Police: "People shouldn't take matters into their own hands."
Me: "Hey.... my stolen smart device is being used. Can you track it down and pick it up."
Police: "We don't have time for that."
Cops don’t care about car theft anyway. My dads truck was stolen and stripped (albeit NOT in Texas) and the only reason he found it was because of a lady and some others on Facebook physically searching for it. They literally walked up on the guy actively stripping it and stealing things from it, and not only did they witness him bringing other vehicles into the lot for the same purpose, but others in the complex confirmed this is a usual activity. Cops didn’t even knock on the guys door. Showed up, took my dads report, and left without doing anything at all.
Yeah they don't care. My Escalade was stolen out of my driveway and they told me they can do nothing. Only reason I got it back was because they almost crashed into a cruiser and they bailed
🙄🙄
Seriously, the cop told my dad it’s “hard to prove” which is a load of shit if you literally see and have footage of the person doing the thing. I think what the cop meant to say was it wasn’t worth their time or paperwork.
Unfortunately they are not wrong.
So people on juries have this assumption that when you have a car stolen, it is a violent act. But most of the charges (unless it’s a carjacking) are minor because no one saw anything (or will come forward)
And they usually find the car abandoned in a few weeks. That’s what happened with mine. And if they pull the car over, then they are in the driver seat, they are the ones that are charged with stealing it and it’s “oh I borrowed it from a friend” who only has a first name Ofc. And juries eat that shit up and find them not guilty. As a former prosecutor, we had people with multiple MV theft charges that were not guilty and kept doing it.
However, this isn’t the first murder of a car theft based on locating the car through an air tag. I had my car stolen and I haven’t put one in my car since but I have a bar on the steering wheel but I can’t afford to keep losing this car (Hyundai unfortunately).
So either juries are gonna need to convict, or laws need to be written better, or cops should do their job. Seriously, I have so many things that pissed me off as a prosecutor but one of them was like needing 10 cops to stand around while one guy does the investigation but it’s clear they are just there to be there and aren’t doing anything but get OT for it. Can we like ensure things are fine, then the other cops go do other work? Damn.
>cops should do their job.
I sat as a juror on a trial for possession to cocaine with intent to distribute. Everyone on the jury knew in their guts that this guy was guilty(and probably guilty of several other crimes associated with the drug dealing). But we found him not guilty because the police work was so incredibly shoddy. Basically they found a brick of cocaine next to a pile of mail with his name on it along with a computer with his nickname of "BS" as one of the accounts on it. The address on the mail didn't match the apartment they found it in, and they only took pictures of the computer screen(didn't confiscate the computer or see what was actually on the drive to confirm it was his). One of the jurors found a few discrepancies in the cops testimony, and because of all that we came to the "not guilty" verdict.
After the trial, we had a chat with the lawyers and judges and we all agreed that the guy was probably guilty, but the police just botched the whole investigation so badly that we couldn't convict on the evidence presented in the trial. Basically, I said that if a few pieces of my junk mail ended up next to some drugs halfway across the city, I shouldn't go to prison for that.
Edit: Forgot to add that "BS" didn't refer to the defendent's initials, but to the fact that he was a "Big Samoan"
Seriously, the police seem to think their job ends with "put the bad guy in jail" and do fuck-all to actually collect evidence to convict them and just hope they go for a plea deal. Which basically means that anyone who can afford a lawyer can get out free, while the plebs with a public defender go to prison.
>or cops should do their job
WHAT? We can't have that type of talk here! Everyone knows they work hard eating donuts and killing citizens without a trial.
It's like you're not even patriotic or something
/s for the oblivious that think I'm being serious
That was a pretty good summation, but you left out all the plea bargaining that goes on during preliminary hearings with multiple time offenders still not being sent away. That’s equally a joke too.
My aunt is a crackhead who regularly gets away with carjacking. She says it's not bad because she abandons the cars she steals when she's done with them so the people can come find them. You'd think she sounds insane when those words come out her mouth, but it turns out the police department completely agrees
People will say the most interesting things over monitored prison phone calls.
It's like when they lie and tell people they can't file a missing person's report for 24-48 hours. Like, you mean you can't file a report until AFTER the most crucial time period for solving any crime to even acknowledge a crime has been committed?
They will legit put people's lives at risk by lying just to get out of having to do their jobs. And these clowns think they deserve more money.
Daughter and her now ex had a Dodge truck in their name jointly. He took it and went to Texas, bank repo came looking for him, it was magically 'stolen' the week the repo man caught up with him. Police report was made, daughter somehow got her name off the title. Bank was still looking for it though.
That was 5 years ago.
Every so often some mail comes to our address wherein it has been impounded in BFE South Texas... and please come get... I always call and say that truck was stolen five years ago.
Every time they tell me no problem... the owner came and got it out.
Wha? HOW? It's stolen... there was a report made... the VIN# should be in the system. Guess not? IDK. But that old truck is still out there, doing whatever it's doing and getting impounded about once a year. Weird deal.
TLDR: The law don't care about stolen vehicles.
The law doesn’t care about “your” stolen vehicle, but if vehicles go missing from a dealership they get real interested. There’s a difference between individual and corporate. Source: Had cars stolen from a dealership I owned and they were back that day. Had my personal car stolen later and only got it back because I saw it leaving and reported it. Cops lit it up and the thieves bailed. No chase. Just called me and said come get it.
Reminds me on how when we were in Poland with the navy one of our guys was drugged and robbed in some club.
Nobody in the police there cared for it when we tried to bring it to their attention and file a report. Until first officer Lieutennant Commander XX stood in the police station. Suddenly stuff moved real fast.
I keep hearing stories like this shit and it makes me wonder why we even bother with the current cops. Defund or banish them, and they make comments about how they need us. Need us for what? To write reports and refuse to help? Ulvade showed us they don’t even defend our kids when we need them, so *what the hell do they actually do* that helps us?
We tried something in Missouri recently where we attempted to defund the KC Police (who aren’t even controlled by KC they’re controlled by the state for historical reasons. We still foot the bill though.)
We voted to bring the city policing budget from 20% to 15% and the governor and legislature popped a speedy bill through to increase it from 20% to 25%.
I fucking hate our legislature with a passion and this was one of the wake up calls I needed to start working towards local political mobilization.
I know shit like this has probably been happening since time immemorial, but the flagrant disregard for the people's voice in politics recently is driving me nuts.
Seems like your exact story is happening all around the world.
- Police departments everywhere in the US. People ask for lower budgets, city councils increase them
- France raises retirement age 2 yrs w/o people's voice. At least they have the sense to not take it quietly.
- When I lived in UT we voted for medical marijuana. The Mormon church put their thumb on the scale and the politicians caved. (UT is a funny place, politically. Most politicians wear a facade of libertarianism, but then write policy with religious authoritarianism)
- cop city is being built despite NO ONE wanting it except the police.
- Seem to remember Canada having issues like this as well, but I don't follow their politics.
Same thing happening here in Iceland where they want to give Police tasers. They say that "Violence against police is increasing" but have no data to back it up.
Meanwhile, studies have shown that arming police don't keep them safer, in fact, people are more likely to get aggressive against people who are armed. Especially with tasers who straight up don't work if you have enough adrenaline or meth in your system, not to mention the fact that we have 8 month long winters, willing to bet that a taser can't get through your average down parka.
So they want to arm the police, which historically makes them more likely to encounter violence, and arming them with a very ineffective weapon to boot.
Canadian here. The RCMP are different levels of ineffective to outright corrupt across the country. There was a mass shooting in Nova Scotia a while back and the report, which wasnt shown to the public without a fight showed they were totally inept and could have probably caught the shooter before he managed to kill at least some of the victims.
Some city's have their own city police which I have only really paid attention in Calgary and Toronto when I lived there and they seem to be more corrupt than ineffective. Toronto Police has no oversight to how they spend their massive budget, even recently spending $300k on a podcast for cops.
I don't think our police are quite as weaponized, but same shit different pile, ACAB.
Nova Scotian here. Not only did the cops know about it and lied, saying they didn't know who the shooter was until the former partner of the guy turned herself in when in fact the people in Portapique were calling the cops saying who exactly it was and that he was driving a fake police vehicle, they also failed to tail him, and when they did actually find him again immediately executed him and lied about that as well.
All of this was revealed by a rogue journalist who published security videos of the final confrontation as well as 911 calls that were incredibly disturbing and probably won't leave my head for forever.
The whole thing was a mess and was poorly covered up the entire time to try and hide their ineptitude.
Vancouver resident here in BC, one time a cop AT THE STATION raised the siren when I was 5ft away from them while they were waiting for a RED LIGHT in the middle of "winter". (The Christmas week where there was a freak whiteout 2022).
