSLR at a house party isn't significantly more dangerous than meeting any Craigslist seller in any public place. In fact, it's probably less dangerous, because you won't be walking up to someone you don't know with hundreds of cash dollars in your pocket.
It's not even a complicated meeting. You take a friend, for safety, as many craigslist buyers do. You ask to see the camera, as any craigslist buyer would. You ask to take a few sample pictures to make sure it works, as any Craigslist buyer would. You snap a picture of the perpetrator and tell him (politely, because you don't want to fight) that this is your camera and you're going to keep it; if he disagrees, he's welcome to accompany you to the police station to sort things out. The vast majority of opportunistic thieves at this point will completely bug out since they know they're busted and they don't want to go to jail (there are few DSLR/lens combinations that don't qualify as felony larceny in most states).
I find your vision of a world in which opportunistic thieves pack heat and victims "just gather information and give it to the police" unrealistic, not to mention depressing.
The police won't help you recover your stolen property: it's not their job.
That very much depends on the department, the particular officer, and how you present your case.
I had a cop in the very high-crime town I was living in take my statement about having seen my stolen bike ridden by someone and then go looking for that person and find him.
Like you said, he didn't have to do that, but he was probably not busy and I had previously reported it stolen. Didn't hurt that he was coincidentally the same one who had come to my apt when I reported the bike (and other stuff) stolen.
What I'm getting at is that you shouldn't assume the police won't help. You have nothing to lose by asking them.
So is driving on the highway. What, exactly, is your point?
We take calculated risks every single day. Meeting an opportunistic thief in a public place to retrieve your own property is at the low of end the risk spectrum, and the savings is a lot more than a slightly faster commute to work.
A thief is MUCH more likely than a random person to be 1) impulsive 2) stupid 3) violent.
It's a calculated risk. I also don't drive on New Years Day at 3am due to the drunks (or, really, late at night on Sunday morning in some areas). I prioritize my personal safety highest, followed by protection from liability, followed by my property. I've seen confrontations over similar things turn into stabbings or shootings. In Oakland, we had a fun game of "armed restaurant takeover" last year, where kids would enter a restaurant or coffeeshop, grab all the laptops/phones, and in a few cases, shoot people.
The police in most non-dysfunctional places are fairly willing to make arrests if you hand them a totally packaged case for grand theft. What they hate is work which screws up their stats (reported crimes which they can't/won't solve).
> Confronting a thief in person is pretty dangerous (if the police weren't there); there's a non-zero chance of a fight, possibly involving a knife or gun.
one of those moments I'm glad I don't live in the US. a thief with a gun? that reminds me when I recently was showing part of my city to an American couchsurfer, we took him for a walk around a lower class neighborhood to show him something other than common tourist attractions, and when we were passing by some average young scamps around liquor stores, he asked if they are armed. I laughed.
I waited on hold for 30+ minutes on a 911 call before giving up. Was going to report a domestic dispute, but never got a human. The dispute ended without anyone getting hurt, which is good, but ... well, it was then I decided that you pretty much can't rely on Oakland emergency services, so I moved out of the city.
I know of people who had various robberies and burglaries committed; the police wanted them to file an online police report, rather than sending officers out (I guess you could go to the PD, too).
Anything where I wasn't legally required to interact with the Oakland PD (i.e. a shooting or something with serious bodily harm, or filing a report on insured property like GTA), I'd avoid them. Armed robbery would be about the cutoff; I don't think I'd report assault without a weapon.
It's a defective police department due to internal culture, but also due to budget issues (and generally defective city government). The best hope for Oakland would be a federal takeover of the department (or city), or failing that, CHP replacing OPD. What they got was a weird federal guy appointed by the federal courts to essentially oversee the department.
Oakland Fire is actually totally fine, which is weird. And their EMS isn't bad for dealing with gunshots -- Highland is pretty good as a trauma center, although it's a county-funded hospital, not city. It's really just that the police department has serious problems, on top of the city having both crime and budget/governance issues.
