How often do the police NOT catch somebody?

Factual Questions
21

I don’t want to hijack, but I can’t resist this. We were all certainly pissed off, but we acknowledge it wasn’t a serious crime (though there was damage to one of the cars which would cost a lot to fix). This doesn’t mean that the police shouldn’t do anything. Especially when you consider that the police department in that town (a wealthy suburb) aren’t exactly hunting down murderers and violent criminals. Mostly they’re going to elementary schools for DARE programs.

I didn’t expect a full-out investigation, but they could at least have gone and knocked on a few doors. There’s a factory literally next-door to my house (don’t ask) which has security cameras which I know also record the foot of our driveway - maybe they could have asked the factory owners if they could take a look and see what was on those tapes.

I’m not one to complain about taxes, but it grates on me that my parents are paying something like a thousand dollars a year towards the police department, and when the police could have actually done something for them, they didn’t. It’s not an underfunded force by any definition, nor is it understaffed, so in my eyes there’s simply no excuse.

22

Another data point here … I was just involved in a hit-and-run accident a few weeks back. A car ran a stop sign and plowed into my car. After a temporary daze, I was able to restart my (heavily damaged) car and proceeded to follow the other car across the intersection to exchange the usual information. To my shock the car just sped away. I chased it and got close enough to get the license plate number and a description of the car and driver. When I looked down at my cell phone to call the cops, I lost the perpetrator. I proceeded to the nearest police station and filed my report, providing all my info about the accident. They told me to call back in 3 days to check the status of the investigation. When I did, I was told that NOTHING will be investigated since I did not die (obviously) or was seriously injured. The reason given was that the police are short-handed at the moment. NOTHING! Not even a quick computer search of the license plate number or any attempt to contact the perp. Based on this, I betcha a lot of criminals get off scott free. So, as others have already pointed out, it’s not just that the police don’t catch a crook; sometimes they don’t even try.

23

Another factor which muddies the statistics is this: A lot of crimes, especially burglaries, are committed by drug users who basically see burglary as part of their occupation. These guys are almost always caught eventually, but it is unlikely their crimes will be traced back to any particular home that was hit a year ago. So while they are caught, there may be no connection made to many of their crimes.

24

Pardon me, you’re right. It was explained to me that the UCR was more official and “confirmable”, but the NCVS covers those crimes plus those that were not reported. Now there’s something called the National Incident Based Reporting System that I recall my old Criminal Stats prof used to talk about with reverence, but I don’t know how much acceptance thats gotten in the law enforcement community.

25

This thread is kind of depressing.

Seems if you are willing to roll the dice (and the odds seem much better than Vegas), you can get away with just about anything you want if you put some thought into it.

Of course, if you *do * get caught, there’s that issue with the new roomies and the all of their interesting social activities I’ve seen on TV too. I guess **OZ ** would scare most people straight.

26

So WHY did the FBI spend over 780,000 looking for the remains of the late Jimmy hoffa? This makes NO sense whatsoever. Hoffa has been dead for 31 years. vitually anybody involved in the case is probably dead as wwell. hoff's estate has been settled 9I'm sure the courts declared him dead years ago0. So can somebody in law enforcement tell me WHY the FBI would blow so much money looking for some bones? Yeah, Hoffa's dead-what else is news? the amount of money WASTED on stupid investigations blows my mind-and the local cops can't be bothered to investigate a case of atu insurance fraud-staged accidents are probably a multi-billion business now!

27

The NCVS seems to cover only violent crimes. Its reliability can probably be assessed by mapping the variance year to year against the UCR data. Of course, in terms of results, the NCVS can only depress the “clearance rate”, since the crimes never reported, will not be solved.

Cite?

28

I don’t know how it muddies up the statistics. If somebody sees burglary as part of their occupation they are a burglar. It is completely irrelevant if they are burglars to feed their family, gamling problem, drug addiction or they just like to live fast. The only reason you think drug using burglars are almost always caught eventually is because we don’t know if the burglars that don’t get caught are using drugs or not. What we can do is estimate what percentage of burglars who get caught are drug users, but that tells us virtually nothing because that number could be less, the same or more than the percentage of all burglars who are drug users.

29

Can I throw in a happy story?

I live in a town of about 5000 people. My wife is an Avon Representative. About a year ago, we had a problem with a $400 shipment. The UPS website said that the packages were delivered to our front porch, but the packages were not there at all. We were a bit annoyed.

We went out to dinner at a local diner (as we had previously planned). Sitting at the next table was our town’s police chief (who is also a neighbor and friend). I went over to him to ask what to do about the stolen stuff. I didn’t actually expect him to do anything, but I wanted to know if I should stop by to file a report or something.