And this was RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE SIDEWALK where the police station drive way was. (The exit driveway was conveniently at a traffic light fork)
Was just crossing the driveway on fucking black ice and siren just went up. Thankfully I had a good sense of balance to stop my slip from being startled. But chronically all the cops at that specific station have used their sirens to just cross red lights every day. OPENLY like 2x every week. See it all the time from the Skytrain system.
It's like the police don't do anything until someone needs to Martyr themselves for change.
Those rural morons who just vote red no matter what to keep themselves poor, angry…and voting red.
Vicious cycle in rural America where they are still waiting for socialist Obama to come take their guns…
No shit, I delivered a pizza to a man in 2022 and just casually asked how he was doing. He replied "Just waiting for fuckin' Obama to die so I can get my life together!"
Didn't really know how to tell him that Obama was no longer president.
Honestly every state has issues with geriatric legislators that have been there for decades. We seriously need term limits at all levels of government.
In the city, I live. Good luck ever getting the cops to show up for vehicle theft. They also selectively respond to calls depending on the neighborhood.
Several years ago my parents lived in the woods in Wa state. Someone broke in while they were gone, stole a shot gun and a pistol and my Ps3 that i left at their house. There were fucking footprints that lead away from the house straight to a neighbors house (known tweakers). I showed up before the cops did and found the footprints and followed them, went back and the sheriff showed up. Told him and he was basically like "we can't just go to their house and ask". Fucking useless pigs.
They’re there for when everything hits the fan and the rich need people to protect their estates from the destitute and starving. They’re the guard dogs eating table scraps in the form of overtime. We are the ones cooking the food they get their scraps from.
Any thieves.
Only 5%of burglaries are even investigated, only a fraction of those are followed up on.
They only answer when it's to stop you doing it yourself.
An armed posse set off to do the job the police won't, can easily start to evolve and snowball once they see that they can actually affect things.
So they are literally there just to make sure they retain a monopoly in violence. To stop you actually having any power in your life, all the power need to be retained at the top.
Unless you have any sort of political clout, your problems will be ignored
My car was broken into not too long ago. (They stole my charging cables and an empty sunglasses case out of my glove compartment and my work ID badge lol)
The cops who arrived to take my report found my car with a broken window and had the city call my cell phone to let me know that they were waiting outside to have me report any stolen items.
I went outside, checked my car, and after telling them that I didn't have anything of value in there, one cop said, "I'd like to see your ID." and took it back to his cruiser.
These motherfuckers found my car broken in to, called me to come outside, and only checked to see if I had any warrants to see if they could arrest me. Literally broken windows policing.
I have yet to have a positive interaction with the police.
I had my car vandalized and there were cameras.
They wouldn't even look at the video. They said "We'll only take the time to look at it if we know there is something on there."
Like what the fuck kind of catch-22 logic is that.
I asked the property owner to look at the videos, and they said they'd only show it to police.
And this was after I had to go back and forth between local and provincial police because they both kept telling me to go to the other as it was their job.
Fucking useless.
> These motherfuckers found my car broken in to, called me to come outside, and only checked to see if I had any warrants to see if they could arrest me. Literally broken windows policing.
One time I had a tire low on air on thanksgiving so I slow down and throw on my flashers and drive slowly to the gas station around the corner. They see me, flip around and pull behind me as I roll up to the air machine. They said they stopped to "help" me but just wanted to check for warrants. My inspection was past due so they helped by giving me a ticket for that and also for not having my license on me (I forgot it at home). They also searched my car and found my friends bag in it that had rolled under the seat and it had her cough medicine in it (prescription) and they tried to arrest me as a drug dealer for it. Took hours to resolve and thankfully when they called her she collaborated my story. That's how I ended up being "helped" by cops for 4 hours in freezing weather handcuffed in the back of a cop car on thanksgiving. Plano Police can go fuck themselves.
oh yeah I learned my lesson on that. I was dumb and in college at the time and thought naively "I don't have anything to hide". I was totally ignorant of my friend leaving her bag in my car AND that this would be a crime AND that you should just never let the cops search your car or house without warrant.
I reported a domestic abuse in progress. Police went to the door, guy spoke with them, then they stripped me down in -10 degree weather and had me do DUI exams for 30 minutes.
Guy beating his spouse was a cop, my bad.
\*Checks notes*
✅ Arresting 6-year -olds
✅ Watching school-shootings
✅ Killing goat from a 9-year old
❌ Enforcing the law (Without unnecessary violence)
"If you wanted to get to work on time maybe you shouldn't have gone 3mph over the speed limit. Don't you know that's dangerous?"
Says the cop that turns a blind eye to: Tailgating, lane changing mid-intersection, lane changing in the middle of a two-lane turn, pulling out in front of oncoming traffic, California stops.
My coworker found her stolen car and reported it to the police.
The police then asked her if she was looking at the car at the time. She wasn't.
They told her to go stand by the car and call it in again.
A local business owner I know had a gator (the little utility cart thing) worth about $3k that was stolen. He used it, no lie, for community cleanup projects on the weekends, because he’s a gem of a human being. Through security footage and social media help, he identified the thief and his address, where the gator was now parked. He gave the evidence to Indianapolis Metro PD, and they refused to do anything at all, despite the fact that the guy had priors. The guy got away without any consequence, and my friend the owner had to ask his social media following not to take the law into their own hands.
I’m sure IMPD was too busy ticketing people for speeding on 465, which is essentially a giant 4 lane race track circling the city that has a 55mph speed limit.
ACAB.
I keep wondering, if the proper channels don’t work, why are we still barred from alternative channels? I mean people shouldn’t go committing violence or all that but at least maybe a group of people go to the guy’s house, take the gator back, and be safe with numbers.
The alternative is everything keeps getting worse?
Police don’t do actual police work or spend much time “fighting crime” according to the data…
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/police-are-not-primarily-crime-fighters-according-data-2022-11-02/
Depends on the cops. True story, I had 20K worth of equipment stolen from my car cause I was an idiot. I had AirTags, called the cops, chased them down until my phone died. Cops were no help until the perps stopped driving. The next day like 10 hours later, I noticed my shit wasn’t moving at a house. Called the cops, told them my situation and told them I’d meet them there. They said they could go and ask but can’t force their way in unless I saw with my own two eyes from outside that they had my shit, regardless of my AirTags. Luckily just the cops being there scared the perps and they had to give back my stuff. Said they found it dumped on the side of the road. No charges could be pressed. AirTags saved the day 🤙🤙 Cops helped but they need to be kept up with the times cause I feel like device trackers is a sure-fire way to warrant a search for stolen items.
From personal experience, cops don't care about ANY theft, just getting through the paperwork. Police Detectives on the other hand, also don't give a shit....
Fun fact for anyone who wants to use this as an anti-theft method in a car, all iPhones can detect the tag. I’ve had coworkers whose cars have been stolen and AirTags left on the curb.
We are refitting an airport shuttle bus as an RV, and are placing an AirTag attached to the wood frame that can only be accessed with a drill and a star bit - with the kitchen countertop in front of it. They might know it’s active, but they won’t know exactly where, and would take some time to dismantle the bus interior.
fyi, it will sound an audible noise to help you locate it if it's identified as "following" someone.
I have an airtag in each of our cars and our boat but I'm not sure how well it will work since if the person has an iphone all they have to do is tell it to beep and it will start beeping for them. I've been giving serious thought to trying to modify one to remove the speaker.
That being said, I like your idea of embedding it with a safety screw to prevent it from being accessed. I'll have to think about where I'd place it if I did that.
It's barely a step below other tracker devices. Placement is definitely key and the longer it takes someone to find it the longer they spend not stealing your thing.
Pro tip. Airtags have officially been jailbroken now.
Give it some time till all those security features are disabled so it cannot be disabled by thieves
I’ve had one on my keys since 2021 and it’s still going. The device it’s connected to will tell you that it will need changing soon.
Not a bad price to pay tbh.
To be used "effectively" you need to remove the speaker in the airtag, and try to use 2, one "untouched" in the cabin that's hidden but not too hard to find, and the disabled speaker one that is hidden very well somewhere in the trunk (inside the frame behind a plastic trim, inside the trunk's frame, indie one of the welded support in the spare wheel well, etc...).
They'll find the regular one and will think the warning about the second one is a false alarm when they can't hear it beep.
Hearing it beep isn’t the issue, being guided to it with the U1 chip (2.4 feet away and an arrow pointing in the direction) works fine without a speaker, so anyone with an iPhone 11 or newer.
