Can't believe all the stealing around here.

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I grew up here. It was a safe place if there was big news like a murder it was talked about for weeks. Now there is 2-3 a day.

The company I work for has equipment out on jobs around the area. They are constantly fighting things like stolen fuel and batteries.

Even locks are no help. The thieves bring torches and cutting wheels.

I had to go out this morning and replace 2 giant batteries and cut cables in a excavator that was right on a main street. The batteries are HUGE!

Somehow the guys got them pulled out of the hole they are in without getting caught.
 
Thieves have been around a long time. I remember not being able to call an office in New York back in the 90's because the junkies had stolen the telephone wires for the copper from the telephone poles.

Wasn't it Diogenes who went around looking for an honest man over 2000 years ago?
 
You can't stop them, only slow them down.
It's like a wild animal eating out of a garbage can, once they know, they will be back.

But, you have to fight fire with fire.
Start getting ideas using technology that will deter them.

Video cameras in use.
Your image is already captured.
 
It is a neighborhood thing. In places with infinite amount of land people don't rebuild old houses, they just move on to new green field and build new houses. The old one is sold to lower income folks with lower income problems. The opposite happens in places that got redeveloped because land is expensive. Poor people move out and developed into new popular units attracting high income folks, and low income problems gone.
 
It is a neighborhood thing. In places with infinite amount of land people don't rebuild old houses

Around here we have a lot of townhouse communities dating back to the 1960s. Most of them are not good places to live, although they once were. An individual unit owner is very limited in what they can do to upgrade their 60 year old house (a single family unattached home can be torn down and rebuilt). Anyone who wanted to completely redevelop the whole community would have to negotiate with hundreds of individual property owners.
 
When systemic unemployment is high (as it is right now) and moving higher soon after the rent freezes expire you always see an increase in nut jobs going after scrap items like cats and copper among other garbage.
Heck junkies will break a window to steal a cheesy $1 radio

Right now meth & heroine addicts are multiplying and a lot of people are enraged making crime increases inevitable

Thankfully my method of stopping crime has so far worked, don’t have anything that looks valuable to steal.

Security cameras, locking devices and even what my father used to do, cover the item of desire in red grease.
Was amazingly effective.

Generally theives are deterred by the usual locks but if the thing is not in a busy area and sits too long they go bolder, I’m told automated glitter bombs do wonders to, anything unexpected will usually spook them.

Around here we have a lot of townhouse communities dating back to the 1960s. Most of them are not good places to live, although they once were. An individual unit owner is very limited in what they can do to upgrade their 60 year old house (a single family unattached home can be torn down and rebuilt). Anyone who wanted to completely redevelop the whole community would have to negotiate with hundreds of individual property owners.
Around here all properties downtown are non conforming and the town loves condemning garages on the property line making the house valueless .
Because house are non conforming it makes it nearly impossible to do anything and if your house burns you can never rebuild without extreme prejudice and years of legal.
One entire block of larger mid range houses was tore down using imminent domain, the row of lots is now replanted with cheap county grass and straw, no clue what the town is thinking, maybe the old folks home wanted a parking lot?

Out town is loosing close to 50% of its tax base this year due to non payment, gotta wonder where they get the cash to be raizing so many homes and businesses in this environment
 
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Luckily I’ve never had any problems with thieves but my elderly neighbors did and luckily they pushed the dining room table in front of the door and the thief couldn’t get the lock picked and the cops quietly rolled up on him.
 
I grew up here. It was a safe place if there was big news like a murder it was talked about for weeks. Now there is 2-3 a day.

The company I work for has equipment out on jobs around the area. They are constantly fighting things like stolen fuel and batteries.

Even locks are no help. The thieves bring torches and cutting wheels.

I had to go out this morning and replace 2 giant batteries and cut cables in a excavator that was right on a main street. The batteries are HUGE!

Somehow the guys got them pulled out of the hole they are in without getting caught.

Some of the adjacent areas where you live are not exactly garden spots of California.
 
In 2018 I moved from an affluent area of a major city to a small village in a remote area of farmland for miles on end. Even living in a nice area in a few larger cities I always knew where the bad parts of town were and frankly they were never that far away. It always seemed like I was hearing about bad things happening that could easily happen to me even though I mainly kept to areas that had a pretense of greater safety and security.

Ever since I moved to cow country though that bad stuff is not even on my radar. I mean I still hear about it happening elsewhere but none of it impacts my psyche directly as it had in the past and for that at least I am thankful and far more peaceful as s result of.
 
I’ve always lived in a bad area and crime has never affected me.

Though there has been one close call with two crackheads sitting in a car at 1am waiting for folks to leave, little did they know it’s a duplex so a car leaving doesn’t mean empty. When they started rushing my front door I flashed the lights, it scared the $hit out of them and they left.

The odd part is even the bad part of town here doesn’t have much crime and the crime there is is overwhelming domestic or between people that know one another.

The thing I’ve never understood is why poor people rage against other equally poor people. Yeah go ahead and steal garbage from your neighbor that has crappier stuff than you. Or steal from a business run by a poor old guy that lives in his $45,000 place of business selling lures.
Never could understand that mentality.
 
The thing I’ve never understood is why poor people rage against other equally poor people. Yeah go ahead and steal garbage from your neighbor that has crappier stuff than you. Or steal from a business run by a poor old guy that lives in his $45,000 place of business selling lures.
Never could understand that mentality.
Rich people lives further away than they can reach, housing prices in their neighborhood is more expensive, and they are better equipped to protect themselves. Poor are more vulnerable and have fewer ways to protect themselves among their own desperate neighbors.
 
The thing I’ve never understood is why poor people rage against other equally poor people. Yeah go ahead and steal garbage from your neighbor that has crappier stuff than you. Or steal from a business run by a poor old guy that lives in his $45,000 place of business selling lures.
Never could understand that mentality.

A friend of mine is an successful psychologist with a track record of 40+ years of involvement in some incredible things. He related to me that what you are describing is subconscious self-sabotage that is perpetrated by those with low self-worth (a financial term) so much so that they are willing to drag others down because in some twisted way of thinking they feel better as a result. He simply refers to it as the "ghetto mentality" and though the word ghetto historically refers to a place where some are forced to live, in this case the subjects forces themselves to stay in such a position because they refuse to do anything which would free themselves from this mentality.
 
A week ago, I found a side window of my garage laying down on the ground. I don't know how long it was there so I'm thinking someone was trying to get in the garage. I've since installed a security camera inside the garage that will notify me of any movement in the garage.
 
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