Oakland PD is the worst PD I've had the displeasure of interacting with. I was in downtown Oakland at night in a party of 5, and we were accosted and robbed by three scary-looking thugs with guns. I was lucky enough to not lose my iPhone (they didn't notice I had not given them my phone) and was able to call 911 right after. The cops showed up immediately (within 3 min) with 4 cars.
We indicated that the perpetrators must've been just down the street, barely a block away. Of course, a description of "three black guys wearing hoodies" does not get you very far, in Oakland. The cops refused to send a car after them, instead asking us to give statements for 30 minutes, before moving on.
The worst part was that we asked if they could give us a ride to the station or to a BART station, and they refused. They had more things to do… like finding other people whose statements they can send a group of 4 cars to write down, I imagine.
>Oakland Fire is actually totally fine, which is weird.
Remember the Oakland Hills Fire? A direct result of complete incompetence of the Oakland fire department.
Hundreds of homes burned in Oakland. Barely any in Berkeley. (For those not familiar with local geography, driving along the ridge it's almost impossible to tell when you've left Oakland an entered Berkeley; the fire certainly wouldn't have been able to tell the difference.)
You could see the line of destroyed homes right up to the Berkeley border, where the Berkeley FD was able to stop its progress.
Oakland had completely broken infrastructure: Fire took out power, which then prevented any pumping stations to get water up the hill. Oakland had refused to update their fire hose connectors to a standard size, so the Berkeley fire trucks wouldn't work in Oakland even if the water were pumping, and other area trucks (probably a dozen cities sent help) were similarly useless. Trucks FULL OF WATER sat unused at the base of the hills because of lack of communication.
And the ENTIRE FIRE happened because the fire chief violated the department's policy: A brush fire they'd put out the night before the BIG fire was what flared up and caused the tragedy. This was a windy season, and their policy states that any such brush fires should be monitored for 24 hours after they've been put out to ensure that they don't flare up again, because of the dangers of fire when the winds are that bad. Story had it that the fire chief (a crony appointment of a useless mayor) told the crew to come home because it was Saturday night.
So if Oakland Fire is actually good now, it's certainly improved from utterly incompetent. Granted the loss of life wasn't bad considering the size of the fire (7 people died, if memory serves), but my sister lost a good friend to the fire, and therefore to Oakland Fire's incompetence. So maybe I'm a bit prejudiced.
Regardless, that die is cast, and I've left California entirely for the time being.
I don't dispute your account, as I don't know the particulars.
One minor quibble, though. Unless you're specifically talking about water tankers sitting unused, most fire engines carry a fairly limited amount of water in their internal tanks (technically, a "truck" has ladders, while, in SF at least, an "engine" has a water tank + a pump + hose lines).
In San Francisco, newer engines have a 500 gallon internal tank. That sounds like a lot, but the rated capacity of the pump is 1500 gallons/min, meaning at full flow (150 psi) you have 20 seconds of water. At best, with a small line at a low pressure, you have a few minutes of water.
Again, not saying you're wrong or repositioning the engines wouldn't have helped. But unless it's a trash can fire, the first order of business at a working fire (structure or wildland) is securing a dependable water supply.
I was led to believe that there were huge water tankers (like gas tankers, but full of water) sitting idle for lack of leadership. But I could have misunderstood.
I agree though that the loss of power (and lack of backup power) to the pumping stations was probably the biggest problem. I remember hearing that a number of people saved the private high school "CPS" from burning down using the water in the pool to keep the fire at bay; I'm not clear how they did this, though (if fire fighters were involved, I'd imagine they would be able to use their trucks to pump the water, but the story as I heard it was a bunch of teachers and/or students fighting the fires back). So yes, if you've got water, it's easier to fight a fire.
And shooting people in the head with grenades. Not as effective as BART PD (the worst Bay Area PD, hands down) at shooting handcuffed people in the back, though.
But yeah, that case was about police's right to lying to victims about providing emergency service, not declining non-emergency service, which is very much not an obligation.
It depends on what pictures were on the memory card too. If you have renters/home owners insurance thefts would likely be covered. Luckily for me they were. The cost and time of replacing gear sucks, but life goes on. However, photos…those are HARD to get back. I lost 1,000 photos from a trip to Amsterdam the day after I got back. That sucks more than anything… Agreed, however, that I would never confront a seller alone in person!