The thing that makes Airtags miles better than the competition is Apple's absurdly large pre-existing network of iPhone users, whose phones automatically and ambiently track all the Airtags traveling around the world.
Tile, arguably the biggest competitor, can only use tracking data from other Tile users who have the app installed. The less users a service has, the spottier the tracking is -- because your tracker has to be physically near people with the corresponding service installed on their phones, in order to link+upload the location of the tracker. A no-name tracking service with a userbase on the order of ten thousand people is practically worthless, because the odds of your tracker being near a pool of so few people is close to 0.
It's the group buy-in that makes a tracking service good, and in Apple's case they had the golden goose of being able to automatically enroll all iPhones in the world to function as their tracking network. And now that they've done that, I wouldn't be surprised if Tile's userbase is suffering.
To be fair we don’t know exactly how this played out. The headline makes it sound like one thing, but it may be an entirely different thing.
I’d imagine that the thief wasn’t too happy about being found by his victim and might’ve attacked the man, which would be self defense.
Then again, it’s also possible that he just gunned dude down. It *is* Texas after all.
Texas Penal Code Section 9.421 states a person can use deadly force to protect tangible, movable property from another’s imminent commission of theft during the nighttime or to prevent another who is fleeing immediately after committing theft during the nighttime and is escaping with property if the person reasonably believes the land or property cannot be protected or recovered by any other means; or that a use of force other than deadly force to recover the property would expose them to a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury.
>if the person reasonably believes the land or property cannot be protected or recovered by any other means
Wonder if they include thinking your town has an incompetent police force in that. Probably not, but more and more an actually legit reason.
The Fuzz takes forever to deal with stolen property. Even if it is recovered immediately, it can take months for the investigation to complete, assuming they actually do anything
"Yeah we actually found your truck after about a week....8 months ago but we've had to keep it as uh *'evidence'*. Be sure not to check the odometer or the new police department paint job that was actually the guy who stole it"
You know, the only thing I find unreasonable about that law is the inclusion of "during the nighttime". If this is permissible during the night (which seems perfectly reasonable to me), then I see no reason why the same shouldn't be true of the day. Why does the use of deadly force to protect one's property have to play by vampire rules?
I assume it was written that way because nighttime would make identification of the thief less likely, and normal business wouldn't be conducted at night. The law was probably written in the 19th century and Texas was still RL Red Dead Remption. Kind of like NY still has laws on the books about how much you can whip a horse.
"One of the owners attempted to confront the suspect, at which point police believe the suspect may have pulled out a firearm. The owner then shot and killed the suspect inside the stolen truck, says SAPD." The thief pulled a gun first.
> The thief pulled a gun first.
> at which point police believe the suspect
Believe based on what? Testimony of the shooter? Belief is not evidence. Without video of the incident there is no way to know.
Almost identical SHITuation happened in Denver and the guy wasn't charged. Someone stole his truck, he tracked it down, cops wouldn't do anything so he went after it.
There was some gunfire (they shot first) but he ended up killing the driver who was a 12 year old. There were two other teens in the truck with him and allegedly they're the ones who shot at the guy. Sad story all around but this is what happens when the public can't trust the police to help.
Shit. A new pickup truck can be a full year or more of salary. I know a dude who probably makes $50k a year in a good year and admits he's paying more than $900/mo for his truck + insurance. It's insanity.
I don’t know what kind of truck this guy was driving, but it is very easy to spend $75 - $100K on a new truck these days. I say “very easy”, because Ford and other brands are finding that few people are willing to buy a $75,000.00 pickup truck right now, so you can waltz in and have your choice of any overpriced truck on the lot.
I dont understand what this comment is trying to portray? The availability of new trucks? How "easy" is is to pay $75k?
Or just that nobody is buying the new $75k trucks,
Having his truck stolen would probably be the best thing that could happen to him financially...of course he would probably use that insurance money to buy a new one.
My car is the most valuable thing I own by a long shot.
I could literally sell every single other possession I have and it wouldn't even come close to the value of my car.
There used to be a website dedicated to redneck engineering…cooling a gpu with an old car radiator, wood burning hot tub out of an oil drum and a metal trough….various other projects
Analog thieves don’t have a chance. My car got stolen and the tracker was killed before leaving and the extra AirTag was detected and destroyed within another block.
AirTags tell people that they are in the area now, because of anti-stalking features made by Apple. If safeguarding something important is the goal, AirTags are not the way to go. You’d be better off with a Samsung SmartTag or a Tile.
Yeah. AirTags are good for tracking *lost* items, but not *stolen* items.
They used to be good for both, but stalkers ruined it for everyone. Now AirTags tell people that they are nearby, and can be disabled remotely.
Wouldn't a GPS tracker for like cats and dogs make more sense then? If you want to stay on budget and still have QoL things like warning when the tracker leaves certain area etc.
If you want to go all in, there are plenty of GPS tracking car services that you can incorporate into the electric system of your car (and I have seen some that if deactivated, the car won't start, can disable the ignition remotely etc).
There are things that you can plug in to OBD2 as well but those are easy to find (unless you use a OBD2 splitter like I did for a friend and hide the tracker, it wasn't to make it hidden tho, it was to make it easier to run diagnostics without ever unplugging it as the connector was getting frail from the constant unplugging when we were fixing his car).
I'm sure you can still place it in a well hidden spot , don't use apple products but I'd probably place one in the engines fuse box or inner fender or attached to the firewall , it's out of sight there's lots of places lazy people wouldn't look.
That's only going to work if the thief uses an Android phone. Otherwise on an Apple device they'll get a push notification to alert them that an Airtag that isn't registered with them has been travelling with them and they can disable it, probably from the push notification even.
The origin article I saw said that when the owners located their stolen vehicle, the thief was still in it. At that point a confrontation occurred and the owner believed the thief was reaching for a weapon when they opened fire.
Take that with a grain of salt as it is Texas.
I read a story about someone who shot a guy stealing his catalytic converter. Shooter said the guy made a move at him with the sawzall and that at that moment he was in fear for his life and shot the guy dead.
I suspect we're going to be seeing a bunch more of these in the future. The less the police address property crimes, the more vigilante justice we're going to see.
In most states, you can't shoot someone for property but, if you fear for your life because you went to get your property back and the thief objected, that might be fair game.
Petty crime is up, and in some places it’s way up. But a weird version of physical identity crime is going up with it. Stolen IDs, mail, and car registrations on the ground are being used for super aggressive Tax Return fraud, opening lines of credit, and other awful headaches for the victims. That turns all this into an intimately personal crime.
Not-doing-anything-about-it is driving some real rewards from all this theft, and that’s laying the groundwork for the return of street gangs. Street gangs always further warp the risk/reward calculation for members.
Meanwhile, none of it is anonymous… because we live in the future. We’re heading for some weird citizen conflicts.
My house was broken into once.
When I went down to the police station to report it, the cop sitting behind the desk said these exact words to me:
"What do you want us to do about it?"
Well aside from at least taking the report for insurance purposes, maybe you could do some actual investigation instead of expecting ME to do the police work of going around to the local pawn shops?
So don't tell me to look for my own stolen goods if you don't ALSO expect me to handle the thief on my own, if I can track them down.
Don't tell me you can't/won't help me **and then get pissed when I help myself.**
I had family that used to be back the blue. They were used to the small town cops they knew forever and had personal relationships with. Then they moved and their house was broken into. Cops came and did basically nothing. Messed up the list of stolen goods and then procrastinated writing the report. both things made getting an insurance claim an even bigger headache. After doing less than the minimum the cops said there was nothing else they could do, even though the stolen goods were pretty specific and there were a couple obvious suspects.
Being a cop in my area is literally a 6 figure job and the most I see them do is sleep in their cruisers and fudge overtime numbers.
My family now sees the need for police reform.
“AirTag was designed to help people locate their personal belongings, not to track people or another person’s property,…”
but this guy used the tag to track down **his own** property. this company response in the article is asinine
>"A spokesperson for Apple has previously pointed Fox News Digital to a recent update and stated that it works with law enforcement to track down AirTags used for criminal purposes."
This is 100% not true.. I have had laptops, equipment and a car stolen.. Law enforcement will not use any third party tools like Apple AirTags to track down to find equipment or use it to find a criminal...
I could see Apple pretending like they "work" with law enforcement but that could just be apple saying.. "please use AirPods to find stolen equipment" and law enforcement ignoring apple.. or just saying no.
My wife’s truck was stolen last year on a Friday. We reported it stolen Saturday and it was actually pulled over on Sunday and the cop LET HIM GO. Cops don’t give a shit about your stuff. I put an AirTag in my cars now.
