25 years ago, in Florida, my wife, our new baby, and I were all sleeping soundly upstairs, when at about 2 AM the phone rang.
"Hello?" I ask groggily.
"This is the police," the voice says. "Do you know who's driving your car?"
I look out the window at the parking lot below. "It's... gone," I say. "I... have no idea."
They send an officer to take a report. I do remember someone who had come to the door a couple weeks earlier. I hadn't let him in, but from the porch he had been able to see that I kept my car keys hanging on a hook by the front door.
That night, he had manipulated the back sliding door into opening, crossed through the apartment, and retrieved the keys from where they hung near the front. All downstairs.
After a high-speed chase, which ended at his girlfriend's house, the police caught him hiding under the bed with the keys in his pocket.
Anyway, that's my personal anecdote. I don't propose that anyone confuse it with data or use it to decide policy. But I still sometimes thank the stars that I and my new family slept peacefully that night.
AFAIK in most states, the police have say in their jurisdiction. So a lot of theft crime can’t be caught because the thief drives to another jurisdiction and the chase can’t go on.
So they can get away.
That being said unlike Seattle and San Francisco, Florida cops don’t fuck around. At-least on Polk county, the are tough on crime.
>AFAIK in most states, the police have say in their jurisdiction. So a lot of theft crime can’t be caught because the thief drives to another jurisdiction and the chase can’t go on.
I think that under the doctrine of hot pursuit, once a suspected crime has been committed, as long as the police are able to visually identify the suspect they're allowed to cross jurisdictions.
If this is their advice, imagine how helpful they are in getting your car returned to you.
My mom had her car stolen in the Baltimore area around 15 years ago, and they actually chased down the guy and got her car back. It was all in one piece as well.
I feel like some of the fault rests in car authentication tech being downright antiquated by having a “whoever has keys is driver” policy.
We wouldn’t accept, in any corporate environment, a computer system where the only form of authentication was a yubikey with no password, the fact that our cars essentially still work like this in 2024 is appalling.
You can actually activate PIN-to-drive authentication on a Tesla. It's a useful added security feature for when you need someone you don't know to use your car, like valet parking or leaving it at a body shop, but you can activate it as default as well.
Would be actually useful for when you share a car with family members and want it to remember seat position when you are both in car. Strange they haven't done it, but headlines "Tesla facial recognition" would make few people wet their bottoms. Even on this forum.
I’m more of a mind to criticize it based on how often Technology fails.
Tesla has had multiple recall issues with the interface pad malfunctioning or not even turning on.
Meanwhile I can just put a key in my car and go. Sure, someone could steal the key - but statistically that is far less likely that a software or hardware failure.
So what is the police force doing to mitigate auto theft motivated home invasions? Why fund the police if they aren't going to be providing protection to citizens? Also, if the thieves are well armed, and the police aren't helping, then maybe the citizenry needs to be armed as well?
Knowing that judges will just free the people they catch means they now have a Sisyphean task, that is torture and will demotivate just about anyone from doing their job.
There are quite a few studies out there that show that stand-your-ground laws only increase homicides, but they don't reduce any other crime rate. It also makes complete sense: Poverty and motivation for stealing don't go away with liberal gun/defense laws - but if you break into a house in Texas and plan to survive, you better bring a gun yourself and don't think twice when you encounter the owner.
What actually happens is that criminals only enter a residence when they are sure no one is at home. You can compare rates between Britain and USA of 'thieves entering house while occupied'. From memory USA is 10% and Britain is over 50%.
This is false. As far as I can tell these numbers were originally spread by right wing american commenters without any data to back it up. But if you actually try to look at this particular issue, you'll find that "entering while occupied" aka "home invasion" aka "hot" burglaries are not defined as their own crimes in most jurisdictions. And if they are (particularly in the US), they are local laws that vary wildly. This means that these numbers are either not tracked at all or thrown in together with a bunch of other crimes. So any country-level number you see on the internet about this special case will be bogus at best.
There’s no evidence to most of what you’re saying, even if there was it wouldn’t matter because nearly the entire US has stand your ground laws.
I think the only thing you’ve said that’s correct is the increase in homicide, but don’t forget a homeowner killing a home invader is technically considered homicide, and the RAND study pointed that out. There’s no evidence of any statistically significant increase of criminal activity.
I for one wouldn’t want to live in a place where my first thought if someone breaks in is to avoid them and hope everyone else in my house can find an exit, home break ins are super rare but why would I take the chance.
There's so much evidence, you really have to actively close your eyes to not find it. But if you actually don't know how to search for these things, see this meta-analysis of 25 studies for example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7958062/
I'm not sure what your point here is. If GP is right, and crime rates don't go down... then it seems that motivation doesn't really go down all that much either?
Does it go down for the people committing crimes? Prisons are full of inmates with poor impulse control, and/or who aren't capable of understanding risk.
I understand that for the average HN reader the known presence of guns in an area is probably going to move the probability of robbing a stranger from 0.001% to 0.0005% or something, but I'm not convinced the thought process of actual criminals works the same way.
Shooting ppl doesn't address the root problem, which is the terrible material conditions of more and more Americans/Canadians.
Not to talk poorly of northern America; most of the western world is going to shit, but most westerners aren't able to self-reflect on the reasons why our system has reached its limits. Not because we are stupid, but because we are being misled.
