Woman Mailed Herself an Apple AirTag To Help Catch Mail Thieves (cnn.com) 103
Several items were stolen from a woman's P.O. box. So she mailed herself a package containing an Apple AirTag, according to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's office:
Her mail was again stolen on Monday morning, including the package with the AirTag that she was able to track.
It is important to note that the victim did not attempt to contact the suspects on her own... The Sheriff's Office would like to commend the victim for her proactive solution, while highlighting that she also exercised appropriate caution by contacting law enforcement to safely and successfully apprehend the suspects.
CNN reports on what the authorities found: The suspected thieves were located in nearby Santa Maria, California, with the victim's mail — including the package containing the AirTag — and other items authorities believe were stolen from more than a dozen victims, according to the sheriff's office. Virginia Franchessca Lara, 27, and Donald Ashton Terry, 37, were arrested in connection with the crime, authorities said.
Lara was booked on felonies including possession of checks with intent to commit fraud, fictitious checks, identity theft, credit card theft and conspiracy, and remains held on a $50,000 bail as of Thursday, jail records show. Terry faces felony charges including burglary, possession of checks with intent to commit fraud, credit card theft, identity theft and conspiracy and was held on a $460,000 bail, according to jail records...
Authorities said they're working on contacting other victims of theft in this case.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.
It is important to note that the victim did not attempt to contact the suspects on her own... The Sheriff's Office would like to commend the victim for her proactive solution, while highlighting that she also exercised appropriate caution by contacting law enforcement to safely and successfully apprehend the suspects.
CNN reports on what the authorities found: The suspected thieves were located in nearby Santa Maria, California, with the victim's mail — including the package containing the AirTag — and other items authorities believe were stolen from more than a dozen victims, according to the sheriff's office. Virginia Franchessca Lara, 27, and Donald Ashton Terry, 37, were arrested in connection with the crime, authorities said.
Lara was booked on felonies including possession of checks with intent to commit fraud, fictitious checks, identity theft, credit card theft and conspiracy, and remains held on a $50,000 bail as of Thursday, jail records show. Terry faces felony charges including burglary, possession of checks with intent to commit fraud, credit card theft, identity theft and conspiracy and was held on a $460,000 bail, according to jail records...
Authorities said they're working on contacting other victims of theft in this case.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.
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I don't believe any of this, and the motivation to lie, "especially their pensions", is right there for all to see.
Postal employees are not well paid, but they do get decent retirement benefits. That make some assholes angry.
Re: Mail is a real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with the sentiment though not the motivation. While bigots gonna bigot, the USPS issues are due to a different strain of crazy. It's embarrassing to rant about "evil incompetent government" and "flawless free markets" when the USPS, despite many many issues, keeps on working really well and is quite popular. So the USPS pension weirdness is one attempt (in a long line) to make reality match their crazy anti-gov fantasies. Because changing your fantasies to match reality is a very anti-conservative position.
(Not that liberals are perfect, but it's like comparing a glass of water to Lake Erie.)
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All the defined-benefit pensions are going to zero, approximately, because of deficit spending and hyperinflation.
At least the postal workers will get something.
But they have the worst of both worlds. At least a 401(k) could be more nimble.
Congress wants to treat USPS as quasi-private but then keeps their monopoly and gives them trucks. It's schizo.
You'll also notice that when the Democrats controlled Congress and the Whitehouse they did not make them regular government workers again.
It's a mistake to thin
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Having the USPS have a monopoly on parcel delivery is not mandated by the constitution. Letter delivery is. The USPS letter delivery SHOULD be part of the civil service, and the parcel delivery should be a separate company that was not connected (directly) to the government. But I can't imagine this argument having any effect.
Re: Mail is a real problem (Score:2)
You want to be rational and scientific but you cling to your quasi religion spreading poverty by economic disinformation, and disease by vaccine and mask disinformation.
How revolting both you and your movement are.
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The five founding BRICS countries have a larger share of global GDP than the seven members of the G7, and the gap is widening. Several of them are trading in their respective currencies rather than using the US Dollar. China and Saudi Arabia in particular have started trading without using the Petrodollar, and India and Iran are in talks to do the same. Russia has sold more petroleum the last two years than ever before, and because of the sanctions and their ejection from the SWIFT system they're not sel
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At this point, I wish we could just end the mail service (especially their pensions) sub it out to Amazon, and be done with it.