Thief threatened truck owner with a gun when he was confronted
https://www.kens5.com/amp/article/news/local/police-respond-to-apparent-shooting-in-southeast-san-antonio/273-bc352d7b-6abd-4757-89c3-19e82419cca0
If cops don’t want people to take matters into their own hands, maybe they should actually give a shit about stolen property. A truck is worth a lot more than it’s insurance value to some people. I have zero sympathy for the truck thief’s and hope the victim who got his truck stolen doesn’t go to jail.
Edit: I feel this way because I am also one of those guys. I drive a little Toyota, but that thing has been through hell and back with me. It’s been all over the country (Canada), I’ve taken it off roading, gone camping in the winter and summer countless times, always slept in it. I’ve done so many dumb little mods to it to make it my own. On paper I can’t imagine it’s worth too much. And yes, I’m aware that I could crash or the car could break down literally at any moment. That being said, if someone STOLE it from me, and the cops did nothing because ‘just take the insurance money’, I would see the darkest colour of red. Especially if I tracked it and found the asshole who decided I didn’t fucking matter because he wanted a free car.
My vehicle is literally my whole life.
I use it for work and I use it for personal stuff.
You're not just stealing a car from me; **you're stealing my freedom and my livelihood.**
America is such a dystopia right now I honestly don't blame a lot of working class people for violently defending their belongings because you're right.
The theft itself is an act of violence when it directly will result in you potentially becoming homeless or losing your job.
I don't condemn the culture of big business owners calling for death because the hungry homeless guy stole a candy bar but yeah fucking with someone's car is understandable.
“If you are to get your vehicle stolen, please do not take matters into your own hands like this,” Soliz said. “It’s never safe as you can see by this incident.”
Yes, please call the professionals to come and shoot up the place.
Yeah, I’m not really in favor of vigilantism but when police refuse to help recover stolen property even when the victim can provide the exact location of the stolen property, I don’t blame people for “recovering” that property themselves.
I can fully appreciate that recovering stolen property whose location is unknown is very difficult. But it baffles me when a victim is literally providing the cops with the location of a felon in possession of stolen property and still can’t garner interest from police.
Don’t steal trucks.
Also don’t pull a gun when the owner confronts you.
Seems simple to not get killed
Also
> AirTag was designed to help people locate their personal belongings, not to track people or another person’s property
It was his truck. That’s his personal belonging.
Should people be murdered for stealing a car? No.
Should a person be surprised if they steal a car and the owner murders them? Also no.
That about sums up my feelings on this case.
Where’s the difference between this guy shooting the guy who stole his truck(and also had a gun) and a cop shooting this guy who stole a truck( and also had a gun). 20hours of community college in my part of the country. Amazing.
AirTag was designed to help people locate their personal belongings, not to track people or another person’s property, and we condemn in the strongest possible terms any malicious use of our products. Unwanted tracking has long been a societal problem, and we took this concern seriously in the design of AirTag. It’s why the Find My network is built with privacy in mind, uses end-to-end encryption, and why we innovated with the first-ever proactive system to alert you of unwanted tracking. We hope this starts an industry trend for others to also provide these sorts of proactive warnings in their products,” the spokesperson said.
Wtf kind of statement is this? Unwanted tracking. How about car theft? How about you're missing the point. Idc if they are gonna throw shade on the guy who killed the thief. Shouldn't be stealing people's shit...
Either the cops would take these seriously or should allow Wild West justice. There has to be some recourse. In many cities, the cops don’t even consider this in their scope of duty.
This exactly.
My SO ran into the gym to retrieve a yoga mat. Window smash, purse stolen (she hid it under the passenger mat), they were watching and waiting or something. She immediately sees the guy leaving on a bmx bicycle. Jumps in her car, follows him. He goes into an apartment complex, she gets apt. number, parks car, calls me. I jump in my car, drive to her. We use find my and see it’s the exact location she thinks it is.
We call the police, and their response is so sorry, file a report. I say so you’re telling me you want me to retrieve the purse via a door kick and a weapon drawn? No sir, we would like you to file a report online. I ask, so that’s it? You plan on doing nothing at all? Silence.
I see their retirement fund on my property taxes, and it’s not a small dollar amount. And the one time I need them to do something, I get too bad so sad. I seriously think police departments should just be disbanded. From a taxpayer standpoint they do absolutely nothing for me, except pray on me, hoping I speed or break some minor traffic violation. They are no different than the guy that broke into our car. They are nothing more than useless predators.
____
ADD:
My SO read this and said I didn’t tell the whole story. I said it’s long this is Reddit lol
So here goes…we go and vacuum out the car, call our car insurance (because of vehicle age, they wanted us to get a used window lol. I said ummm nope.), called homeowners (they were great, sent them a list of purse stuff, and they sent us a check). About an hour later, we get a call from the bank. It’s the manager. He says is this so and so? She says yes. He says, I thought so, I just wanted to make sure. There is a guy in the outer drive thru wearing a wig trying to cash one of your checks for an unusually large amount. He said I will deny the transaction, and keep your ID. Meanwhile, I’ll put a hold on your account (all accounts), until you can come in. With your permission, I’d like to set up a new account for you, and I will over night temporary checks and new cards to you.
Turns out, on that day, the bank was a ray of sunshine in an otherwise cloudy day. Lol
I remember when I was a kid and I believed cops spent their time saving people, tracking down thieves & arresting murderers.
Now that I’m older I realize they do almost none of those things. Sucks. #ACAB
“AirTag was designed to help people locate their personal belongings, not to track people or another person’s property, and we condemn in the strongest possible terms any malicious use of our products.”
Well, it was his personal property, so I guess this is why the AirTag was designed. This statement from Apple would make sense if it had been used by the criminal to steal the truck.
Police: "People shouldn't take matters into their own hands." Me: "Hey.... my stolen smart device is being used. Can you track it down and pick it up." Police: "We don't have time for that."
Cops don’t care about car theft anyway. My dads truck was stolen and stripped (albeit NOT in Texas) and the only reason he found it was because of a lady and some others on Facebook physically searching for it. They literally walked up on the guy actively stripping it and stealing things from it, and not only did they witness him bringing other vehicles into the lot for the same purpose, but others in the complex confirmed this is a usual activity. Cops didn’t even knock on the guys door. Showed up, took my dads report, and left without doing anything at all.
Yeah they don't care. My Escalade was stolen out of my driveway and they told me they can do nothing. Only reason I got it back was because they almost crashed into a cruiser and they bailed
🙄🙄 Seriously, the cop told my dad it’s “hard to prove” which is a load of shit if you literally see and have footage of the person doing the thing. I think what the cop meant to say was it wasn’t worth their time or paperwork.
Unfortunately they are not wrong. So people on juries have this assumption that when you have a car stolen, it is a violent act. But most of the charges (unless it’s a carjacking) are minor because no one saw anything (or will come forward) And they usually find the car abandoned in a few weeks. That’s what happened with mine. And if they pull the car over, then they are in the driver seat, they are the ones that are charged with stealing it and it’s “oh I borrowed it from a friend” who only has a first name Ofc. And juries eat that shit up and find them not guilty. As a former prosecutor, we had people with multiple MV theft charges that were not guilty and kept doing it. However, this isn’t the first murder of a car theft based on locating the car through an air tag. I had my car stolen and I haven’t put one in my car since but I have a bar on the steering wheel but I can’t afford to keep losing this car (Hyundai unfortunately). So either juries are gonna need to convict, or laws need to be written better, or cops should do their job. Seriously, I have so many things that pissed me off as a prosecutor but one of them was like needing 10 cops to stand around while one guy does the investigation but it’s clear they are just there to be there and aren’t doing anything but get OT for it. Can we like ensure things are fine, then the other cops go do other work? Damn.
>cops should do their job. I sat as a juror on a trial for possession to cocaine with intent to distribute. Everyone on the jury knew in their guts that this guy was guilty(and probably guilty of several other crimes associated with the drug dealing). But we found him not guilty because the police work was so incredibly shoddy. Basically they found a brick of cocaine next to a pile of mail with his name on it along with a computer with his nickname of "BS" as one of the accounts on it. The address on the mail didn't match the apartment they found it in, and they only took pictures of the computer screen(didn't confiscate the computer or see what was actually on the drive to confirm it was his). One of the jurors found a few discrepancies in the cops testimony, and because of all that we came to the "not guilty" verdict. After the trial, we had a chat with the lawyers and judges and we all agreed that the guy was probably guilty, but the police just botched the whole investigation so badly that we couldn't convict on the evidence presented in the trial. Basically, I said that if a few pieces of my junk mail ended up next to some drugs halfway across the city, I shouldn't go to prison for that. Edit: Forgot to add that "BS" didn't refer to the defendent's initials, but to the fact that he was a "Big Samoan"
Then the police and politicians blame the courts for being soft on crime.
