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Ten Cops Can't Recover Police Chief's Son's iPhone

Posted by Soulskill on from the try-twenty-next-time dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "The Oakland Tribune reports that when Berkeley police Chief Michael Meehan's son's cell phone was stolen from a school locker in January, ten police officers were sent to track down the stolen iPhone, with some working overtime at taxpayer expense. 'If your cell phone was stolen or my cell phone was stolen, I don't think any officer would be investigating it,' says Michael Sherman, vice chairman of the Berkeley Police Review Commission, a city watchdog group. 'They have more important things to do. We have crime in the streets.' But the kicker is that even with all those cops swarming around, looking for an iPhone equipped with the Find My iPhone tracking software, police were not able to locate the phone. 'If 10 cops who know a neighborhood can't find an iPhone that's broadcasting its location, that shouldn't give you a lot of confidence in your own vigilante recovery of a stolen iProduct,' writes Alexis Madrigal. 'Just saying. Consider this a PSA: just buy a new phone.'"

13 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. That's the police for you by GodfatherofSoul · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Unless you're related or f**king one of them, you can forget about timely justice. And, unless there's a chance they'll get to whip out a gun and play cops/robbers, you might as well fire up a pot of coffee because you're going to be waiting a while. My girlfriend is an asst. manager at a major chain store and they have a revolving door of the usual suspects and it's very low on law enforcement's priority.

    But, some of the blame also falls on the court system which has found that chasing potheads is more lucrative than going after petty thieves.

    --
    I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
    1. Re:That's the police for you by Sancho · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The truth is, there's a lot of crime and not a lot of money for cops. And for most individuals who are burglarized, there's rarely enough evidence to even begin an investigation. The best you can usually hope for is to have serial numbers for some of your stuff and that when the thief screws up and gets caught, that you'll be able to get your stuff back then. More likely it's already been sold, though.

      The other truth is that all jobs have perks. Some people get to read Slashdot during the day. Some people don't have to pay for their own car or cell phone. And some people get more immediate attention from the police. Is it fair? No, but all of these things happen on a daily basis, and there's little sign that they will ever change.

    2. Re:That's the police for you by Sir_Sri · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Right, the trick is that the phone has to be taken to a location that you can uniquely identify, or be given to a person you can uniquely identify.

      The problem with any sort of GPS tracking is that it has an error range. If you can pin down that the phone is in my building, but the building has 120 units in it. Is it really worth search 120 units for a 500 dollar phone? Actually maybe it is, if in the long run you set the precedent that the police will hunt you down and arrest you if you steal a 500 dollar phone, but it might not be. Different people will have different tolerances for these things.

      One of my friends in san francisco had his iphone stolen with find my iphone on it. The guy who stole it took it to his own house. And as the article states if the police can real time track it guess what? Right. That guy got caught. Take it to an apartment, or an area with a lot of tightly grouped living spaces and you're SOL.

      All of which goes to show that all of the phone carriers need to have a stolen device list that will disable stolen phones.

    3. Re:That's the police for you by Tanktalus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The problem with any sort of GPS tracking is that it has an error range. If you can pin down that the phone is in my building, but the building has 120 units in it. Is it really worth search 120 units for a 500 dollar phone? Actually maybe it is, if in the long run you set the precedent that the police will hunt you down and arrest you if you steal a 500 dollar phone, but it might not be. Different people will have different tolerances for these things.

      Is it really worth running roughshod over the privacy of 119 innocent units to discover 1 alleged perpetrator?

      Damn, I think I just encouraged them.

    4. Re:That's the police for you by causality · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The truth is, there's a lot of crime and not a lot of money for cops.

      Imagine the law enforcement resources that would be freed up and made available for real crimes (i.e. those with a victim) if we never prosecuted anything that happens among consenting adults. I bet a lot more thieves, rapists, and murderers would be behind bars.

      The other truth is that all jobs have perks. Some people get to read Slashdot during the day. Some people don't have to pay for their own car or cell phone. And some people get more immediate attention from the police.