This seems akin to watching those flash mob looting videos and saying “they’re just trying to feed their families”.
They are criminals. They are not trying to feed their families in a way commiserate with a peaceful society. They’re probably not trying to feed their families but even if they are it doesn’t matter if they are doing so by brutalising their neighbours.
The implication is we don't live in a peaceful society. Violent coercion is just disguised as men in suits writing contracts that are economically infeasible to challenge backed up by skewed access to the State's means of physical violence.
In many ways, one could make the argument, a world where everyone is on an equal footing to do violence is preferable to one in which it is restricted to only a few.
In the industry we love using the 5 whys to get to the bottom of an issue. I just wish folks would apply the same to their daily life.
1) Why did this man steal your car?
> Because he's poor.
2) Why is this man poor?
> Because his previous job paid too little.
3) Why did his previous job pay so little?
> Because he can only accept terms of a contract, try to find a better contract, or face homelessness
4) Why does he have to make that terrible choice?
> Because there is a power disparity between the employer and the employee
5) Why is there a power disparity between the employer and the employee?
> Because employees, despite being the real wealth creators, do not have any oversight and democratic control over their workplace.
A society that rewards theft will breed thieves. The alpha thief being the capitalist. Thats why "the west is falling"; it's only sowing the seeds of its destruction.
> Why did this man steal your car? > Because he's poor.
That's a very simplistic line of reasoning. People who aren't as well off as you aren't automatons without agency, driven by their base desires. This is proven by the people without cushy IT jobs you meet every day who don't choose to rob you every chance they get.
I think the thrust of the article (and many of the comments) is that there are other ways to address the problem that don’t involve loss of life. Some are individual/preventative and others are society-wide and difficult to do overnight.
Whenever you have a home invasion article, inevitably the “Internet Rambos” come out of the woodwork with their “simple” solution to a complex problem.
The root problem is a lack of imagination that cannot fathom how the person making the judgement might find themselves in the position of the judged, in the not-so-far-future.
The good news is that reality does not care whether or not you lack imagination. One can only marvel then, at the sequence of events that lead to the "unthinkable".
It's fascinating how people who appear to be so smart are so very confused by systemic causes of criminality. The bullet is a bandage. It does not cure the illness. And even then murder for something so insignificant is beyond reprehensible.
Why are they telling people to put it in a faraday cage??? If the whole point is they want them to be able to steal the car without breaking in?
Are they trying to say "let them break into exactly your front door but then a bright flashing basket that says please take car keys here sir, welcome to slightly inconvenient free car costco, i love you."
So instead of real policing or understandable self defence laws the answer is all of us have to calculate the exact amount of inconvenience layers between free giveaway vs getting into violence?
You sound like you’re being sarcastic, but if that’s what it takes to get a home invader away from my family safer, then that’s what I’ll do. I’ll roll the red carpet out for them and throw in a stack of $100 bills if that’s what it takes. Property can be replaced, lives can’t be.
I missed this one but I will reply. Yes, I’ll happily pay the Danegeld if it means I’m not faced with the prospect of ending someone’s life. I’m not qualified to make that decision. Do you think you are? I believe deadly violence should be the absolute last course of action after every other option is tried and fails.
I am sure qualified to tell if somebody is trying to break into my house, it's not rocket science. Even you seem to be able to tell, as, I imagine, you are not handling your valuables to anybody passing by?
This is a symptom of inequality. Get used to it as it looks like it's only going to get worse. Nobody wants to steal your stuff if they can have what you have anyway. Much better that way.
That is such a dumb lie, poor people steals from other poor most of the time. They steal since they want more, they don't care how much the other person has they just want easy targets.
> Nobody wants to steal your stuff if they can have what you have anyway.
That is blatantly false. People don't steal cars since they want cars, they steal cars to sell them. They step on others to get ahead, usually those poorer than themselves.
Your comment doesn't make any sense in this thread. Why are you talking about Canada or ideals? You can't eliminate poverty without eliminating crime, since crime causes poverty, people steal a workers car now he is poor since he spent so much to get it, the car is usually the most valuable thing a person has.
Honestly, I like that advice. Crime is a symptom of societal dysfunction, something law enforcement has no real way to combat. The conventional belief that the police can enforce laws makes no sense, you would need an officer for each person who might do crime which would be totally infeasible. It’s like applying 1000 bandaids for ebola. Until our governments take responsibility for their failed citizens nothing will change and in the mean time I would rather crime done to me be as safe as possible, which might mean leaving my keys out
"Hello?" I ask groggily.
"This is the police," the voice says. "Do you know who's driving your car?"
I look out the window at the parking lot below. "It's... gone," I say. "I... have no idea."
They send an officer to take a report. I do remember someone who had come to the door a couple weeks earlier. I hadn't let him in, but from the porch he had been able to see that I kept my car keys hanging on a hook by the front door.
That night, he had manipulated the back sliding door into opening, crossed through the apartment, and retrieved the keys from where they hung near the front. All downstairs.
After a high-speed chase, which ended at his girlfriend's house, the police caught him hiding under the bed with the keys in his pocket.
Anyway, that's my personal anecdote. I don't propose that anyone confuse it with data or use it to decide policy. But I still sometimes thank the stars that I and my new family slept peacefully that night.