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Ten Cops Can't Recover Police Chief's Son's iPhone
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.'"
I would be more worried if they found the phone quickly.
Palm trees and 8
That's because the kid had photo's of his dad that he used to blackmail him into getting the iPhone in the first place.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
But when you multiply that times 10, that's pretty smart.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
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!
The only tech angle here is that the item in question is an iPhone.
Subsititute that for a car or a bike, would this story be here? Why or why not? I sense an an anti-LEO pattern on this site.
In honor of the professional and successful police investigation?
//sarcasm^2
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
I'm under no illusion that "Find my iphone" will recover my stolen phone, but it's been great for those. "Ah shit where's my phone?" Moments.
Just knowing where it is, or weather or not it's stolen, or if you left it at your friends or your parents house is good enough. Its the unknown quantity that's scary.
The GPS is indeed accurate enough to determine things like. "Oh, it's in my car parked outside" - Done that from both home and work with my iphone and my ipad2 w/3g
If that iPhone was downloading illegal music/movies I bet they would find it in no time.
He earlier sent an officer to a journalist's house in the middle of the night to intimidate him.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/11/BANH1NJ73K.DTL
To be fair, the $1000 also goes towards attempting to convict a thief which may in this case itself recover more stolen goods or prevent other goods from being stolen. In the wider world it may also produce a deterrent effect against future crime. I imagine that if cops never went after any stolen goods there would be even more theft.
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.
Well, it was a mistake to use the Keystone division...
Um, how much would you value a rape, then? Or a beating? Or domestic violence? Or even murder?
It would be interesting to see a world where such calculations are being performed.
Oh, so the guy punched you repeatedly in the face and stole 100 USD from you? Right. How much was the hospital charging you? 2000 USD? I see. So that's a total of 2100 USD. Well, we can have one officer spend 5 days investigating this, then tough luck buddy. Maybe next time you'll get lucky and he'll stab you in the liver, I heard those wounds are expensive to heal and we'd be able to investigate the incident for one whole month.
Yeah, would be interesting to live in such a world, indeed...
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Just this past weekend my wife lost her iPhone after stopping at a highway rest area. I knew from Find My iPhone that it was at the rest area, but there was no phone on the grass at the GPS point. Then the point moved to the far side of the parking lot. It wasn't there, either. It moved several more times, all of which led to the conclusion that it had to be inside - that despite claiming a location and even drawing an accuracy circle on the map, it was not where it claimed to be. I searched inside several buildings, had the attendants check the ladies' room (all the while using Find My iPhone to make the phone beep).
Finally, after over an hour, an attendant and I went out to the dumpsters in back, stuck our heads in, and heard it ringing. That guided us to the right bag, and lo and behold, there it was.
So yes, Find My iPhone was terrific in that without it, I would never have been able to recover my wife's iPhone. However, given what I went through in an otherwise relatively empty area, I can't imagine what one would do if the signal was coming from near a large apartment complex, a school, a parking garage, even a dense neighborhood of single-family homes could show the GPS point in the wrong location if the phone's inside. Sometimes it's just better to take advantage of the remote wipe feature and start all over.
I cannot, of course, defend in any way the use of police resources in this particular case. I'm sure we'd all want to help our kid out similarly, but I imagine the smart among us would have done it informally and off the clock.
Michael J.
Root, God, what is difference?
same guy sent a COP over to a REPORTERS house at MIDNIGHT because he was worried about a story which was about to run.
http://www.dailycal.org/2012/03/10/berkeley-police-chief-sends-officer-to-reporters-home/
Berkeley Police Chief Michael Meehan ordered a sergeant to the home of a reporter around 12:45 a.m. Friday to request changes to a story that Meehan felt inaccurately portrayed him, media outlets reported this weekend.
was stolen from her locker at school. I actually left the phone on instead of disabling it to see if the retards would call someone. Sure enough when I checked the phone bill there was a call made to a number which I called and told them to return it or I'll go to their house and cut their hands off. The mom called back crying and begging to not do anything as she will get the phone back.
Anyways after the phone was stolen my wife went to the school and told them about it. They did fuck all about it. A week later when nothing happened with the school she want to the police station and they said they couldn't do anything about it for some fucking reason. So mean while other students had their lockers broken into.
After I got the phone back and got the names of the kids who where breaking into lockers, once again the school did fuck all so this time I went to the police station with the name of the people who did the break in. The retards told nothing they couldn't do anything because the school is a public place or something like that and I had to talk to the school RCMP liaison. Well so I call expecting to talk to someone and got an answering machine. Another phone call a few days later and I got nothing.
Any ways moral of the story don't rely on the police for anything.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
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.
So, the cops should not deal with crime in schools because there is crime on the streets? That is awfully specific. How about crimes on the side-walk? Is crime in the park alright?
Sounds like it was written by a church lady, someone who just wants to be outright at the indecency going on everywhere, even if she has to take a stepladder and binoculars around with her to find it.
The issue is rather simple, it is the insane privacy expectations of people where they are outraged if the police has any clearance to do their job and are equally outraged when the police has any clearance to do their job. "How dare you pull me over to test me for drink driving, why don't you shoot that guy with a laser guided missle because I think he might or might have had something to drink and I just don't like how he is driving". The British tabloids are REALLY good at this, whine about drink drivers in one article, then whine about the horrid effects of drunk drivers getting actually sentenced to anything at all. "Get them off our roads! You can't deny someone access to their car!"
And people wonder why politicians don't listen to the voter. The issue isn't that every voter has a different demand, it is that every single voter has multiple contradicting demands.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.