Some rap music gives good legal advice (Jay-Z's "99 Problems" is about 95% accurate, it just oversteps the rights argument in a few places). A lot gives really bad advice. I'm a lot closer to George Tenet with the rented Maybach without tints or rims, spending money on businesses rather than 80 gold chains :)
I knew a woman who did white-collar criminal defense at one of San Francisco's most high-profile law firms. She heard "99 Problems" and thought "actually, those are very sound tactics."
I have a buddy who is a Georgetown Law student. He is a huge Jay-Z fan and told me that one of his professors used this song as an example in one of his classes. Jay-Z seems to have a pretty good head on his shoulders. I guess that's what happens selling crack on the streets in New York. He didn't end up shot, in jail or dead, so he obviously did something right.
Comments
If true, I'm pretty sure this wasn't in San Francisco or Oakland. I could maybe see one of the smaller Peninsula PDs helping out like this.
Confronting a thief in person is pretty dangerous (if the police weren't there); there's a non-zero chance of a fight, possibly involving a knife or gun. If you theoretically have a CCW and can be legally carrying a gun for self defense, it's still physically dangerous, and legally risky (a lot of legal/self defense advice is that if you're going to confront someone like a cheating spouse or whatever, you should not have even a legally owned gun with you, since if things escalate, it can get much worse.) Even a "righteous" self defense shoot in California is probably going to cost you $50-100k in legal -- absolutely worth it to save your life or the life of someone you care about, not really worth it for anything else, including breaking up strangers fighting on the street.
Much safer to just gather information and give it to the police.
I don't know how much risk I'd be willing to take for a $350 camera. (if it had a 5.0 f/1.0L or 1200mm, capture/torture/killing might be appropriate, though)
> Much safer to just gather information and give it to the police.
The police won't help you recover your stolen property: it's not their job.
> Confronting a thief in person is pretty dangerous...there's a non-zero chance of a fight, possibly involving a knife or gun.
Every day walking around a city involves a non-zero chance of a fight. Every day interacting with other humans in civilization can involve a knife or a gun. Meeting someone who opportunistically boosted your DSLR at a house party isn't significantly more dangerous than meeting any Craigslist seller in any public place. In fact, it's probably less dangerous, because you won't be walking up to someone you don't know with hundreds of cash dollars in your pocket.
It's not even a complicated meeting. You take a friend, for safety, as many craigslist buyers do. You ask to see the camera, as any craigslist buyer would. You ask to take a few sample pictures to make sure it works, as any Craigslist buyer would. You snap a picture of the perpetrator and tell him (politely, because you don't want to fight) that this is your camera and you're going to keep it; if he disagrees, he's welcome to accompany you to the police station to sort things out. The vast majority of opportunistic thieves at this point will completely bug out since they know they're busted and they don't want to go to jail (there are few DSLR/lens combinations that don't qualify as felony larceny in most states).
I find your vision of a world in which opportunistic thieves pack heat and victims "just gather information and give it to the police" unrealistic, not to mention depressing.
The police won't help you recover your stolen property: it's not their job.
That very much depends on the department, the particular officer, and how you present your case.
I had a cop in the very high-crime town I was living in take my statement about having seen my stolen bike ridden by someone and then go looking for that person and find him.
Like you said, he didn't have to do that, but he was probably not busy and I had previously reported it stolen. Didn't hurt that he was coincidentally the same one who had come to my apt when I reported the bike (and other stuff) stolen.
What I'm getting at is that you shouldn't assume the police won't help. You have nothing to lose by asking them.
This model of the world is optimal in the majority of cases, but when it fails, it fails very badly.
So is driving on the highway. What, exactly, is your point?
We take calculated risks every single day. Meeting an opportunistic thief in a public place to retrieve your own property is at the low of end the risk spectrum, and the savings is a lot more than a slightly faster commute to work.
A thief is MUCH more likely than a random person to be 1) impulsive 2) stupid 3) violent.
