A telling contrast with the Mark Rober video and comments. Citizen has video evidence of package being stolen ? Or in the case of the comments GPS of offenders? Police dont give a fuck. Trillion dolllar company? Yes sir Mr Bezos, and we’ll deliver those extra packages for you on our time as well!
The dystopian medium-term future is relocation incentives being paid by cities to increase liquidity and therefore facilitate competition in the "better place to live" market.
... I guess we already have those for corporations, so extending it to individuals can't be much worse. But there's currently little meaningful competition to shake out what small-scale policies are better (e.g., the question of how much your police should care about package theft probably has basically the same answer throughout all of American suburbia) and it'd be interesting to see if people make the markets work efficiently (and leave ghost towns in the wake of bad decisions).
They say in the article that the police department was able to double the number of bait packages due to a grant from an external organization. It would be pretty trivial to donate money to a charity or "Friends of" organization and then have them write a grant to pay for bait package kits.
Not saying that's what happened -- lots of people might be pissed about the package-theft epidemic -- but it certainly could.
I assume every locality has their own set of police priorities. In the case of Mark Rober's video, it's clear that his local police don't care about package theft. The thieves know that, and exploit it. Hence it was necessary for him to do his own thing outside of the law to try and deter people (or at least recoup his losses with some YouTube revenue).
There's a big difference between apprehending a suspect based on fuzzy phone video vs just driving around a little to drop off some packages. Why would you compare those two actions?
If you haven't seen the exact video he's referencing it's here [1].
It certainly was nothing like just "fuzzy phone video". He had 360 degree video with fine detail clearly showing the thieves' faces up close, vehicles, and so on. His bait package also had GPS and several of the thieves took the packages home to open them. You can't have more condemning evidence. But this all begs the question. I expect that those thieves were indeed arrested, unlike the ones he caught on his home surveillance system stealing packages where indeed it was just some video snippets of the thieves taken from cameras several meters away.
It's just not that simple. I've seen the video but it only starts filming separately after being opened and there's no material loss since the item is retrieved at the end.
Even if this was a normal shipment being stolen, you have to weigh all the costs in time, effort and tax-payer dollars being spent to arrest a suspect and prosecute. When most shipments are either insured and/or replaced for free, it's not worth police time on these petty crimes.
There are a lot of crimes that have no direct victim or 'offender' at all - drugs, prostitution, etc. And these crimes are actively prosecuted. I'd fully agree with you in cases like this that the enforcement is a complete waste of time, effort, and money. But in this case stealing stuff from somebody is a crime that very much has a victim and an offender. Crimes against property are second only to crimes against people. I think these should always be very actively prosecuted.
Beyond that the video also shows a second reason why these crimes need to be actively prosecuted. The creator and his friend trialed their trap packages for what couldn't have been all that long. Yet in that time period they caught around a half dozen thieves, probably around a dozen once you include accomplices. When crimes aren't prosecuted and you have the sort of people that would take advantage of this, you're incentivizing crime.
A third issue is that without enforcement you start to encourage vigilante justice, which can be disproportionate and extremely dangerous. In this case the retribution was good spirited and presumably aimed at embarrassing the police into action and getting some social media love. But you could just as well have somebody who created dangerous packages, or an armed individual seeking to engage in confrontation with the thieves.
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And as an aside, with criminal theft it doesn't matter if the item is returned after stolen. A big difference between criminal offenses (including misdemeanors) and civil offenses is that the latter is generally about making material loss right again. The former seeks to right the material loss, but the punishment also includes purely punitive measures. Break a contract to the tune of $100 and you're generally on the line for $100 and some court costs. Steal the same amount and you're facing e.g. 6 months in jail and a $1000 fine.
> When most shipments are either insured and/or replaced for free,
The free part of insurement or replacing is a lie. If there is a 10% chance that your packega will be stolen/lost/break/whatever, then the shipping company ill add a secret 10% more to the price. You are paying for it. It's just that instead of an explicit extra charge that you can't opt out, this is marketed as a free feature.
Deterrent is a thing. Even a couple hundred well-publicized arrests (heck, even a couple dozen sufficiently well-publicized arrests and prosecutions) could move the needle on replacement needs, insurance cost, and all of the intangible inconvenience associated.
I'm impressed they didn't disappear into the void of, "maybe this needs to be kept as evidence. I dunno... Maybe ... Easier to just assume so than risk getting a slap on the wrist"
Being known as the police department that screwed up some kids Christmas is not a good thing particularly in a town of around 49K. Plus, most small town cops are not bad people (frankly like most people in this world aren't the bad sort).
My sample size of 1 says the opposite. I was driving from Greensboro to that hometown of Lowes. I think ~3 hour drive, speed limit is 70, in the middle of nowhere. I'm doing 75 on cruise. Guy pull behind me on the road empty as far as the eye can see. Rides my bumper for 10 minutes. The lights go on, speeding ticket. Feel free to fly out here again and go to court. The ticket for 5mph over the highway limit? $350. I spend a thousand to get a big time attorney out there, took it to court, got it dismissed. Just to prove a point.
How many stories out there have you read about this happening to people - small town, passing through, and they rape you on made up bs because it's hard for you to come back and go to court. How about all those small towns in the news where they steal all the cash out of your car?
Small town cops are not bad people - to the small town in which they live. Saying they are not bad people in general is opposite of the truth. It's like saying the nazis were great people because they were good to other nazis.
I once got a speeding tickrt for driving 20km/h faster than the claimed speed limit of 100km/h however this was on the german autobahn and nowadays when I'm there people are driving there at speeds of 130km/h and above without getting a ticket.
Or, you know, you could try going outside and joining society. 5mph over on the highway is completely normal, and the only reason the smalltown cop, those OP claims to be nice guys, gave me a ticket is because I was transiting through. $350 for 5mph over on the highway is normal in your world? Again, I urge you to go outside and join society, oh mighty keyboard warrior.
That was really awesome of them to do, especially around Christmas!