Well, he asked if we noticed anything else unusual at our end of the street (he lives at the other end). I told him that my next-door neighbor was having a large tree removed and that there were many landscaper guys running all around her and my yards. He asked what the landscape company was and I told him. He told me that he knew what to do.

So, I sat back down and finished my dinner. The chief came over as he and his family were leaving. He told me that he made a few phone calls. When we got homefrom dinner, all of the missing packages were on the front porch. Apparently, the chief had an officer go hassle the owner of the landscape business who then hassled one of his employees. The employee saw the light and returned the stuff.

Sometimes, the police do help.

Now, when my wife was in high school, her best friend was murdered, probably by her (the friend’s) stepdad. That crime has never been solved.

30

I can tell you as a victim of violent crime, the police told me outright, we’ll never catch him. They did NOTHING after taking my statement.

When I got my wallet stolen, the thief used my Bally’s card and my credit cards to over $2,000 dollars worth of stuff. When I asked both Bally’s and Best Buy if they taped the transactions, they both said, yes they probably could see who was from the tape. Considering it was stolen in a place where I knew everyone I could’ve most likely recognized the guy. But the cops said, it wasn’t worth persuing, and the credit card company ignored my requests to persue it. All they did was write off the charges and then up my interest rate.

My friend had her house set on fire. The cops asked her if she had any enemies. The family said not. Because no one was killed in the fire, though the house was totally destroyed and it took them a year to rebuild it, the cops said, they had higher priorities and they’d never find out who did it anyway

So from my experience in a big city I say unless someone is killed there isn’t a high motive to go after them.

31

Was the OP asking about people getting away in police chases? You don’t often seem to see people successfully dodging the police in this fashion…

I should think a very good reason to attempt to investigate even minor crimes is that the majority of crimes are committed by a minority of people. Catch someone who steals $15 worth of goods and odds are you’re halting a bigger crime wave.

32

Happenned in Hudson, OH about two years back.
Unnamed suspected drug dealer in an Oldsmobile managed to evade police after the lead chase car crashed in a single-car incident.
There was a second interceptor involved. I don’t know if he halted pursuit to assist the lead car or because the lead car was attempting an unlawful stop. Taped radio chatter indicated that the second officer attempted to dissuade the first officer from pulling the suspect over because the alleged traffic violation didn’t really occur.

33

Not to sound like a dick or anything, but the story you just described is typical. Yeah, the police help you if you’re family (sometimes) or friends with the chief. Not surprising there. What pisses me off is that you can practiucally hand them the criminal and they won’t do anything about it.

About 15 years ago, a hangar which housed my mom’s plane and one other one was broken into. A bunch of tools and avionics were stolen, and the planes were slightly damaged. The police came out, took the report, etc etc…nothing.

The owner of the hangar (not my mom) whose plane was victimized more heavily, searched classified ads in town (this was before Ebay, you see) and found someone selling almost exactly all the stuff he lost. So he set up a meeting, got some serial numbers (if you know anything about aircraft avionics and flying, you know that most pilots have records of their equipment inspections with serail #s), and found out that it was the same stuff. So he called the cops. It took FOREVER to get the guy arrested and prosecuted. A slam dunk case, in a fairly sleepy suburban town. I don’t know if the owner ever got his stuff back, and I know my mom lost a bunch of money due to the deductible on the insurance policy. But I’ll bet if we were friends with the chief of police, it would have been handled a lot faster.

34

It appears that the FBI has been told they have to get back to work. Hunting terrorists just doesn’t make the arrest stats look good. So they are going around looking for some high profile cases that will get their name in the papers. It IS budget time on the hill after all. As you pointed out, the only possible reason for the Hoffa case is PR. At first I assumed it was a cover for some other investigation-but turns out not to be the case. The lead they were following had been investigated back when Hoffa first disappeared and rejected as not creditable. I assume something came up since to give the FBI some justification. Justification is one thing, the reason for the search is clear.

35

I don’t doubt that the fact that we have both personal and professional relationships with the police chief (and some of the officers) helped in our Avon case. However, in a town like ours, everyone knows everyone anyway. Part of why our case worked out is because, as soon as I told him the landscape company, the chief knew who had our stuff.

This thread is straying into GD territory, but what if your attorney called the police on your behalf? I am having a hard time understanding all these victims of serious crimes saying that the police did nothing, even when the perps were obvious. What about alerting the media? “I called the cops and they wouldn’t help” seems like a good story.

