Man dies after being run over during attempted catalytic converter theft in Sacramento

ProDarwin said:

wae said:

Wow.  Tragic.

I fully support arresting, charging, trying, convicting, sentencing, and imprisoning thieves, but I thought we had gotten past the point of wanting to execute people for property crimes.  

This.

Some of the reactions in this thread are surprising.

You'll find this is a natural reaction to the lawlessness being encouraged in all the big cities.  Crime is rising so fast, the response will be harsh.  You push too far one direction and things swing back harder like a pendulum.  Get ready for a big giant swing.  If theft doesn't get punished appropriately, seeing people being run over will seem civil and nice soon enough.  No one is arresting, convicting, sentencing or imprisoning thieves right now.  The reaction will get worse.  

Beer Baron said:

RX Reven' said:

Doesn't a 3% efficiency criminal suggest a lower level of regard for others than a 100% efficiency criminal? 

No. It suggests greater opportunistic desperation.

Someone who swindles an old person out of all their savings is 100% efficient, with a much lower level of regard for others than someone who steals catalytic converters.

No, it suggests lack of adverse consequences for the act

Beer Baron said:

In reply to RX Reven' :

We already do that. People are (theoretically) liable for or punished based on the total damages they cause, not for the benefit they gain.

If someone grafittis a building, they are liable for the full cost of to clean or repair the damages even though it didn't profit them anything.

I think you inadvertently introduced additional variables when providing your example...

1.  Greater injury is caused when stealing 100% of money from one person than 10% of money from ten people.

2.  Greater injury is caused when stealing from an elderly person than when stealing from a younger person.

There was a time when crimes had ridged punishments...first offense, minor, stealing $100 in food to feed family got the same punishment as third offense, adult, stealing $100 to buy a concert ticket.

We now have sentencing guidelines to give judges the flexibility to take extenuating factors into consideration.

I'm proposing that efficiency could be one of the extenuating factors.

In my example of gaining $50 while causing $1,700 in damage, the perp. would need to inflict $57,800 of harm on society to get the same gain as a 100% efficient theft of $1,700.

Given that the median annual income of a full-time worker in the U.S. is $56,287, that's 1.03 years of lost human productivity.

It appears you don't agree and that's fine...I just think about maximizing resources to get the greatest gain and as a result, I'd be nailing the people that need to do $57,800 in damage to get the same gain as those that only need to do $1,700 in damage harder.

RX Reven' said:

It appears you don't agree and that's fine...I just think about maximizing resources to get the greatest gain and as a result, I'd be nailing the people that need to do $57,800 in damage to get the same gain as those that only need to do $1,700 in damage harder.

We would be. We'd be prosecuting them for $57,800 in damages instead of prosecuting them for $1,700 in damages.

Are you suggesting that a person who does $50,000 in damages to earn $2,000, should be prosecuted as though they did >$100,000 in damages?

In reply to Beer Baron :

Hi Beer Baron,

#1  That would only be correct if we somehow knew they stole 33 cats before getting caught stealing the 34th which would almost never be the case.

#2  I'm suggesting that inefficiency should move us towards the upper limit of the sentencing guidelines but other extenuating factors could also move us down...minor, first offense, stealing to provide basic necessities, etc..

What factors go into someone's decision to commit a crime...risk of getting caught, punishment if caught, & what they stand to gain if not caught; did I miss anything?

To a very rough extent, the gain is a constant "I need to make $2,000 a month stealing to cover rent, etc."  If you're only making $50 per cat, you've got to steal 40 cats per month which is imposing $68,000 harm on society as apposed to $2,000 per month for a perfectly efficient crime.

Once criminals learn that efficiency is taken into consideration as a sentencing guideline, they'll at least sometimes work on being more efficient which should pull that $68,000 per month harm to society number down.

Yes, some will just go balls-out grabbing everything they can until caught but not all...some, I believe, will try to be efficient.

Obviously I don't know how effective this would be but I believe many criminals respond to logic in the same way non-criminals do.