It's a calculated risk. I also don't drive on New Years Day at 3am due to the drunks (or, really, late at night on Sunday morning in some areas). I prioritize my personal safety highest, followed by protection from liability, followed by my property. I've seen confrontations over similar things turn into stabbings or shootings. In Oakland, we had a fun game of "armed restaurant takeover" last year, where kids would enter a restaurant or coffeeshop, grab all the laptops/phones, and in a few cases, shoot people.
The police in most non-dysfunctional places are fairly willing to make arrests if you hand them a totally packaged case for grand theft. What they hate is work which screws up their stats (reported crimes which they can't/won't solve).
> Confronting a thief in person is pretty dangerous (if the police weren't there); there's a non-zero chance of a fight, possibly involving a knife or gun.
one of those moments I'm glad I don't live in the US. a thief with a gun? that reminds me when I recently was showing part of my city to an American couchsurfer, we took him for a walk around a lower class neighborhood to show him something other than common tourist attractions, and when we were passing by some average young scamps around liquor stores, he asked if they are armed. I laughed.
[deleted]
I waited on hold for 30+ minutes on a 911 call before giving up. Was going to report a domestic dispute, but never got a human. The dispute ended without anyone getting hurt, which is good, but ... well, it was then I decided that you pretty much can't rely on Oakland emergency services, so I moved out of the city.
It's too bad, because I loved living there.
I know of people who had various robberies and burglaries committed; the police wanted them to file an online police report, rather than sending officers out (I guess you could go to the PD, too).
Anything where I wasn't legally required to interact with the Oakland PD (i.e. a shooting or something with serious bodily harm, or filing a report on insured property like GTA), I'd avoid them. Armed robbery would be about the cutoff; I don't think I'd report assault without a weapon.
It's a defective police department due to internal culture, but also due to budget issues (and generally defective city government). The best hope for Oakland would be a federal takeover of the department (or city), or failing that, CHP replacing OPD. What they got was a weird federal guy appointed by the federal courts to essentially oversee the department.
Oakland Fire is actually totally fine, which is weird. And their EMS isn't bad for dealing with gunshots -- Highland is pretty good as a trauma center, although it's a county-funded hospital, not city. It's really just that the police department has serious problems, on top of the city having both crime and budget/governance issues.
Oakland PD is the worst PD I've had the displeasure of interacting with. I was in downtown Oakland at night in a party of 5, and we were accosted and robbed by three scary-looking thugs with guns. I was lucky enough to not lose my iPhone (they didn't notice I had not given them my phone) and was able to call 911 right after. The cops showed up immediately (within 3 min) with 4 cars.
We indicated that the perpetrators must've been just down the street, barely a block away. Of course, a description of "three black guys wearing hoodies" does not get you very far, in Oakland. The cops refused to send a car after them, instead asking us to give statements for 30 minutes, before moving on.
The worst part was that we asked if they could give us a ride to the station or to a BART station, and they refused. They had more things to do… like finding other people whose statements they can send a group of 4 cars to write down, I imagine.
>Oakland Fire is actually totally fine, which is weird.
Remember the Oakland Hills Fire? A direct result of complete incompetence of the Oakland fire department.
Hundreds of homes burned in Oakland. Barely any in Berkeley. (For those not familiar with local geography, driving along the ridge it's almost impossible to tell when you've left Oakland an entered Berkeley; the fire certainly wouldn't have been able to tell the difference.)
You could see the line of destroyed homes right up to the Berkeley border, where the Berkeley FD was able to stop its progress.
Oakland had completely broken infrastructure: Fire took out power, which then prevented any pumping stations to get water up the hill. Oakland had refused to update their fire hose connectors to a standard size, so the Berkeley fire trucks wouldn't work in Oakland even if the water were pumping, and other area trucks (probably a dozen cities sent help) were similarly useless. Trucks FULL OF WATER sat unused at the base of the hills because of lack of communication.
And the ENTIRE FIRE happened because the fire chief violated the department's policy: A brush fire they'd put out the night before the BIG fire was what flared up and caused the tragedy. This was a windy season, and their policy states that any such brush fires should be monitored for 24 hours after they've been put out to ensure that they don't flare up again, because of the dangers of fire when the winds are that bad. Story had it that the fire chief (a crony appointment of a useless mayor) told the crew to come home because it was Saturday night.