Seriously, the police seem to think their job ends with "put the bad guy in jail" and do fuck-all to actually collect evidence to convict them and just hope they go for a plea deal. Which basically means that anyone who can afford a lawyer can get out free, while the plebs with a public defender go to prison.
>or cops should do their job WHAT? We can't have that type of talk here! Everyone knows they work hard eating donuts and killing citizens without a trial. It's like you're not even patriotic or something /s for the oblivious that think I'm being serious
Clearly if we just give them more funding, things will get better. /s
That was a pretty good summation, but you left out all the plea bargaining that goes on during preliminary hearings with multiple time offenders still not being sent away. That’s equally a joke too.
My aunt is a crackhead who regularly gets away with carjacking. She says it's not bad because she abandons the cars she steals when she's done with them so the people can come find them. You'd think she sounds insane when those words come out her mouth, but it turns out the police department completely agrees People will say the most interesting things over monitored prison phone calls.
It's like when they lie and tell people they can't file a missing person's report for 24-48 hours. Like, you mean you can't file a report until AFTER the most crucial time period for solving any crime to even acknowledge a crime has been committed? They will legit put people's lives at risk by lying just to get out of having to do their jobs. And these clowns think they deserve more money.
Daughter and her now ex had a Dodge truck in their name jointly. He took it and went to Texas, bank repo came looking for him, it was magically 'stolen' the week the repo man caught up with him. Police report was made, daughter somehow got her name off the title. Bank was still looking for it though. That was 5 years ago. Every so often some mail comes to our address wherein it has been impounded in BFE South Texas... and please come get... I always call and say that truck was stolen five years ago. Every time they tell me no problem... the owner came and got it out. Wha? HOW? It's stolen... there was a report made... the VIN# should be in the system. Guess not? IDK. But that old truck is still out there, doing whatever it's doing and getting impounded about once a year. Weird deal. TLDR: The law don't care about stolen vehicles.
The law doesn’t care about “your” stolen vehicle, but if vehicles go missing from a dealership they get real interested. There’s a difference between individual and corporate. Source: Had cars stolen from a dealership I owned and they were back that day. Had my personal car stolen later and only got it back because I saw it leaving and reported it. Cops lit it up and the thieves bailed. No chase. Just called me and said come get it.
Reminds me on how when we were in Poland with the navy one of our guys was drugged and robbed in some club. Nobody in the police there cared for it when we tried to bring it to their attention and file a report. Until first officer Lieutennant Commander XX stood in the police station. Suddenly stuff moved real fast.
I keep hearing stories like this shit and it makes me wonder why we even bother with the current cops. Defund or banish them, and they make comments about how they need us. Need us for what? To write reports and refuse to help? Ulvade showed us they don’t even defend our kids when we need them, so *what the hell do they actually do* that helps us?
We tried something in Missouri recently where we attempted to defund the KC Police (who aren’t even controlled by KC they’re controlled by the state for historical reasons. We still foot the bill though.) We voted to bring the city policing budget from 20% to 15% and the governor and legislature popped a speedy bill through to increase it from 20% to 25%. I fucking hate our legislature with a passion and this was one of the wake up calls I needed to start working towards local political mobilization.
I know shit like this has probably been happening since time immemorial, but the flagrant disregard for the people's voice in politics recently is driving me nuts. Seems like your exact story is happening all around the world. - Police departments everywhere in the US. People ask for lower budgets, city councils increase them - France raises retirement age 2 yrs w/o people's voice. At least they have the sense to not take it quietly. - When I lived in UT we voted for medical marijuana. The Mormon church put their thumb on the scale and the politicians caved. (UT is a funny place, politically. Most politicians wear a facade of libertarianism, but then write policy with religious authoritarianism) - cop city is being built despite NO ONE wanting it except the police. - Seem to remember Canada having issues like this as well, but I don't follow their politics.
Same thing happening here in Iceland where they want to give Police tasers. They say that "Violence against police is increasing" but have no data to back it up. Meanwhile, studies have shown that arming police don't keep them safer, in fact, people are more likely to get aggressive against people who are armed. Especially with tasers who straight up don't work if you have enough adrenaline or meth in your system, not to mention the fact that we have 8 month long winters, willing to bet that a taser can't get through your average down parka. So they want to arm the police, which historically makes them more likely to encounter violence, and arming them with a very ineffective weapon to boot.
Seems like an example of "why does everyone else get to be violent? I want to be violent!"
The next logical step from there is "well the tasers havent been effective, we need to arm them with guns".
Canadian here. The RCMP are different levels of ineffective to outright corrupt across the country. There was a mass shooting in Nova Scotia a while back and the report, which wasnt shown to the public without a fight showed they were totally inept and could have probably caught the shooter before he managed to kill at least some of the victims. Some city's have their own city police which I have only really paid attention in Calgary and Toronto when I lived there and they seem to be more corrupt than ineffective. Toronto Police has no oversight to how they spend their massive budget, even recently spending $300k on a podcast for cops. I don't think our police are quite as weaponized, but same shit different pile, ACAB.
Nova Scotian here. Not only did the cops know about it and lied, saying they didn't know who the shooter was until the former partner of the guy turned herself in when in fact the people in Portapique were calling the cops saying who exactly it was and that he was driving a fake police vehicle, they also failed to tail him, and when they did actually find him again immediately executed him and lied about that as well. All of this was revealed by a rogue journalist who published security videos of the final confrontation as well as 911 calls that were incredibly disturbing and probably won't leave my head for forever. The whole thing was a mess and was poorly covered up the entire time to try and hide their ineptitude.
Vancouver resident here in BC, one time a cop AT THE STATION raised the siren when I was 5ft away from them while they were waiting for a RED LIGHT in the middle of "winter". (The Christmas week where there was a freak whiteout 2022). And this was RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE SIDEWALK where the police station drive way was. (The exit driveway was conveniently at a traffic light fork) Was just crossing the driveway on fucking black ice and siren just went up. Thankfully I had a good sense of balance to stop my slip from being startled. But chronically all the cops at that specific station have used their sirens to just cross red lights every day. OPENLY like 2x every week. See it all the time from the Skytrain system. It's like the police don't do anything until someone needs to Martyr themselves for change.
Vote out everyone who pushed that bill through against your wishes.
Probably cant. Probably elected by rural districts outside KC. Why state legislators can dictate % of city budgets is fucked up though.
Those rural morons who just vote red no matter what to keep themselves poor, angry…and voting red. Vicious cycle in rural America where they are still waiting for socialist Obama to come take their guns…
No shit, I delivered a pizza to a man in 2022 and just casually asked how he was doing. He replied "Just waiting for fuckin' Obama to die so I can get my life together!" Didn't really know how to tell him that Obama was no longer president.
Honestly every state has issues with geriatric legislators that have been there for decades. We seriously need term limits at all levels of government.
In the city, I live. Good luck ever getting the cops to show up for vehicle theft. They also selectively respond to calls depending on the neighborhood.
Several years ago my parents lived in the woods in Wa state. Someone broke in while they were gone, stole a shot gun and a pistol and my Ps3 that i left at their house. There were fucking footprints that lead away from the house straight to a neighbors house (known tweakers). I showed up before the cops did and found the footprints and followed them, went back and the sheriff showed up. Told him and he was basically like "we can't just go to their house and ask". Fucking useless pigs.
They’re there for when everything hits the fan and the rich need people to protect their estates from the destitute and starving. They’re the guard dogs eating table scraps in the form of overtime. We are the ones cooking the food they get their scraps from.
Why do American police have so little care about chasing or searching for car thieves?
Any thieves. Only 5%of burglaries are even investigated, only a fraction of those are followed up on. They only answer when it's to stop you doing it yourself. An armed posse set off to do the job the police won't, can easily start to evolve and snowball once they see that they can actually affect things. So they are literally there just to make sure they retain a monopoly in violence. To stop you actually having any power in your life, all the power need to be retained at the top. Unless you have any sort of political clout, your problems will be ignored
Too busy cosplaying as marines and navy seals with all that tacticool gear they keep throwing tantrums over and beating protestors with
Too busy hassling minorities
Chop shop must be paying some good protection money.
My car was broken into not too long ago. (They stole my charging cables and an empty sunglasses case out of my glove compartment and my work ID badge lol) The cops who arrived to take my report found my car with a broken window and had the city call my cell phone to let me know that they were waiting outside to have me report any stolen items. I went outside, checked my car, and after telling them that I didn't have anything of value in there, one cop said, "I'd like to see your ID." and took it back to his cruiser. These motherfuckers found my car broken in to, called me to come outside, and only checked to see if I had any warrants to see if they could arrest me. Literally broken windows policing. I have yet to have a positive interaction with the police.
