It’s Petty When It Happens To Someone Else
Currently, 17 percent of American homeowners have a smart video surveillance device, and unit sales are expected to double by 2023… The popularity of these devices has led to the “porch pirate gotcha” film genre, a sort of America’s Funniest Home Videos of petty crime.
In the pages of The Atlantic, our sympathies are solicited. Though not for the people being robbed, of course:
The first time Ganave Fairley got busted for stealing a neighbour’s Amazon package, she was just another porch thief unlucky to be caught on tape.
The words first time and unlucky should perhaps be borne in mind.
The deliveries that were dropped daily on her neighbours’ porches caught her attention. At that point, she didn’t know about the cameras or [neighbourhood watch app] Nextdoor. In the months that followed, the police would find a cache of the neighbours’ belongings and mail in her possession… Her sister told me that Fairley generally sold the packages “for a little bit of nothing, just to get high.”
I sense that some of you may not be feeling overly sympathetic.
Ms Fairley – who invokes racism as a cause of her local notoriety, and whose extensive cache of stolen belongings included other people’s credit cards – is described to us at length and in the softest possible light. We learn of her dysfunctional upbringing, her struggles with a mouldy apartment, and her various drug habits, including “trekking daily to a methadone clinic” – a heroic feat, apparently. Ms Fairley’s failure to attend numerous court dates – for petty theft, mail theft, receiving stolen property, possession of heroin, and child endangerment – is, we learn, due to her having “a lot going on” in her life. In at least one instance, it turns out that what was going on was stealing from a resident she’d previously targeted and who, while being robbed again, was waiting to see Ms Fairley appear in court.
The fact that Ms Fairley is gay is mentioned too, as if that were somehow relevant or an explanation for credit card fraud and chronic thieving. We’re also told, touchingly, that she has “family members’ names tattooed on her neck.”
The author of the piece, Ms Lauren Smiley, informs us that these are crimes “committed by the poorest,” “the Artful Dodgers of the Amazon age” – yes, those charming rascals – before inviting us to feel bad for thieves caught in the act for the umpteenth time:
Stings and porch-pirate footage attract media attention—but what comes next for the thieves rarely gets the same limelight… Offenders may be routed to drug treatment and housing… Those with previous convictions could be eligible for jail time… One [suspect] pleaded guilty to stealing $170.42 worth of goods, including camouflage crew socks and a Call of Duty video game from Amazon, and was sentenced to 14 months of probation.
Readers will note Ms Smiley’s attempt to trivialise habitual thievery by selectively mentioning the contents of packages that were stolen, as if the thieves hadn’t just swiped someone else’s property regardless of the contents, which were, presumably, only discovered later. Not caring what it is you’re stealing and doing it anyway isn’t, I’d suggest, the strongest excuse for habitual criminal behaviour. [As illustrated via Schuler in the comments, here, here and here.] We’re then, inevitably, reminded of “wealth and race disparities,” again with the implication that not being well-off, or having brown skin, is a mitigating circumstance, at least for Ms Smiley and her elevated peers.
Fairley was correct in thinking that, in many cases, Amazon will replace pilfered packages. Her major miscalculation was in thinking that her neighbours would, therefore, just shrug and move on.
Alas, Ms Smiley doesn’t share her home address, along with times at which she would be out or distracted – disclosure of which might have allowed some testing of her own, first-hand reactions.
Update, via the comments:
The direction of Ms Smiley’s sympathies is fairly obvious in the piece, and equally so on Twitter, where she mocks the theft of “Montessori books and dog probiotics,” as if only unimportant possessions were stolen, which is untrue. And as if law-abiding people weren’t being targeted repeatedly – to the extent that they were actually being robbed by Ms Fairley while they were in court waiting to see the woman answer for her previous crimes. This quip about dog probiotics is immediately followed with ostentatious agonising about how our chronic thief and credit card fraudster “lost darn-near everything.” As if Ms Fairley somehow wasn’t the author of her own miseries, determinedly so, and somehow hadn’t wrecked or rejected endless opportunities to improve her situation.