...because Amazon deliveries are never stolen and they don't offer their delivery drivers pensions?
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At this point, I wish we could just end the mail service (especially their pensions) sub it out to Amazon, and be done with it.
...because Amazon deliveries are never stolen and they don't offer their delivery drivers pensions?
Amazon isn't perfect (who is?), but they are consistently better than the postal service.
Why is it taboo here to say that?
Re:Mail is a real problem (Score:5, Informative)
So what do you gain? An Amazon unable to deliver mail, because they don't have the delivery drivers, and a Postal service no longer working. Best of two worlds, really.
Stop your revenge dreams and come up with solutions!
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At this point, I wish we could just end the mail service (especially their pensions) sub it out to Amazon, and be done with it.
...because Amazon deliveries are never stolen and they don't offer their delivery drivers pensions?
Amazon isn't perfect (who is?), but they are consistently better than the postal service.
Why is it taboo here to say that?
Perhaps more off topic than taboo.
Re:Mail is a real problem (Score:5, Informative)
Do you know what UPS, FedEx, DHL, Amazon, and all of the other private delivery services have in common? They all depend on the U.S. Postal Service to complete at least some of their deliveries. Why is that such an apparently obscure fact?
Now, go on Amazon and order something that could easily be dropped into an envelope and mailed for $0.73 and get anywhere in the U.S. in about 5 days. What does Amazon want for delivery? Now pick something like that randomly out of your desk at home. How much does FedEx or UPS want to deliver it across the country (ground)? I didn't include Amazon because they don't offer that service at all. Which of them can deliver it to any valid address in the U.S. without handing it off to USPS (hint: none of them).
It's not taboo to say amazon does better, it's just wrong.
Re: Mail is a real problem (Score:2)
something that could easily be dropped into an envelope and mailed for $0.73 and get anywhere in the U.S. in about 5 days. What does Amazon want for delivery?
A two cubic foot box filled with packing air pillows.
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Yup, Amazon does NOT deliver mail, it delivers packages. Expensively too, and inefficiently. One envelope, with some padding, and a tiny product, with the option to deliver within a week or month or don't care, will be delivered the same day by a van. The post office will deliver all the mail to a neighborhood in one trip. Amazon is for impatient people.
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Congress sets USPS postal rates.
We dont need to have an argument about the pros and cons of price fixing to observe that it must be fixed too low if the other delivery services are offloading as much as they can to the fixed price service.
As far as funding their pension, the claim seems to be that "nobody else has to fully fund their..."
The actual argument is that everybody else should also be fully funding their pension plans but congress doesnt h
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The offloading could be many things, including that the delivery services other than USPS are over-inflated and they would rather do the work on the parts with fat margins and leave the thin margins to USPS. Or it could mean that they just wouldn't offer service to the places that aren't profitable. Notably, the government's goal with USPS is to provide universal service.
As for pensions, yes, others should probably do more to make sure theirs are funded. But as long as they don't, and the courts don't treat
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Amazon isn't perfect (who is?), but they are consistently better than the postal service.
Why is it taboo here to say that?
Because it isn't true? Amazon drivers can't even reliably deliver to the correct place; if it's an Amazon driver for me it's a diceroll where the package ends up - UPS, Fedex, and USPS never mess up. (It's an outsourced driver thing - google maps et. al. are terrible with apartment complexes, while the other delivery services actually pay for correct addresses).
And the requirements of mail are different from the requirements of packages for an online vendor. The only reason Amazon can do rapid delivery s
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Amazon deliveries are done by contractors whose capabilities can vary dramatically. Most are good, some are not, you can report issues with delivery in the email that confirms your package was delivered, which will help to weed out the latter.
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I've never seen any basis for that claim. Delivery in our area (Seattle) is equally reliable if it's the USPS or Amazon, and for that matter the Postal Service delivers a certain amount of Amazon parcels.
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At this point, I wish we could just end the mail service (especially their pensions) sub it out to Amazon, and be done with it.
...because Amazon deliveries are never stolen and they don't offer their delivery drivers pensions?
Exactly, A person can go to Youtube and spend a long time watching people stealing Amazon deliveries caught on their security cams.
There is a certain group who has a huge rageboner for the USPS. We can just assign poster to that group.