RX Reven' said:

In reply to Beer Baron :

#1  That would only be correct if we somehow knew they stole 33 cats before getting caught stealing the 34th which would almost never be the case.

Are you suggesting we punish people for crimes we're pretty sure they've committed, rather than crimes that can be proved beyond a certain threshold in a legal setting?

Once criminals learn that efficiency is taken into consideration as a sentencing guideline, they'll at least sometimes work on being more efficient which should pull that $68,000 per month harm to society number down.

...

Obviously I don't know how effective this would be but I believe many criminals respond to logic in the same way non-criminals do.

Are you suggesting that non-criminals generally respond to logic? Do you really honestly believe this? Have you met people?

How many people do you consider to be truly rational actors behaving in accordance to enlightened self interest? Do you think the sorts of people inclined to steal catalytic converters are more or less likely to behave as rational actors weighing the cost/benefit of their actions than the general populace?

What makes you think that people inclined to crime aren't already looking at the problem as rationally as they're going to, and adjusting their behavior accordingly?

If you were inclined to turn to crime, what would you be doing?

Let's say you have a general disregard for financial or property harm to others, but are opposed to doing direct physical harm to people. What kinds of criminal acts would you engage in and why? I would not being stealing catalytic converters because that's very low payout for the work required. I'm also putting myself at greater risk of being caught or interrupted. I'd probably be engaging in phone, email, or cyber fraud or maybe identity theft. It's a lot larger payout for the same amount of work to call up a grandma, claim to be her grandson, and say I need $5,000 in bail money wired to me. I can do that sitting at home with a burner cell phone. No chance of someone seeing me in the act to try to confront me or identify me to authorities. The legal penalties or my regard for people wouldn't factor into this decision. With more time, resources, and skill I'd engage in a fancier scam creating ransomware, or illegally trading companies, or create a new cryptocurrency or NFT to con people into buying. The only reason I'd choose to steal catalytic converters is if that is that is if I don't have the skills and resources to engage in a more profitable crime.

If you were in that situation, would you choose stealing catalytic converters? Or some other crime that nets you more money? How much would the legal penalties factor into your decision making vs the potential payout for the same amount of work?

I must say that this thread has taken a humorous turn.  Somehow I just can't picture the average converter thief sitting in front of a computer, plugging numbers into a spreadsheet in an effort to analyze the efficiency of his enterprise.  Neither can I see him spending a lot of mental energy pondering the sociological ramifications of his actions.

914Driver said:

I brought two cats to the scrapper, he wanted two IDs and played 20 questions before begrudgingly paying off.

Where would you possibly sell a truck full?

Either by going a step lower or a step higher than the place you were selling to. These things get accumulated to the point they're in huge containers and shipped to China to be recycled.

I'm okay with some schadenfreude (okay, fine, I love me some schadenfreude), but I do think it's reasonable to worry about how glib conversations a few billion times a day affect folks' perceptions. *shrug*

Anyhow, my favorite pet notion of the moment is to stop and note when two seemingly opposing views aren't incompatible.

When someone berks up, there should be repercussions for them. Absolutely.

BUT!

Even when we haven't saturated our enforcement and legal systems so badly that folks are getting ignored, it's not as effective as we need/want it to be. So you've gotta figure out how to make changes so that *fewer* (these are humans, we don't do perfection, utopia, etcetera) people are cutting cats off cars or other berked up stuff. When you see a big swell in bad behavior numbers, it's not because human nature changed or people got to be worse humans in huge numbers. It's because more of them are in positions where they're making bad decisions.

Back to point A: Yes, they are absolutely responsible for those decisions and the resultant repercussions, but it does us much more good to stop them before they get there than to punish them after they do when we can manage it.

IMHO.

Was there ever a follow-up on the thief that got killed ?

What did they find in his car or house etc

Maybe they can find his "boss" and put some heat on him !