Ms Smiley also seems offended by the fact that Amazon’s Loss Prevention Manager was “cheering arrests” of the people robbing his company and its customers. And, of course, there’s the obligatory minimising waffle about “the root problems” – which are never quite specified or causally explained, but which apparently don’t include bewilderingly bad choices, pathological selfishness, and choosing to rob your neighbours again and again and again.
It’s an odd thing, being expected to identify with, and sympathise with, someone who repeatedly demonstrates that she isn’t at all inclined to return the favour. And who, when faced with the consequences of her own antisocial predation, promptly invokes racism as a diversion and excuse. Someone so profoundly selfish that she endangers her own children and steals from her own neighbours, who are treated only with contempt. As people from whom things can be taken. 
We have a lot of dumb, millennial journalists who don’t remember the 70s and early 80s.
We have a lot of dumb, millennial journalists who don’t remember the 70s and early 80s.
I knew a lot of young progressive types back then who were at least this factually ignorant and morally clueless.
as if objecting to the repeated theft of your possessions were just bourgeois fussing
On Smiley’s Twitter thread there is one response about leaving packages on porches is a “poor business model”.
Yep, all you online buyers … YOU are the cause of the rise in petty crime.
The Atlantic, as usual, teaches us the REAL progressive lesson, the one most progressives who can afford to religiously obey: avoid being around black people, they just can’t help themselves and *have* to be criminals. The “Atlantic” thinks the cause is “racism”, the KKK that it’s low IQ, but the bottom line is the same.
From Ms. Smiley’s twitter:
Root problems don’t rack up charges on stolen credit cards.
Incoming!
Yep, all you online buyers … YOU are the cause of the rise in petty crime.
I blame all of the owners or Peter-Principle middle managers of businesses large enough to need and have a mail room for company policies prohibiting personal parcel deliveries to one’s office. It’s THEIR choices that cause all this petty crime — not the choices of the petty criminals (by no means! I may faint at the mere suggestion!).
the obligatory minimising waffle about “the root problems” – which are never quite specified or causally explained, but which apparently don’t include bewilderingly bad choices, pathological selfishness, and choosing to rob your neighbours again and again and again.
That.
“the root problems”
In the eyes of the left, the “root problems” are always racism, capitalism, and white people–never defective people and even defective cultures that teach kids that it is okay to steal, rob, or even murder.
And hence we see the left condemning the punishment of habitual criminals as “persecution” while condoning and even applauding the actual persecution of people who express right-of-center opinions with everything from harassment and silencing to deprivation of employment and actual violence. We saw this in the Soviet Union, where political prisoners were treated far, far more harshly than thieves and thugs because Marxist ideology taught that real criminals were merely hapless victims of capitalism while political dissenters were enemies to be destroyed.
The bien pensants at the Atlantic may pretend to be moderate, reasonable people, but their ideas derive directly from Marx and his disciples.
Skeptic: “£they just can’t help themselves and *have* to be criminals”
SJWs are way more racist than most racists. They write as if back people are inherent savages who can’t behave in a civilised fashion.
The city of Seattle blows all of this off as mere “property crime” because property is so incredibly unimportant and, if you ask the egregious Democratic Socialist Kshama Sawant or nearly all of the rest of the city council, downright evil. So evil, in fact, that they are entirely indifferent and unaware that the police will not give you the time of day for a lousy “property crime.”
But what these dimwits – criminals and the city council (BIRM) – always overlook is that decent people had to work to earn the money to buy the items these dirtbags are stealing. That means, when “porch pirates” (way, way too cute a name) steal our stuff, they are stealing a part of our lives, maybe just five minutes here, maybe a whole hour there, seldom as much as a whole day but not for lack of trying. And that’s why I never ever have anything delivered to my house.
while condoning and even applauding the actual persecution of people who express right-of-center opinions
Latest case in point.