Deliveries are way too intermixed today to end the USPS anyhow. In tracking my purchases, things might start UPS, get passed off to another service, and you don't always know who is going to make the final delivery. And these other services don't deliver regular mail.
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And these other services don't deliver regular mail.
My regular mail consists of junk mail (advertising) or bills and statements from government-run utilities that don't yet use e-billing.
I can't even remember the last time I received any mail that was something I wanted.
It all goes straight into the trash.
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Most of mine does, but I get important stuff too. I don't want everything to be email, I want some things to be on paper for record keeping purposes (9 times out of 10, the e-receipt is a "follow this link" and then also requires logging in). I get checks in the mail, I don't want to sign up for some stupid and unsecure e-banking site. I get letters from some relatives. I get medicine delivered from my medical provider, free, in a couple of days by USPS, with no need to sign up and pay for an account w
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I should add, since I paid a bill online just now. I get charged EXTRA for paying online for some things vs paying by check and sticking on a stamp. It's a "convenience fee"!
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People who hate the national postal service just resent it making no commercial rival viable. They would much rather there me a market for postal services, which would quickly become local monopolies because no two companies want to compete over the same last mile when they can just carve the whole country up between them.
Then they can fleece you for both sending and receiving mail, and charge you extra for not living right next to the sorting office etc. Anyone who invests in that is going to make a killin
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People who hate the national postal service just resent it making no commercial rival viable. They would much rather there me a market for postal services, which would quickly become local monopolies because no two companies want to compete over the same last mile when they can just carve the whole country up between them.
Then they can fleece you for both sending and receiving mail, and charge you extra for not living right next to the sorting office etc. Anyone who invests in that is going to make a killing.
So you can imagine how they feel about roads.
I'm a little off topic here - but imagine the Libertarian utopia. Individual citizens own the road in front of their place, and are responsible for it's maintenance, Then in order to recoup their costs by installing tollgates, and everyone traveling the road has to stop every 100 feet to pay the toll.
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and are responsible for it's maintenance,
So this utopia would look like distant rural Alabama, with cars surrounded by eight foot high reeds, old furniture dumped in the roads, and potholes big enough to swallow the space shuttle?
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and are responsible for it's maintenance,
So this utopia would look like distant rural Alabama, with cars surrounded by eight foot high reeds, old furniture dumped in the roads, and potholes big enough to swallow the space shuttle?
Only if they have their proof of patriotism - the Rebel flag.
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The only thing concerning about a libertarian society is that it will let the societal fuck ups starve and die as a consequence of their own decisions. I would argue t
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The only thing concerning about a libertarian society is that it will let the societal fuck ups starve and die as a consequence of their own decisions. I would argue that's far less cruel than the modern alternative for all parties involved.
That depends on your taste for cruelty. If being cannibalized by fuck ups (zombies, aliens, whatever) is less cruel than a libertarian human landfill, then tally ho, old chap, and enjoy the fox hunt.
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Witness Hungary. Postal services there are being privatized, and they have been blocking political mail from Orban's opponents forcing them to hand deliver (because there are no private services not beholden to Orban). A postal service not beholden to political powers or swayed by political whims or controlled by private interests, is important to a good democracy.
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Exactly, A person can go to Youtube and spend a long time watching people stealing Amazon deliveries caught on their security cams.
The main difference would be stealing Amazon deliveries is mostly a local crime. Stealing US mail is a federal crime. So if someone stole an Amazon shipment that used USPS as the last mile, that's multiple crimes and multiple jurisdictions.
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No, because he has Amazon Stock, or is a Prime member, and it is a financial benefit to the poster if more people join the cult.
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At this point, I wish we could just end the mail service (especially their pensions) sub it out to Amazon, and be done with it.
...because Amazon deliveries are never stolen and they don't offer their delivery drivers pensions?
And there certainly never were Amazon drivers who were filmed taking the packages with them after snapping the "proof of delivery" picture.
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Kramer tried to stop his mail service but the USPS is too powerful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Mail is a real problem (Score:2)
I don't understand the problem. Just don't have a mailbox.
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I am a proud Libertarian, posting on Slashdot as AC fairly often, touting how Bitcoin will be likely hitting $100,000, saying how the US needs to cut programs, and that the US debt is going to hyperinflate sooner or later, because Bitcoin has actual proof of work supporting it... while the USD has the FED and a printing press.
However, Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution has an express thing saying, "To establish Post Offices and post Roads".
You know what this means? Even someone as far right as I g
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I am a proud Libertarian
Thanks, that tells me that I can stop reading because nothing rational is likely to follow.
I'll say this much (Score:2)
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Mark Rober's glitter bomb vs. porch pirates does the same, but it also includes glitter bomb.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
He made several versions of it.
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Postal Inspectors Should Do This (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems really stupid that a private individual needs to do this. You would think if someone reports that they're getting their mail consistently stolen, the postal inspector would do the same thing. That's the real story here: Postal Inspector Fails to Investigate Mail Theft.
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Typical government attitude. There's little motivation when you can't be fired for not doing your job.
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That system was better. Endless War and Covert Assassinations wasn't a thing.
You need a permanent government of the Professional Managerial Class to support that.
We don't need perfect to disassemble what's clearly broken and dangerous.
These same people say they're going for a Nuclear War in 2025 and you should get your affairs in order.
Annie Jacobsen's book is essential reading.
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Because they don't have enough budget to investigate literally everything. Everyone is pressured to do more with less, this is not just for the corporate world but it's in government too.
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The Postal Inspectors Service has a total of 2,400 employees, of which about 500 are inspectors, to cover the entire country. I don't think they've got quite enough personnel to be staking out mailboxes.
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You would think if someone reports that they're getting their mail consistently stolen, the postal inspector would do the same thing.
Perhaps they will now that someone has come up with the idea and shown them how easy and effective it is.
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You want the Postal Inspectors to stop residential mail theft? Tell your congresscritter to fund it for an extreme expansion, because there aren't enough of them now.
https://facts.usps.com/inspect... [usps.com]
Enforcing the law. Established Aug. 7, 1775. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service enforces federal laws, prevents crimes and keeps customers, employees and the mail safe.
It’s one of the oldest law enforcement agencies in the nation. Postal Inspectors remain on the heels of the criminals — targeting th
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Interesting info.
But 2400 employees for how many towns and villages and cities in the USA? Sounds a little bit understaffed.
Locked boxes? (Score:2)
Not explained is how these two were able to pilfer the contents of all those "secure" PO boxes. I can only assume that one or both of them worked (or contracted) for the Post Office. Or they have a friend on the inside, but that seems less likely, given the petty nature of this crime spree.
Re:Locked boxes? (Score:4, Informative)
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
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The "master" delivery keys are all the same or infrequently vary.
Security by obscurity. Until it wasn't.
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It's rather poor journalism for the article to make no mention of whether either of them worked for the post office. I'm not sure that's because the writer is an idiot that didn't think of the obvious question or if they were urged by someone in power to omit the answer from the article.
However, it's far from a forgone conclusion that the theft must have been done by a postal worker. See this Lock Picking Lawyer video for evidence of exactly how easy it is to open somebody else's PO Box https://youtu.be/KUa [youtu.be]
PO Box, not a clustered mail box (Score:2)
See this Lock Picking Lawyer video for evidence of exactly how easy it is to open somebody else's PO Box https://youtu.be/KUau7vVa5pQ?s... [youtu.be]
Lots of love for LPL, but his video shows picking a lock for clustered mailboxes, not for PO boxes, which are located inside a post office. The summary says the thefts were occurring from a PO box.
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Lots of love for LPL, but his video shows picking a lock for clustered mailboxes, not for PO boxes, which are located inside a post office. The summary says the thefts were occurring from a PO box.
I'm aware of that, but I'm not sure I follow your logic. Are you saying that the post office legally requires clustered mailboxes to use a lock that can be easily raked open in seconds without even picking but uses high security unpickable locks inside the post office? If they have those high security locks in the post office, why do they legally required clustered mailboxes to use the totally insecure ones?
My guess is that the locks in the post office are just as weak and easy to open as the ones that the
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Stealing from apartment-style "cluster mailboxes" is much more lucrative as you only need to get past one lock (or steal a master "arrow" key) and you have access to all the mail and packages in the cluster.
The PO Boxes inside a post office are each keyed uniquely and do not have a master key. It is much more difficult & risky to gain access to the backside to loot the boxes en masse, as that is within the "secure" side of the post office. You'd pretty much have to be a USPS employee to successfully
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But it's about Air Tags! So it must be great.
