comment: >
  
  This is not that relevant to the discussion, but something similar happened to me—a metal sheet flew off a small truck on the highway and came right at me; all I could do was duck, and when I came up, the windshield was a splintered wreck. I was very lucky not to get hurt. Don’t know if the highway patrol bothered to look for this very obviously overloaded truck trundling up a major freeway; they were quite lackadaisical when I reported it. I wonder if the driver even knew it happened.
context: You gotta know this is going to happen more and more often as it becomes easier to track your stuff. >
  
  I had friends track their stolen stuff down to an exact address, communicate this info to the police, and they were "ok, so what do you expect us to do about this?". They're nice, peaceful people, but it's easy to see how more impulsive folks would react to this... >
  
  When my van was stolen, I saw it by chance on a street several miles from my house. So I went back there and drove it to a secure location. 
  I also later found out who stole it. Of course, the police did nothing. They have more important things to do like shooting people's dogs, roughing up homeless people, and kicking down the door to the wrong house during raids.
  Whether justice will ever be done, I can't speculate. >
  
  Don’t forget how useful they were taking down that school shooter who massacred all those babies. >
  
  Which time we talking about? >
  
  The Uvalde shooting. 
  You can watch clips of dozens of officers hiding from one scrawny kid who was actively executing 5 year old children. You can watch clips of them beating and macing the parents who tried storming the building when the police were doing literally nothing 
  Then you can read comments of people defending those officers actions 
  It’s actually crazy. >
  
  Now hang on there champ.
  They also stalked and harassed the few parents who managed to get past them and rescued children, doing a better job than they did. For weeks. >
  
  Oh! They also blamed a teacher for leaving a door open. 
  She didn’t, but that didn’t stop the thousands of people who harassed and threatened her until quitting. >
  
  Holy fuck. Imagine blaming a teacher while you have a hallway stacked with armed men. 
  I wish I had 10-12 armed men behind me. Fuck I’ll take a country with that. 
  Small one, maybe tropical. I don’t want to retire in Canada. >
  
  I've been told twice in my life by police in my city that I would have better luck solving the problem myself.." just don't get caught" >
  
  This is why I put an airtag in a discreet area of my car. >
  
  My issues wernt with vehicles, but I know what ya mean. >
  
  Oh,  yeah. I know exactly what you mean. I'm right there with you. I just felt mentioning the airtag was a useful piece of advice for people who have their car stolen only to have the cops shrug their shoulders. >
  
  You would think that when you buy a $30k-$50k asset, it would come with it’s own locator device, say along the lines of a $25 object the size of a quarter that just gets powered from the vehicle battery.
  But no, this is an unpredictable use case for likely the 2nd or 3rd most expensive thing that we buy. Of course they can add heated seats, backup camera’s with distance detection warnings, and complex touchscreen interfaces. The automotive companies can’t even claim that the technology or the cost isn’t justifiable to plan ahead for theft. >
  
  My first thought is to buy a used vehicle, and one that’s not too swanky. It’s a liability that quickly loses value. 
  Second thought is that if those tracking devices were installed, criminals would know how to disable them. It’s actually more likely to be helpful if you install a 3rd party solution.
  Last thought is that the best way to handle vehicle thefts would be to program a device that gradually cut the power after 1 minute. That way, the thieves would be confused as to why the car is slowly crapping out, and abandon the vehicle close enough that you could grab a neighbor’s car, bicycle, taxi, etc. and go find it.
  Bonus points if you can add a little 16-bit speaker saying “fuck you.” And have it programmed to slowly fade out / distort as the power cuts. >
  
  Hidden kill switch. >
  
  Had a friend w/ a Vette. Didn't bother locking it, because that wasn't a deterrent, thed just slice the roof. . But the gas line kill switch. The'd drive a short distance and it would stall. Who wants to hang around a stolen Vette on the side of a road and troubleshoot the problem? >
  
  Easiest anti theft device is to wire a switch to the fuel pump that you hide in the car and can flip on and off easily >
  
  In this day and age, you could buy one that runs on a remote app. >
  
  Police: Well, it's gone. There's no telling who took your vehicle, ma'am. It's probably already been rendered down at chop shop and sold off as parts.
  Victim: No, it's still driving around. 
  Police: Well, nothing we can do about it. No telling where it is now. 
  It's at a gas station on 32nd and Briarwood. 
  Police: Well, good luck. Hopefully it turns up, but I wouldn't hold out hope. 
  It's right there. You can go get it right now. 
  Police: We'll give you a call if it turns up. You'll of course have to pay impound fees. Have a good day. >
  
  Work at a dealership where 9 cars were stolen. We told them exactly where the vehicles were and they didn’t care. They wound up trying to pull 3 vehicles over regularly just because they didn’t have plates in them and they all went in high speed chases. Let them off because they said it was a misdemeanor and prisons were too full. >
  
  My buddy was driving home in Houston and all these 4x8 sheets of plywood started blowing off of a trailer in front of him and one went through his window. The guy started running and he chased the guy for awhile and he called the police while he was following him telling dispatch what street he was on and they told him they weren't going to do anything about it. I bet you there were police within 1/2 a mile stopping people for speeding.
  Someone I know also had a drug dealer selling drugs off of his porch and driveway and the guy refused to leave so he called the police and it took them two hours. This happened often and they almost never showed up. Two weeks before a drug dealer got killed in a drive-by at the stop sign across the street.