      The difference being that everyone pays for police protection but some get better service than others. If you can read Slashdot during the day or have a company-supplied phone, that's between you and your employer. If that really bothered me for some reason, I could choose not to do business with you.

      Is it fair? No, but all of these things happen on a daily basis, and there's little sign that they will ever change.

      Maybe you didn't intend it this way but that sounds rather defeatist. None of that is a reason to give up and stop calling attention to abuses wherever they happen. None of that means we shouldn't expect better. If we never scrutinized these things, it would be far worse than it is right now.

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
    5. Re:That's the police for you by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The other truth is that all jobs have perks. Some people get to read Slashdot during the day. Some people don't have to pay for their own car or cell phone. And some people get more immediate attention from the police. Is it fair? No, but all of these things happen on a daily basis, and there's little sign that they will ever change.

      This isn't about fairness, it is about abuse of power. None of your other examples involve the public trust. The cops get all kinds of special privileges to enable them to do their jobs, so they have a higher standard to up hold than some guy driving to the grocery store in his company car.

      The reason there is little sign that this kind of abuse of power will stop is in part due to people making false equivalancies to excuse it.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    6. Re:That's the police for you by arth1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The problem with any sort of GPS tracking is that it has an error range. If you can pin down that the phone is in my building, but the building has 120 units in it. Is it really worth search 120 units for a 500 dollar phone? Actually maybe it is, if in the long run you set the precedent that the police will hunt you down and arrest you if you steal a 500 dollar phone, but it might not be.

      It would be illegal.

      "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

      That you're one out of 120 who might have dunnit isn't "probable cause". This is exactly the kind of fishing expeditions that the amendment was designed to prevent. Even if you know a crime was committed, you can't use that as an excuse to search everyone.

      That doesn't stop cops and certain politicians from trying to do go fishing, of course. After all, if you look hard enough, few people are really 100% innocent, so you're bound to discover some crimes and make arrests, which will make you popular with the holier-than-thou part of the population.

    7. Re:That's the police for you by X0563511 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Imagine that... treat them with respect and you are treated with respect in turn.

      Fucking shame people have forgotten this.

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
  2. not necessarily by Chirs · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm sure that there exist police officers who are doing the job because they think it needs doing and someone else would do it worse.

  3. Re:I would be more worried... by Sancho · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Typical anti-LE first-post karma-grabbing reply.

    Did you notice that they were using Find My iPhone? It's an Apple service which requires opting-in on the part of the phone's user (pre-losing the phone, of course.)

    The joke you should have made has to do with not being able to find ones ass with 10 cops and a map. These guys had GPS from the phone (via consent of the victim or certainly his father) and couldn't find it. That takes a spectacular level of incompetence.

  4. Re:I would be more worried... by amicusNYCL · · Score: 5, Insightful

    These guys had GPS from the phone (via consent of the victim or certainly his father) and couldn't find it. That takes a spectacular level of incompetence.

    I think it illustrates limitations in the technology more than human incompetence. The service can't find your phone. It can tell you that your phone is near 55th and San Pedro, but it's not going to tell you which house and room the thing is sitting in, or whose pocket it has been put in. I bet I can stash a phone "near" any intersection in the country and you wouldn't be able to find it with only that information.

    Notice that I'm not suggesting a solution... the service does what it does, but it's not a panacea for finding lost things.

    --
    "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
  5. Re:Still useful. by PRMan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Time to put your kid in another day care...

    --
    Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
  6. Re:Well, what about we think a bit.... by nedlohs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Garbage men have a fatality rate of 30 per 100,000 according to http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2011/pf/jobs/1108/gallery.dangerous_jobs/8.html

    Law enforcement has a fatality rate of 14 per 100,000 according to http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/archive/summer1999art1.pdf

    Different years, but police fatality rates haven't more than doubled in ten years.

    http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cfch0009.pdf has farmers/ranchers at 42 per 100,000

    And http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/news/1004/gallery.Most_dangerous_jobs/10.html has taxi drivers at 19 per 100,000.

    So out of farmers, garbage men, taxi drivers, and police the police have the safest (in terms of not getting killed) job.