In a big city, my mom’s car was broken into and the window switches :rolleyes: were stolen. The damage to the car cost several hundred dollars, plus the inconvenience. However, the crime wasn’t serious and I wouldn’t expect that the police would drop everything for the Great Window Switch caper. In the same big city (same house), my dad died while my mom wasn’t home. She came home, found the body, and called 911. The EMS, police, and victim’s services all responded. Obviously, I’m glossing over the trauma of the whole thing, but all of the city services people were very helpful in a horrible time. Several days later, my mom had friends over and a police officer stopped by to make sure that she was okay and that all the cars didn’t indicate another tragedy. In this case, my parents did not have a personal relationship with anyone involved. (Full discolsure: My dad wrote a police investigation book that a former police chief in this big city wrote the forward for. I cannot imagine a street cop made the connection or behaved any differently because of it. The chief in question was no longer with the department at the time.)

36

Does anyone from the policing side of things have a perspective of the matter? I imagine even fairly “slam dunk” cases are going to consume far more resources than people would typically assume.

I had a laptop stolen from me once. The thief booted it up and logged onto my ICQ and a friend got his IP address. It was from an ISP that I know uses static IPs and a simple police request for the address associated with the IP would have caught the thief but nothing was done.

37

Surely you’re exaggerating! Either that or you hang out with an unprecedented number of the biggest scumbag “professionals” on the planet. Most of these professionals? A few felonies each? Why should we believe that?

I do not say. Many of those are damned serious crimes, and very “real”.

Since it happens often, it’s not a real crime? Is that your argument?

You bet your ass it is!

That is in no way “smuggling”.

What do you have in mind here? More clippers or scissors? Again, that’s not smuggling. But smuggling is indeed a real crime.

Like Rush Limbaugh? He’s a real criminal.

I’d get the hell out of Dodge if I were you! I had no idea San Jose was such a hideous place to live.

38

I can say that the majority of the homicides I work on are solved by the police who investigate them, usually months to years after the event. Sometimes shorter, but the usual timeframe is many weeks. If you watch the police arrive with dogs and the burglars have gotten away, don’t assume the crime hasn’t been solved because it isn’t being solved before your eyes. It may very well be solved next February.

That said, I am still unhappy about several murder victims I autopsied that even the best cops on the force were unable to bring justice. An eleven month old is the worst of them. No I cannot tell that story; it hasn’t been adjudicated. And LIKELY NEVER WILL BE DAMMIT!!!

39

With homicides, if they don’t break the case within 24 hours, or the perp isn’t standing there holding the knife when they arrive (which is very often the case) then they’re probably in for the long haul; weeks or months especially is there’s no obvious prior relationship between the parties.

40

I only have 2 personal anecdotes about police & crime.
In one, I saw some scruffy people loading audiovisual equipmemt into the back of their scruffy station wagon. The suspicious thing was they were doing it at 8pm from the back door of a college classroom with no lights on anywhere. I happened to be standing in the adjacent parking lot yakking with friends & recognized the (humongous 1970s era) gear.

The bad guys drove by us with ther headlights off & just after passing us they turned them on, helpfully illuminating their license plate without having trashed our night vision.

5 minutes later a cop showed up, we gave him the vehicle description & plate #, which he radioed in. He got back an address I recognized as within a couple miles of the school & off he went.

The next morning the local paper had a story. The cop went directly from the college to the to the house, called for some help, and then they found the car & goods in the garage and the people in the house. Total time from crime to arrest, about 20 minutes.

This was in an upper-midldle class suburb of LA. Not the inner city, but not a small town eiher.
In the other story (late 1980s), my garage was broken into & some power tools stolen. I got up in the AM to find my garage door up & the goods gone. No damage & I wondered how they got the garage door up with the electric opener still engaged & no outside switch installed.

Called the cops, somebody came by a couple hours later to take a report. I described what I knew. He said the typical MO was to look for unlocked cars & then look for garage door remotes. D’oh!! I usually left my car unlocked at night & yep, it had a remote in it, although out of plain sight.

As I started to descibe the missing property, he started telling me what else I was missing! Seems that at about 3am a cop buddy of his had seen some folks cruising our area very slowly with headlights off. That aroused his curiosity & after a brief chase he had 4 bad guys & a trunk full of power tools & golf clubs & whatnot. He & my cop were trading stories at shift change when this one came up.

So the bad guys were in jail & my stuff was in the evidence cage before I even woke up to find the crime scene!

This was in Las Vegas, not some 3-cop small town. At 3am on a random Wednesday, there is plenty going on in LV to keep a police force busy. Including catching my perps.

The only problem was they couldn’t release my goods until after the trial, which ended up being 6 months later. Between the crime & the trial I ended up replacing all the tools because I needed them for one project or another. After the trial I had 2 Skilsaws, 2 1/2" drive drill motors, etc., etc. Oh well.
So for me at least, the cops have done a pretty good job over 40+ years. Other than being on the receiving end of occasional (deserved) traffic citations, I’ve had no other first or second person interactions with them. So far the score is good guys 100%, bad guys 0%.