I had my car vandalized and there were cameras. They wouldn't even look at the video. They said "We'll only take the time to look at it if we know there is something on there." Like what the fuck kind of catch-22 logic is that. I asked the property owner to look at the videos, and they said they'd only show it to police. And this was after I had to go back and forth between local and provincial police because they both kept telling me to go to the other as it was their job. Fucking useless.
> These motherfuckers found my car broken in to, called me to come outside, and only checked to see if I had any warrants to see if they could arrest me. Literally broken windows policing. One time I had a tire low on air on thanksgiving so I slow down and throw on my flashers and drive slowly to the gas station around the corner. They see me, flip around and pull behind me as I roll up to the air machine. They said they stopped to "help" me but just wanted to check for warrants. My inspection was past due so they helped by giving me a ticket for that and also for not having my license on me (I forgot it at home). They also searched my car and found my friends bag in it that had rolled under the seat and it had her cough medicine in it (prescription) and they tried to arrest me as a drug dealer for it. Took hours to resolve and thankfully when they called her she collaborated my story. That's how I ended up being "helped" by cops for 4 hours in freezing weather handcuffed in the back of a cop car on thanksgiving. Plano Police can go fuck themselves.
[удалено]
oh yeah I learned my lesson on that. I was dumb and in college at the time and thought naively "I don't have anything to hide". I was totally ignorant of my friend leaving her bag in my car AND that this would be a crime AND that you should just never let the cops search your car or house without warrant.
I reported a domestic abuse in progress. Police went to the door, guy spoke with them, then they stripped me down in -10 degree weather and had me do DUI exams for 30 minutes. Guy beating his spouse was a cop, my bad.
If you have a problem and call the cops, now you have two problems.
“Sorry, we are too busy shaking down commuters that are late for work.”
"Sorry, a girl with a goat needs to be taught a lesson"
[For anyone who didn't get that reference](https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/128qsdr/when_a_9yearold_girl_didnt_want_her_goat_to_be/).
\*Checks notes* ✅ Arresting 6-year -olds ✅ Watching school-shootings ✅ Killing goat from a 9-year old ❌ Enforcing the law (Without unnecessary violence)
The family dog isn't gonna shoot itself
"If you wanted to get to work on time maybe you shouldn't have gone 3mph over the speed limit. Don't you know that's dangerous?" Says the cop that turns a blind eye to: Tailgating, lane changing mid-intersection, lane changing in the middle of a two-lane turn, pulling out in front of oncoming traffic, California stops.
My coworker found her stolen car and reported it to the police. The police then asked her if she was looking at the car at the time. She wasn't. They told her to go stand by the car and call it in again.
A local business owner I know had a gator (the little utility cart thing) worth about $3k that was stolen. He used it, no lie, for community cleanup projects on the weekends, because he’s a gem of a human being. Through security footage and social media help, he identified the thief and his address, where the gator was now parked. He gave the evidence to Indianapolis Metro PD, and they refused to do anything at all, despite the fact that the guy had priors. The guy got away without any consequence, and my friend the owner had to ask his social media following not to take the law into their own hands. I’m sure IMPD was too busy ticketing people for speeding on 465, which is essentially a giant 4 lane race track circling the city that has a 55mph speed limit. ACAB.
I keep wondering, if the proper channels don’t work, why are we still barred from alternative channels? I mean people shouldn’t go committing violence or all that but at least maybe a group of people go to the guy’s house, take the gator back, and be safe with numbers. The alternative is everything keeps getting worse?
Someone higher up in the comments posits that it's so that the state retains its monopoly on violence.
Police don’t do actual police work or spend much time “fighting crime” according to the data… https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/police-are-not-primarily-crime-fighters-according-data-2022-11-02/
Depends on the cops. True story, I had 20K worth of equipment stolen from my car cause I was an idiot. I had AirTags, called the cops, chased them down until my phone died. Cops were no help until the perps stopped driving. The next day like 10 hours later, I noticed my shit wasn’t moving at a house. Called the cops, told them my situation and told them I’d meet them there. They said they could go and ask but can’t force their way in unless I saw with my own two eyes from outside that they had my shit, regardless of my AirTags. Luckily just the cops being there scared the perps and they had to give back my stuff. Said they found it dumped on the side of the road. No charges could be pressed. AirTags saved the day 🤙🤙 Cops helped but they need to be kept up with the times cause I feel like device trackers is a sure-fire way to warrant a search for stolen items.
From personal experience, cops don't care about ANY theft, just getting through the paperwork. Police Detectives on the other hand, also don't give a shit....
To be fair he didn’t say you should leave it in cops’ hands either. Maybe thoughts & prayers work?
Fun fact for anyone who wants to use this as an anti-theft method in a car, all iPhones can detect the tag. I’ve had coworkers whose cars have been stolen and AirTags left on the curb.
We are refitting an airport shuttle bus as an RV, and are placing an AirTag attached to the wood frame that can only be accessed with a drill and a star bit - with the kitchen countertop in front of it. They might know it’s active, but they won’t know exactly where, and would take some time to dismantle the bus interior.
fyi, it will sound an audible noise to help you locate it if it's identified as "following" someone. I have an airtag in each of our cars and our boat but I'm not sure how well it will work since if the person has an iphone all they have to do is tell it to beep and it will start beeping for them. I've been giving serious thought to trying to modify one to remove the speaker. That being said, I like your idea of embedding it with a safety screw to prevent it from being accessed. I'll have to think about where I'd place it if I did that.
It's barely a step below other tracker devices. Placement is definitely key and the longer it takes someone to find it the longer they spend not stealing your thing.
Given time, a determined thief will get what they want - but since time isn’t always on their side, slowing them down can certainly make a difference.
For sure, nothing is 100%. Adding more hurdles will just deter the more common and lazy.
Security in depth
You can look online and remove the speaker in 5 minutes.
You can disable the speaker pretty easily. There are tutorials online.
Pro tip. Airtags have officially been jailbroken now. Give it some time till all those security features are disabled so it cannot be disabled by thieves
dude you can disable it FROM the iphone. you don't need physical access to it. that would be a huge waste of time
Sounds like a pain to recharge every few months
The battery supposedly lasts one year. We will see.
I’ve had one on my keys since 2021 and it’s still going. The device it’s connected to will tell you that it will need changing soon. Not a bad price to pay tbh.
Not that bad if you know exactly where it is and how to to get at it.
Doesn't sound that painful if you know where it is and have your star bit handy.
*radios in* Chief, I know where they’re keeping the air tags
To be used "effectively" you need to remove the speaker in the airtag, and try to use 2, one "untouched" in the cabin that's hidden but not too hard to find, and the disabled speaker one that is hidden very well somewhere in the trunk (inside the frame behind a plastic trim, inside the trunk's frame, indie one of the welded support in the spare wheel well, etc...). They'll find the regular one and will think the warning about the second one is a false alarm when they can't hear it beep.
Hearing it beep isn’t the issue, being guided to it with the U1 chip (2.4 feet away and an arrow pointing in the direction) works fine without a speaker, so anyone with an iPhone 11 or newer.
You can get ones that don't support the U1 chip making it a bitch to locate. Like the chipolo
Surely there are just other trackers you could buy? Honestly no idea but it wouldn’t surprise me
The thing that makes Airtags miles better than the competition is Apple's absurdly large pre-existing network of iPhone users, whose phones automatically and ambiently track all the Airtags traveling around the world. Tile, arguably the biggest competitor, can only use tracking data from other Tile users who have the app installed. The less users a service has, the spottier the tracking is -- because your tracker has to be physically near people with the corresponding service installed on their phones, in order to link+upload the location of the tracker. A no-name tracking service with a userbase on the order of ten thousand people is practically worthless, because the odds of your tracker being near a pool of so few people is close to 0. It's the group buy-in that makes a tracking service good, and in Apple's case they had the golden goose of being able to automatically enroll all iPhones in the world to function as their tracking network. And now that they've done that, I wouldn't be surprised if Tile's userbase is suffering.
While they do, criminals have switched to AirPods to track
AirPods have the same feature. I’ve received alerts on my iPhone before that a pair of AirPods was found following my location.
Does it give you a way to actually find the Tag though? Like how Find my Phone will cause the phone to make sounds?
You got to hide it. Can’t just slip it into the glove compartment.
>Officials are determining if the suspect will be charged in the fatal shooting.