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We had our postal boxes in a condo complex replaced a few years back, because someone came with a crowbar and pried the back open. The new ones have steel instead of aluminum, and are embedded firmly in the concrete (some places have had the entire boxes taken). A friend who was an HOA president reported that even in an indoors mail pickup area, with cameras, someone broke them open in the middle of the night.
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It's not hard to learn to pick locks, I learned to do it in an afternoon. There are plenty of videos on YouTube as to how to do it.
California police actually arrest criminals??!! (Score:2, Troll)
Wow, I am amazed the police actually showed up at the AirTag location and arrested the thieves.
Usually California police just ignore complaints about property crimes a police officer didn't personally witness.
Per the article it was the Santa Barbara County sheriff's office that did it. Maybe the sheriff is better than local (city) police. Anyway, kudos to the sheriff's office for doing their job. Unusual in California and so worthy of praise.
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Santa Barbara sheriffs have a certain reputation.
At a certain level of wealth they're more like a private protection agency and less like State goons who just follow orders.
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He was elected. Its police officers that you are thinking of.
The primary sheriff duty is court-ordered eviction. Removing people from property.
The primary police office duty is writing motor vehicle tickets. Removing property from people.
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No, this is not California, don't listen to the Fox News propaganda. It was a rule in some cities, not all or even most, to focus on property crimes above a certain value. California governor just last week signed a law to crack down on retail theft.
Also, stealing mail is a FEDERAL crime, not just state or municipal.
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In our area at least the issue wasn't police not paying attention to misdemeanor theft, it was that the District Attorneys wouldn't bother prosecuting non-felony theft because they didn't have time or personnel to do it. I was working on a computer near the front desk in the Tacoma PD headquarters and overheard a person telling the cop at the desk that he could see his stolen bicycle in his neighbors yard. The cop told him that they wouldn't be dispatching anyone if it wasn't worth more than $1000 and sai
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The surprise here is that I would have thought it would be feds, not sheriffs or staties or municipal cops. Anyone know why it wasn't the feds?
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Per the article it was the Santa Barbara County sheriff's office
County sheriff is an elected office. So they are answerable to the voters. At some point, this will be changed when some liberal cities complain. It will be made an appointed position, under their authority (like King County with Seattle) so enforcement priorities can be adjusted to make life comfortable for the homeless, fentanyl users and mail thieves.
Fire All Police. They Are A Useless Tax Burden (Score:1)
How many police agencies didn't think of this first? All of them.
Pet peeve (Score:1)
People's names (and mugshots) shouldn't be published until after a conviction. Same as asset forfeiture shouldn't happen before a conviction. Because a whole lotta innocent people people are falsely arrested by cops, and their names will turn up on Google searches when seeking employment, housing or loans.
Directly related example, cops used Find my iPhone data to break into the wrong house and eventually their insurance had to pay out $3.8 million in compensation, but if arrested their names would have been
Re: Pet peeve (Score:2)
Directly related example, cops used Find my iPhone data to break into the wrong house
Cops don't understand how the tech works. The BlueTooth tag has no location knowledge. It reports its presence to the nearest avaible iPhone. Which reports _its_ location. So if there's a tracker in your next door neighbor's house, your phone will get your door kicked in.
incarceration and rehabilitation does not work (Score:2)
It's cute but kind of useless (Score:2)
Re: It's cute but kind of useless (Score:2)
Nobody steals mail for a living because they want to.
Because they don't want to work. It's time for socialism now!
Where these kinds of people get sent to the gulag. And nobody cares what they want or don't want.
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Nobody steals mail for a living because they want to.
Have suffered brain damage recently? Of course they want to steal mail. That's how they make a living. This has squat all to do with anything else. This is straight up criminals being criminals.
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Almost certainly no one, they're probably meth heads like the guys who were stealing our mail.
Virginia $50,000 bail, Donald $460,000 bail (Score:2)
What do women need to do to get equal treatment? Fucking patriarchy.
postal inspectors are lazy (Score:2)
Some years back, I talked to the local police about the mail thefts that were happening. How come local police are working on it, when it's a federal crime and it is the bailiwick of the postal inspectors. The answer: we can't get the postal inspectors to care to pursue anything.
