The problem with these stories (and I could tell some like that myself) is that if you speak privately to a police force employee who is a friend, they will probably tell you that this is not how it is supposed to work, and that if you went straight to the chief constable for the force, the low level dicks will get a big kicking up the back end.
I don’t know what drives this lack of interest. It could be institutionalised cynicism about people… the “rich”, or lower socio-economic groups…
I recall one case of a staff theft at work (1980s, so nothing new) where the plods told me it was obviously an inside job and walked back out, so I escalated it and they were back in about 15 mins, red faced like a beetroot, took fingerprints, etc. Nothing happened due to other reasons e.g. fingerprints of any worker of a company are ok to be found on any object in the company, even inside a locked office to which the worker had no access.
So I just think that a lot of people get fobbed off by low level staff.
The police get excellent training on how to get a message across, so it works most of the time.
Peter wrote:
I don’t know what drives this lack of interest.
Sit through jury duty.
You’ll figure it out pretty quickly!
One of the most enlightening + demoralizing experiences I’ve ever had.
The guy was 105% guilty, but the prosecution was 106% inept, so the guy walked away…
We had to be 100% certain he was guilty. If we were 99.999% it wasn’t good enough.
When someone lies and says, ‘I bought from over yonder’ then proof must be found. A witness, a video, something tangible.
For a detective, which is the type of policeman required for this kind of work, to be activated, there must be something incredibly valuable at stake, as he has a lot of value associated with his time.
Theft typically doesn’t count as valuable enough for assigning a detective to the case.
Thus, you get sirened secretaries – beat cops – who just write reports for statistics.
They know that if they kick the door down, they’re more liable to get shot and killed, or have to write some horrible 20-page report on what happened, just to see some guilty guy lie, them be able to produce NO evidence whatsoever (except circumstantial, which I don’t think is admissible in most cases…) and therefore have all their hard work be for nothing.
They could have been out writing speeding tickets and possibly catching a crime in-the-act (hot stuff!). Those actions are directly rewarded.
Busting a door down and searching some bloke’s house to find a couple of pieces of avionics gear for some rich guy, but solve no real crime and have no real conviction result is demoralizing.
Better to snack on donuts and snoop for crime in-the-act…
Hey, or have molotov cocktails and rocks thrown at you during ‘protests’! yay!
Jury Duty. Opening the eyes of the utopic since… it was invented.
After longer than hoped for delays in getting the repairs under way, things are finally being worked on… can’t wait to get flying.
AF wrote:
Theft typically doesn’t count as valuable enough for assigning a detective to the case.
So generally burglars know they can just get away with it, since it won’t be investigated – and really the only thing stopping this from being more prevalent is most people don’t go around stealing from others.
I would guess that the risk of being caught in the act is a deterrent.
The risk of being caught afterwards does seem low but probably isn’t zero…
Because most houses no longer contain anything worth stealing (gone are the good old days when you could break in and in a minute or two steal a VCR worth £500) burglars have had to do what farmers do: diversify.
So we may see more of this.
On the face of it you can’t offload this stuff easily but the apparent ease with which Rotax engines get passed on suggests that there is a ready market. You also don’t really need database updates if flying VFR 
Still in many homes: Ipads, mobile phones, laptops, jewelry, cameras, cash – all easier to carry than a VCR and more valuable (trying to come up with a Betamax versus VHS joke and failing…).
I wouldn’t say there’s nothing worth stealing, it’s just different stuff than before and much easier to carry than an old cathode ray television.
I have a friend whose business in London was hit in the middle of night on a weekend recently and many laptops were stolen, and it turns out the same has happened with three other nearby offices. Much easier to steal a tall stack of the now standard issue corporate laptop than it would have been to carry out an old x386 desktop computer.
I work in geospatial, and theft was pretty much never a problem.
Until a few years ago. 98% globalization. They steal the kit and sell it in the 2nd/3rd world for cheap.
I worked for a manufacturer, and we just made it so that you couldn’t use the hardware without a special software key.
One instrument was stolen in my 7 years of working there…
With the rollout of Bluetooth and Wifi connectivity in the cockpit, maybe they’ll do the same. Just have it so you need an app to ‘unlock’ the hardware… Not too hard, they already do it with cars.
Patrick_K wrote:
After longer than hoped for delays in getting the repairs under way, things are finally being worked on… can’t wait to get flying.
Congats! Where ya headed next?
Just passing on the information I received:
I was almost relieved to read they were just stolen!