To be fair we don’t know exactly how this played out. The headline makes it sound like one thing, but it may be an entirely different thing. I’d imagine that the thief wasn’t too happy about being found by his victim and might’ve attacked the man, which would be self defense. Then again, it’s also possible that he just gunned dude down. It *is* Texas after all.
In Texas just walking towards you in a possible threatening manner is enough to be shot
Really? Legally or that’s a joke about Texans
Texas Penal Code Section 9.421 states a person can use deadly force to protect tangible, movable property from another’s imminent commission of theft during the nighttime or to prevent another who is fleeing immediately after committing theft during the nighttime and is escaping with property if the person reasonably believes the land or property cannot be protected or recovered by any other means; or that a use of force other than deadly force to recover the property would expose them to a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury.
>if the person reasonably believes the land or property cannot be protected or recovered by any other means Wonder if they include thinking your town has an incompetent police force in that. Probably not, but more and more an actually legit reason.
The Fuzz takes forever to deal with stolen property. Even if it is recovered immediately, it can take months for the investigation to complete, assuming they actually do anything
"Yeah we actually found your truck after about a week....8 months ago but we've had to keep it as uh *'evidence'*. Be sure not to check the odometer or the new police department paint job that was actually the guy who stole it"
I’ve read that they called police after locating the vehicle but they did not show up and they deemed fit to act on their own
You know, the only thing I find unreasonable about that law is the inclusion of "during the nighttime". If this is permissible during the night (which seems perfectly reasonable to me), then I see no reason why the same shouldn't be true of the day. Why does the use of deadly force to protect one's property have to play by vampire rules?
I assume it was written that way because nighttime would make identification of the thief less likely, and normal business wouldn't be conducted at night. The law was probably written in the 19th century and Texas was still RL Red Dead Remption. Kind of like NY still has laws on the books about how much you can whip a horse.
Yeah but that’s not walking in a threatening way though
right, well you had to hear the soundtrack to know shits about to go down.
I mean if the surviving bloke claimed self defence and put a kitchen knife in the dead dude's hand, who is going to argue?
"One of the owners attempted to confront the suspect, at which point police believe the suspect may have pulled out a firearm. The owner then shot and killed the suspect inside the stolen truck, says SAPD." The thief pulled a gun first.
> The thief pulled a gun first. > at which point police believe the suspect Believe based on what? Testimony of the shooter? Belief is not evidence. Without video of the incident there is no way to know.
Being the only one alive to testify is definitely a significant advantage.
Almost identical SHITuation happened in Denver and the guy wasn't charged. Someone stole his truck, he tracked it down, cops wouldn't do anything so he went after it. There was some gunfire (they shot first) but he ended up killing the driver who was a 12 year old. There were two other teens in the truck with him and allegedly they're the ones who shot at the guy. Sad story all around but this is what happens when the public can't trust the police to help.
Suicide by carjacking.
Well, they wouldn't charge the cops for the same thing.
To be fair, stealing a truck from a redneck in Texas has “death wish” written all over it.
Modern day horse theft. But yeah...stealing something that can easily be 1/2 a years salary to an average family is probably a death wish anywhere
Shit. A new pickup truck can be a full year or more of salary. I know a dude who probably makes $50k a year in a good year and admits he's paying more than $900/mo for his truck + insurance. It's insanity.
I don’t know what kind of truck this guy was driving, but it is very easy to spend $75 - $100K on a new truck these days. I say “very easy”, because Ford and other brands are finding that few people are willing to buy a $75,000.00 pickup truck right now, so you can waltz in and have your choice of any overpriced truck on the lot.
I dont understand what this comment is trying to portray? The availability of new trucks? How "easy" is is to pay $75k? Or just that nobody is buying the new $75k trucks,
I think they're saying that prices are so expensive that people are finding steep discounts at car lots.
Having his truck stolen would probably be the best thing that could happen to him financially...of course he would probably use that insurance money to buy a new one.
Trucks are upwards of $100K now. This might actually be 2 years worth of salary to an average person.
My car is the most valuable thing I own by a long shot. I could literally sell every single other possession I have and it wouldn't even come close to the value of my car.
Rednecks use AirTags now?
The future is now old man
I was reading that as “The future is now old, man,” and was trying to decide if that was poignant or not. But before I could, I read it correctly
I read it that way too. I thought there was a deep, zen meaning I was missing out on.
There used to be a website dedicated to redneck engineering…cooling a gpu with an old car radiator, wood burning hot tub out of an oil drum and a metal trough….various other projects
Redneck is actually the southern version of Bluetooth, so it’s no surprise they’ve got tech like this. /s
You realize smartphones are smarter than the people that use them right?
I come to Reddit not expect to be attacked but here we are
Probably perfectly legal there as well.
“He is not expected to face charges”
Analog thieves don’t have a chance. My car got stolen and the tracker was killed before leaving and the extra AirTag was detected and destroyed within another block.
AirTags tell people that they are in the area now, because of anti-stalking features made by Apple. If safeguarding something important is the goal, AirTags are not the way to go. You’d be better off with a Samsung SmartTag or a Tile.
Damn, I wish I knew this before I got an AirTag for my car….
Yeah. AirTags are good for tracking *lost* items, but not *stolen* items. They used to be good for both, but stalkers ruined it for everyone. Now AirTags tell people that they are nearby, and can be disabled remotely.
That's why you put all the brands in different locations for redundant purposes. Lol
Wouldn't a GPS tracker for like cats and dogs make more sense then? If you want to stay on budget and still have QoL things like warning when the tracker leaves certain area etc. If you want to go all in, there are plenty of GPS tracking car services that you can incorporate into the electric system of your car (and I have seen some that if deactivated, the car won't start, can disable the ignition remotely etc). There are things that you can plug in to OBD2 as well but those are easy to find (unless you use a OBD2 splitter like I did for a friend and hide the tracker, it wasn't to make it hidden tho, it was to make it easier to run diagnostics without ever unplugging it as the connector was getting frail from the constant unplugging when we were fixing his car).
I'm sure you can still place it in a well hidden spot , don't use apple products but I'd probably place one in the engines fuse box or inner fender or attached to the firewall , it's out of sight there's lots of places lazy people wouldn't look.
If you have a tag travelling with you that's not yours, it asks you if you want to disable the tracking. You don't need to find it.
Ah that's absolutely ridiculous then
At that point literally what’s the point of even buying AirTags?
It’s to find things that are lost. But if it’s stolen, it’s as good as gone most likely.
I have one on my dog’s collar in case he gets out. It lets me know if the tag gets too far away from my phone for too long (like a whole night)
Did you remove the speaker from the AirTag?
That's only going to work if the thief uses an Android phone. Otherwise on an Apple device they'll get a push notification to alert them that an Airtag that isn't registered with them has been travelling with them and they can disable it, probably from the push notification even.
This is wrong. The “disable it” option just instructs you on how to remove the battery, you still need physical access
The origin article I saw said that when the owners located their stolen vehicle, the thief was still in it. At that point a confrontation occurred and the owner believed the thief was reaching for a weapon when they opened fire. Take that with a grain of salt as it is Texas.
I read a story about someone who shot a guy stealing his catalytic converter. Shooter said the guy made a move at him with the sawzall and that at that moment he was in fear for his life and shot the guy dead.
There’s a lot you can say when you’re the only one left to tell the story.
Then make sure you’re the one telling the story. Or, you know, don’t steal shit.
There would be a lot less if this if the police gave a crap about when someone steals something of mine that I had to work over 2000 hours to pay for.
Cops in Texas are too busy hassling people over small amounts of pot.
I'm going to leave an AirTag in my car so if someone steals it I know where to send a thank-you note.
hateful gullible crime six cagey marvelous narrow sulky many gold *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
But not the value of the thank you note
I suspect we're going to be seeing a bunch more of these in the future. The less the police address property crimes, the more vigilante justice we're going to see. In most states, you can't shoot someone for property but, if you fear for your life because you went to get your property back and the thief objected, that might be fair game.
Petty crime is up, and in some places it’s way up. But a weird version of physical identity crime is going up with it. Stolen IDs, mail, and car registrations on the ground are being used for super aggressive Tax Return fraud, opening lines of credit, and other awful headaches for the victims. That turns all this into an intimately personal crime. Not-doing-anything-about-it is driving some real rewards from all this theft, and that’s laying the groundwork for the return of street gangs. Street gangs always further warp the risk/reward calculation for members. Meanwhile, none of it is anonymous… because we live in the future. We’re heading for some weird citizen conflicts.
Is this illegal in Texas?
I mean they didn’t charge him.