But what these dimwits – criminals and the city council (BIRM) – always overlook is that decent people had to work to earn the money to buy the items these dirtbags are stealing. That means, when “porch pirates” (way, way too cute a name) steal our stuff, they are stealing a part of our lives, maybe just five minutes here, maybe a whole hour there, seldom as much as a whole day but not for lack of trying. And that’s why I never ever have anything delivered to my house.
I think you’re the second person to point this out in the last week or so. So that makes at least three of us that understand this. Do you suppose Jeffery Epstein did not kill himself there are others?
Re: “Montessori books and dog probiotics”: Smiley evidently doesn’t realize that the genius of any capitalist economy is that the buyer is happy trading money to the seller in exchange for whatever s/he buys. She has no idea what the end destination of any item shipped is. She doesn’t know whether it is a gift or for the person the package is actually addressed to; she hasn’t a clue how long it was searched for or what effort went into making sure it was correct. That there might be any number of reasons for buying dog probiotics (most of which involve a sick and suffering pet), or that maybe Montessori books aren’t commonplace at the local bookstore — assuming there is one — none of this stuff matters, because once you have had something shipped via UPS, it belongs to whichever creep gets to it first.
they are stealing a part of our lives
There’s a meme I like that has the text “I have never paid for anything with money, only hours and minutes of my life that I will never get back.”
My poor cat has gut problems that require probiotics, otherwise he suffers terribly with his evacuations. If anyone stole his probiotics, I want to run them down with my car. I imagine the examples of montessori books and dog probiotics were selected because they *sound* stupid or frivolous, but they are sneering at people who value: 1) education, and 2) responsible pet ownership (those stupid assholes).
On Smiley’s Twitter thread there is one response about leaving packages on porches is a “poor business model”.
I doubt that would apply to any other crime of course. Don’t people always scream ‘blaming the victim?’
That.
Well, it’s a little odd, being expected to identify with, and sympathise with, someone who repeatedly demonstrates that she isn’t inclined to return the favour. And who, when faced with the consequences of her own antisocial predation, promptly invokes racism as a diversion and excuse. Someone so profoundly selfish that she endangers her own children and steals from her own neighbours, who are treated only as something to violate and exploit. “Just to get high.”
I suppose it’s a pretty good example of an otherwise engaging article being soured and logically undermined by leftist ideology and its perverse moral assumptions.
I also despise the argument that victims of petty crime are just ‘losing stuff’. People, especially the old and vulnerable, suffer beyond the loss of their possessions, there is also the sense of violation and the fear that it generates.
This. And the fear is 100% justified.
How many of these dirtbags also test the front door to see if it’s unlocked? How many home burglaries and violent home invasions begin this way?
Many more than dipshits like Smiley want to acknowledge.
In my small burg, an elderly woman was murdered by a boyfriend-girlfriend team of druggies who then torched her home and left.
This stuff happens, which makes the snark coming from the likes of Ms. Smiley particularly aggravating.
Oh, and by the way, here’s a senior editor at The Atlantic sharing her thoughts on the subject.
It’s stories like this from California that I’m often reminded of the scene from The Magnificent Seven. If God did not want them sheared, he would not have made them sheep. There are times I feel Calvera’s point. Perhaps we get a group together, ride into California, and steal their stuff. Well, so long as we keep it under $950 a pop. Which after hitting four or five Home Depots or Targets a piece should rater easily pay our expenses. Especially for anyone who lives close to CA. Hell, the employees at these stores are trained not to interfere with you if they see you shoplift. We walk in, take stuff, walk out. Who’s with me, Guild of Evil? It’s not like there are any Steve McQueens, Yul Brynners, or Charles Bronsons left in those snowflake, gun free zone jurisdictions.