It's also sort of funny that California law prevents local law enforcement from cooperating with the Feds when it comes to immigration, but the for some reason no one remembers about that law when it comes to mail theft or bank r
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It's also sort of funny
Not really. There are not enough people to process illegal immigrants, and it's not the job of the police. Having illegals them in fear of the local police creates an underclass who have no protection from the law which creates a really, really nasty criminal class that exploits them. That has all sorts of knock-on problems.
If nothing else it is very sound financial sense for the California police to turn a blind eye. Something you'd think conservatives would appreciate...
Don't Cooperate (Score:3)
I'm not sure how we got on illegal alien criminals from the Post Office thefts, but...
It's also sort of funny that California law prevents local law enforcement from cooperating with the Feds when it comes to immigration,
Not really. There are not enough people to process illegal immigrants, and it's not the job of the police. Having illegals them in fear of the local police creates an underclass
Your statement that it's not the job of the police to enforce immigration law makes me think you don't understand what that means or what is actually going on. I'll give you an example.
I live in Fairfax County, the main suburb of Washington D.C. where all the federal workers and contractors live. A very rich county, super liberal.The county government declared some years back that we are a "Sancturary County". What does t
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Six month suspended sentence? That's not a problem with the sheriff, that's a problem with the judge. I'd recommend checking his browser history.
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Six month suspended sentence? That's not a problem with the sheriff, that's a problem with the judge. I'd recommend checking his browser history.
The judge was problem #1, but we're talking hear about the police. The feds told them to hold the guy because he was a dangerous multiple-offender criminal who was in the country illegally. The police obeyed the County edict that the police "will not cooperate with" and "will not honor any legal orders from" or "enforce any federal law" when they happen to have an "undocumented" "immigrant" in custody.
They made sure to release him before ICE showed up to fetch him.
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There are a total of 500 postal inspectors for the whole country, and you think they should be devoting one of them to stake out your mailbox? Really?
is it just that one is female and the other is mal (Score:2)
Why does one suspect get your $50K bail and the other gets $460K bail. Are partners in crime not equal flight risks? Are partners in crime not equally able or unable to post bail? Or, is it just that one is female and the other is male?
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The list of crimes each was charged with was totally different.
The US doesn't deliver packages (Score:2)
In most of the world parcel delivery services hand parcels to whoever answers the door, or they post a card that allows people to arrange later delivery or to pick the parcel up from a depot. The rampant theft of US parcels is caused by the peculiar system of discarding parcels outside delivery addresses.
If you want parcels to not get stolen actually deliver them, like they do in every other country.
Re: The US doesn't deliver packages (Score:1)
Hard to believe (Score:3)
I live in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and have a household mailing address and also a USPS PO Box. I haven't had anything stolen from the PO Box, but I have had a number of things stolen *by* the USPS employees in the regular mail. I am talking about small packages containing electronics, fairly expensive.
You can watch on the USPS tracking web site as the package is picked up, all the intermediate stations along the way, when it gets to your local USPS office, when the postman picked it up and put it in a truck, and when they put it on your doorstep.
What happens is that the parcel gets to the final post office, and is in the "waiting for the postman to pick it up and go to your house" state. The parcel never leaves that state, is never picked up, and after a little while vanishes from the system.
This is because post office workers steal the parcel while it is in their office, before the postman gets it. (Or perhaps the postman steals it by somehow circumventing the tracking scanner.)
I have filed the USPS paperwork with the Postal Inspector, and the I.G. when these parcels are obviously stolen. This goes into a black hole no matter what papers you file or what telephone calls you make. There is no resolution, no response at all.
If you contact the police, they are not interested at all; they tell you to file the forms, it's the USPS's problem.
I get plenty of mail each week. Only expensive parcels are ever stolen by the USPS workers. The U.S. Mail is not a reliable way to send a package. The place is infested with thieves.
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That's going to be an issue with your local post office then, I've never heard of this anywhere else.
Misread (Score:2)
pfffft (Score:2)
It is important to note that the victim did not attempt to contact the suspects on her own... The Sheriff's Office would like to commend the victim for her proactive solution, while highlighting that she also exercised appropriate caution by contacting law enforcement to safely and successfully apprehend the suspects.
I would like to commend the Sheriff's Office for actually doing something about it. Lots of them refuse to do so even when presented with the evidence of the location of the stolen items. But I do not approve of their passive-aggressive "good thing she came to us" language when so many SOs do not respond, it is extremely tone deaf and victim-blaming.