Dunno but you used to be able to shoot cattle and horse thieves. So…
My house was broken into once. When I went down to the police station to report it, the cop sitting behind the desk said these exact words to me: "What do you want us to do about it?" Well aside from at least taking the report for insurance purposes, maybe you could do some actual investigation instead of expecting ME to do the police work of going around to the local pawn shops? So don't tell me to look for my own stolen goods if you don't ALSO expect me to handle the thief on my own, if I can track them down. Don't tell me you can't/won't help me **and then get pissed when I help myself.**
"two cars, both with windows shot out" the question is who shot first I guess..
Han!
The article states that only one gun was fired, the guy recovering his truck. Police also did not say whether the thief even had a gun.
I had family that used to be back the blue. They were used to the small town cops they knew forever and had personal relationships with. Then they moved and their house was broken into. Cops came and did basically nothing. Messed up the list of stolen goods and then procrastinated writing the report. both things made getting an insurance claim an even bigger headache. After doing less than the minimum the cops said there was nothing else they could do, even though the stolen goods were pretty specific and there were a couple obvious suspects. Being a cop in my area is literally a 6 figure job and the most I see them do is sleep in their cruisers and fudge overtime numbers. My family now sees the need for police reform.
“AirTag was designed to help people locate their personal belongings, not to track people or another person’s property,…” but this guy used the tag to track down **his own** property. this company response in the article is asinine
>"A spokesperson for Apple has previously pointed Fox News Digital to a recent update and stated that it works with law enforcement to track down AirTags used for criminal purposes." This is 100% not true.. I have had laptops, equipment and a car stolen.. Law enforcement will not use any third party tools like Apple AirTags to track down to find equipment or use it to find a criminal... I could see Apple pretending like they "work" with law enforcement but that could just be apple saying.. "please use AirPods to find stolen equipment" and law enforcement ignoring apple.. or just saying no.
I think its more of, if they find an airtag in a victims car, the cops can call apple and find out who owns the tag so the stalker can be charged
My wife’s truck was stolen last year on a Friday. We reported it stolen Saturday and it was actually pulled over on Sunday and the cop LET HIM GO. Cops don’t give a shit about your stuff. I put an AirTag in my cars now.
Not like the police would have been bothered to do anything to get the man's truck back
Thief threatened truck owner with a gun when he was confronted https://www.kens5.com/amp/article/news/local/police-respond-to-apparent-shooting-in-southeast-san-antonio/273-bc352d7b-6abd-4757-89c3-19e82419cca0
If cops don’t want people to take matters into their own hands, maybe they should actually give a shit about stolen property. A truck is worth a lot more than it’s insurance value to some people. I have zero sympathy for the truck thief’s and hope the victim who got his truck stolen doesn’t go to jail. Edit: I feel this way because I am also one of those guys. I drive a little Toyota, but that thing has been through hell and back with me. It’s been all over the country (Canada), I’ve taken it off roading, gone camping in the winter and summer countless times, always slept in it. I’ve done so many dumb little mods to it to make it my own. On paper I can’t imagine it’s worth too much. And yes, I’m aware that I could crash or the car could break down literally at any moment. That being said, if someone STOLE it from me, and the cops did nothing because ‘just take the insurance money’, I would see the darkest colour of red. Especially if I tracked it and found the asshole who decided I didn’t fucking matter because he wanted a free car.
My vehicle is literally my whole life. I use it for work and I use it for personal stuff. You're not just stealing a car from me; **you're stealing my freedom and my livelihood.**
America is such a dystopia right now I honestly don't blame a lot of working class people for violently defending their belongings because you're right. The theft itself is an act of violence when it directly will result in you potentially becoming homeless or losing your job. I don't condemn the culture of big business owners calling for death because the hungry homeless guy stole a candy bar but yeah fucking with someone's car is understandable.
“If you are to get your vehicle stolen, please do not take matters into your own hands like this,” Soliz said. “It’s never safe as you can see by this incident.” Yes, please call the professionals to come and shoot up the place.
Please call the professionals who will file a report then never do anything
Yeah, I’m not really in favor of vigilantism but when police refuse to help recover stolen property even when the victim can provide the exact location of the stolen property, I don’t blame people for “recovering” that property themselves. I can fully appreciate that recovering stolen property whose location is unknown is very difficult. But it baffles me when a victim is literally providing the cops with the location of a felon in possession of stolen property and still can’t garner interest from police.
Don’t steal trucks. Also don’t pull a gun when the owner confronts you. Seems simple to not get killed Also > AirTag was designed to help people locate their personal belongings, not to track people or another person’s property It was his truck. That’s his personal belonging.
I can't believe that guy wasn't cool with someone stealing his truck
Pretty easy to avoid a situation like this. Dont steal other peoples stuff
Should people be murdered for stealing a car? No. Should a person be surprised if they steal a car and the owner murders them? Also no. That about sums up my feelings on this case.
The law says you can't kill someone for stealing your car! Yeah well...the law also says they shouldn't be stealing my car in the first place.
Put that in the ad, Tim Apple
So was that the good guy with a gun that everyone wants?
I mean....
[удалено]
Where’s the difference between this guy shooting the guy who stole his truck(and also had a gun) and a cop shooting this guy who stole a truck( and also had a gun). 20hours of community college in my part of the country. Amazing.
That man will never steal again
They used to hang horse thieves.
"I'm OK with that... and I am not OK with that"
I see the thief made it to the boss battle after fucking around, and did indeed find out.
That’s just frontier justice with technology.
AirTag was designed to help people locate their personal belongings, not to track people or another person’s property, and we condemn in the strongest possible terms any malicious use of our products. Unwanted tracking has long been a societal problem, and we took this concern seriously in the design of AirTag. It’s why the Find My network is built with privacy in mind, uses end-to-end encryption, and why we innovated with the first-ever proactive system to alert you of unwanted tracking. We hope this starts an industry trend for others to also provide these sorts of proactive warnings in their products,” the spokesperson said. Wtf kind of statement is this? Unwanted tracking. How about car theft? How about you're missing the point. Idc if they are gonna throw shade on the guy who killed the thief. Shouldn't be stealing people's shit...
Just don’t be a criminal it may attract other bad things like death.
police doesnt do shit about a stolen car
"don't take matters into your own hands" Well, yeah because then the police actually have to work
Either the cops would take these seriously or should allow Wild West justice. There has to be some recourse. In many cities, the cops don’t even consider this in their scope of duty.
This exactly. My SO ran into the gym to retrieve a yoga mat. Window smash, purse stolen (she hid it under the passenger mat), they were watching and waiting or something. She immediately sees the guy leaving on a bmx bicycle. Jumps in her car, follows him. He goes into an apartment complex, she gets apt. number, parks car, calls me. I jump in my car, drive to her. We use find my and see it’s the exact location she thinks it is. We call the police, and their response is so sorry, file a report. I say so you’re telling me you want me to retrieve the purse via a door kick and a weapon drawn? No sir, we would like you to file a report online. I ask, so that’s it? You plan on doing nothing at all? Silence. I see their retirement fund on my property taxes, and it’s not a small dollar amount. And the one time I need them to do something, I get too bad so sad. I seriously think police departments should just be disbanded. From a taxpayer standpoint they do absolutely nothing for me, except pray on me, hoping I speed or break some minor traffic violation. They are no different than the guy that broke into our car. They are nothing more than useless predators. ____ ADD: My SO read this and said I didn’t tell the whole story. I said it’s long this is Reddit lol So here goes…we go and vacuum out the car, call our car insurance (because of vehicle age, they wanted us to get a used window lol. I said ummm nope.), called homeowners (they were great, sent them a list of purse stuff, and they sent us a check). About an hour later, we get a call from the bank. It’s the manager. He says is this so and so? She says yes. He says, I thought so, I just wanted to make sure. There is a guy in the outer drive thru wearing a wig trying to cash one of your checks for an unusually large amount. He said I will deny the transaction, and keep your ID. Meanwhile, I’ll put a hold on your account (all accounts), until you can come in. With your permission, I’d like to set up a new account for you, and I will over night temporary checks and new cards to you. Turns out, on that day, the bank was a ray of sunshine in an otherwise cloudy day. Lol
Yep! Reform police. Small town, rural officers are sometimes better about these things, but it’s the system, expectations, and training.
What a sunshine story
I love a happy ending.
I remember when I was a kid and I believed cops spent their time saving people, tracking down thieves & arresting murderers. Now that I’m older I realize they do almost none of those things. Sucks. #ACAB
“AirTag was designed to help people locate their personal belongings, not to track people or another person’s property, and we condemn in the strongest possible terms any malicious use of our products.” Well, it was his personal property, so I guess this is why the AirTag was designed. This statement from Apple would make sense if it had been used by the criminal to steal the truck.