So if Oakland Fire is actually good now, it's certainly improved from utterly incompetent. Granted the loss of life wasn't bad considering the size of the fire (7 people died, if memory serves), but my sister lost a good friend to the fire, and therefore to Oakland Fire's incompetence. So maybe I'm a bit prejudiced.
Regardless, that die is cast, and I've left California entirely for the time being.
I don't dispute your account, as I don't know the particulars.
One minor quibble, though. Unless you're specifically talking about water tankers sitting unused, most fire engines carry a fairly limited amount of water in their internal tanks (technically, a "truck" has ladders, while, in SF at least, an "engine" has a water tank + a pump + hose lines).
In San Francisco, newer engines have a 500 gallon internal tank. That sounds like a lot, but the rated capacity of the pump is 1500 gallons/min, meaning at full flow (150 psi) you have 20 seconds of water. At best, with a small line at a low pressure, you have a few minutes of water.
Again, not saying you're wrong or repositioning the engines wouldn't have helped. But unless it's a trash can fire, the first order of business at a working fire (structure or wildland) is securing a dependable water supply.
I was led to believe that there were huge water tankers (like gas tankers, but full of water) sitting idle for lack of leadership. But I could have misunderstood.
I agree though that the loss of power (and lack of backup power) to the pumping stations was probably the biggest problem. I remember hearing that a number of people saved the private high school "CPS" from burning down using the water in the pool to keep the fire at bay; I'm not clear how they did this, though (if fire fighters were involved, I'd imagine they would be able to use their trucks to pump the water, but the story as I heard it was a bunch of teachers and/or students fighting the fires back). So yes, if you've got water, it's easier to fight a fire.
Time for a private social peer-to-peer civil protection startup?
I'm only half joking. Earlier this year someone was murdered on the street directly outside my window at 2 o'clock. PM.
It's called "moving to Piedmont, Orinda, or Hillsborough", I believe.
"Vote with your dollars. Your TAX dollars."
The term you're looking for is "mercenary company".
And in it doesn't work out, change your name and carry on - Black water.
But the Oakland PD is very active and effective in quelling "Occupy Oakland" protests, arresting the protestors and charging them falsely.
And shooting people in the head with grenades. Not as effective as BART PD (the worst Bay Area PD, hands down) at shooting handcuffed people in the back, though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
"police do not have a duty to provide police services to individuals"
DC district court, 4-3 split 30 years ago.
Only weakly relevant to California today.
But yeah, that case was about police's right to lying to victims about providing emergency service, not declining non-emergency service, which is very much not an obligation.
It depends on what pictures were on the memory card too. If you have renters/home owners insurance thefts would likely be covered. Luckily for me they were. The cost and time of replacing gear sucks, but life goes on. However, photos…those are HARD to get back. I lost 1,000 photos from a trip to Amsterdam the day after I got back. That sucks more than anything… Agreed, however, that I would never confront a seller alone in person!
I take it you don't listen to rap music?
If you did, I think you'd have a different viewpoint as a G.
Some rap music gives good legal advice (Jay-Z's "99 Problems" is about 95% accurate, it just oversteps the rights argument in a few places). A lot gives really bad advice. I'm a lot closer to George Tenet with the rented Maybach without tints or rims, spending money on businesses rather than 80 gold chains :)
I knew a woman who did white-collar criminal defense at one of San Francisco's most high-profile law firms. She heard "99 Problems" and thought "actually, those are very sound tactics."
I did an analysis of it on Quora http://qr.ae/TcyFx and a law professor did a far better job: http://slu.edu/Documents/law/Law%20Journal/Archives/LJ56-2_M...
There's also the Rap Genius analysis: http://rapgenius.com/Jay-z-99-problems-lyrics#note-17560
(IANAL, of course, nor am I a rap musician or interstate cocaine trafficker)
I have a buddy who is a Georgetown Law student. He is a huge Jay-Z fan and told me that one of his professors used this song as an example in one of his classes. Jay-Z seems to have a pretty good head on his shoulders. I guess that's what happens selling crack on the streets in New York. He didn't end up shot, in jail or dead, so he obviously did something right.
Lol, "clique" reference.