In reply to californiamilleghia :

I'd suspect that would fall back to the "you can't prove I stole all those cats piled up in my yard" and the police simply don't care enough to try and prosecute each instance (especially since the "alleged" thief is already dead).

Similar sort of thing happened when I was in college and my mountain bike was stolen.  The police said "that sucks but you should have bought a better lock".  Then a few months later a student was found to have something like 200 bikes in his dorm room.  He took off and the police scrapped the whole pile of bikes.  They couldn't be bothered to call the people who had reported stolen bikes even to let us look through them and recover our property.  It was easier for them to just say that no more bikes would be stolen by the kid who left the state.

In reply to KyAllroad :

If the police treated the bikes like they do locally, they let them sit in a warehouse for a while then sold them at auction.

There is no money to be made dealing with petty theft. There is not big media blast when someone's cat gets stolen or house gets broken into. The PD has zero interest in pursuing these crimes. They would much rather be writing traffic tickets that pad the coffers of their department, city, or state.

Even if they did drag in every E36 M3ty little thief, the prosecutor doesn't care because it won't make a news splash to help him get reelected. 

Do you want to stop cat theft? Don't expect any help from Jonny Law. They are useless.  

I wonder if a lifted Prius would be considered baiting?

Even better, lifted on airbags with the airline running right above the cat inlet. Maybe we can pin him in place without killing him. 

Toyman! said:

....Do you want to stop cat theft? Don't expect any help from Jonny Law. They are useless...

Depends where you live.  We have had some groups come through my area, and they very much went after them, even shot at one that got into a dead end street and had to turn around and come back at the cop.  They will learn soon enough, there is better / easier hunting elsewhere.

And I live in CA.... near LA!   But in not Los Angeles County or city... makes a HUGE difference!

Interestingly enough, funding and supporting law enforcement has benefits....

In reply to aircooled :

That's organized crime. That makes the news and what makes the news is what the police care about. 

Hit one car and nobody cares. Hit 50 in a neighborhood and it's a problem.

With all the police departments already armed like paramilitary groups, I don't think funding is the issue. It's more likely priorities.

Again, depends where you live.  I reluctantly called (because I thought they would not care) about a prowler trying to get over my neighbors fence.  A cop (sheriff) showed up withing 30 min and they caught the guy (I had good security cam pics) the next day! (charged with something else I suspect).

I do agree it has to do with priorities though.  In LA they generally won't even respond unless someone is trying to kill someone because crime is pretty rampant there and the cops don't have the resources.  Yes, I am sure they have armored cars and assault rifles, but that doesn't help when you need 2 times the cops and the DA won't prosecute most of the crimes anyway (e.g. he refuses to prosecute for resisting arrest... you can imagine what that result in when the cons figure that out, which they obviously do).

In reply to aircooled :

Yep, I live in Ventura county about 1,500 feet from the Los Angeles county line.

My home is at the top of a long, steep hill and it backs up to open land.

A few months ago, I found young man hanging out on the other side of my fence and when I confronted him, he just grinned and flipped me off.  I called the police (I own about eight feet of the land beyond my fence so he was trespassing) and they were searching the area within 20 minutes of my call.

Two weeks ago, a rented Chevy panel van was parked in front of my house for several hours with no activity.  My neighbors are old / affluent and in the thirteen years I've owned my home, I've never seen any of them do panel van stuff.  Additionally, no activity such as a garage door being open and again, I live at the top of a long steep hill so random people just don't show up.

Anyway, a neighbor called me at work to let me know what was going on and I called the police asking for a courtesy drive by as my 17 y/o daughter was home alone.

By mistake, I called the Los Angeles police rather than the Ventura police this time and they were completely dismissive..."I don't understand, what exactly is wrong...what do you want us to do...blah, blah, blah"

I had my daughter take off while keeping me on the phone and I drove 42 miles home.

I live 1,500 feel away from a completely different world.  

Sacramento County is more along the lines of LA or SF Counties, rather than Ventura or Orange Counties, with respect to law enforcement