Well, so long as we keep it under $950 a pop. Which after hitting four or five Home Depots or Targets a piece should rater easily pay our expenses
Yep. You can walk into a mall and go from store to store in a day and steal thousands of dollars of stuff and all you will get is a citation as long as what you took from each store is less than $950. Indeed, as bail is being phased out, even if you were arrested, you’d be cited out in 12 hours.
Indeed, as bail is being phased out, even if you were arrested, you’d be cited out in 12 hours.
Well, it’s settled then. We ride at dawn! And no, we don’t need no steeenking badgers, so you Wisconsin boys stay on the porch.
The real message, of course, is “We hate you and so we will unleash plagues on you whenever we can.”
Status frustration’ll do that to some people, esp those with a lot of unearned self-esteem.
Who’s with me, Guild of Evil?
LEEROYYY JENKINS!
The bien pensants at the Atlantic may pretend to be moderate, reasonable people, but their ideas derive directly from Marx and his disciples.
It bears repeating that Marx himself was a parasite who mooched off of others while he wrote his drivel, and that Engels lived off the labor of workers in the factory he’d inherited from his father.
So, basically, neither one of them was much acquainted with the concept of “work.”
“Give me just one generation of youth, and I’ll transform the whole world.” ― Vladimir Lenin
Very much related, pregnant Florida woman shoots home intruders who were pistol whipping and beating her husband.
Assorted leftists are upset.
“Murder” = preventing the person beating your husband like a Chinese gong from maiming or killing him. OK, if you say so.
RTWT, some of the other replies from are equally moonbatty.
Great link Darleen.
” What isn’t a good thing is that much of the current offerings published recently aren’t about helping children see themselves in a book but indoctrinating children into a particular political and ideological persuasion. ”
Anecdotally I’ve noticed the same in Australian publishing and bookstores. The result seems to be, mostly, progressive/secular hagiographies: turning a ragtag bunch of protesters into saints for the next generation.
In one sense this will all prove to be laughably ineffective – the marketing is effectively being targeted not at kids, but at well-meaning progressive parents. This is the norm of one generation that the next generation will rebel against..
In another sense it’s awful for our culture short term; classics are unlikely to emerge in such an environment.
classics are unlikely to emerge in such an environment.
Yeah, I’m not seeing a “Anne of Green Gables” in any of those offerings.
Bring back dueling.
Outlawery would be better, as it would not require the perpetrators to keep appointments.
Unfortunately we are far more likely to see a continuation of the present trend towards classifying non-criminals and non-leftists as political outlaws, a sort of dhimmi/helot class any leftist or client of the left can get free punches in on.
We saw this in the Soviet Union, where political prisoners were treated far, far more harshly than thieves and thugs because Marxist ideology taught that real criminals were merely hapless victims of capitalism while political dissenters were enemies to be destroyed.
Likewise, Cuba:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004ASOQTO/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
It bears repeating that Marx himself was a parasite who mooched off of others while he wrote his drivel, and that Engels lived off the labor of workers in the factory he’d inherited from his father.
See also: Muhammad, again (his grandfather, then his uncle, then the wealthy, middle-aged widow that was his first wife, then the rest of his life taking a 20% cut from his followers’ and mercenaries’ looting and sex-slave harvesting).
[places hands over mouth to smother laughter …. fails]
Just found this:
via Yeyo
Very much related, pregnant Florida woman shoots home intruders who were pistol whipping and beating her husband.
Assorted leftists are upset.
And so the leftists show to us that they are not morally qualified to be citizens of a free republic.
[this made me laugh]
https://twitter.com/mad_liberals/status/1192167614484750336
via Yeyo
Also this.
Needless to say, it’s a point we’ve illustrated here quite a few times.
Also this
Ah, David…you missed the most beautiful part. It’s one of those Thingsthatneverhappened. Well, at least according to someone further down the Twit thread. Apparently Target Canada (presumably it’s where this alyssa lives) ceased operating in 2015….
https://twitter.com/j02hn/status/1191562356394012672
La vita è bella. You’ve gotta stop and smell the roses.
It’s one of those Thingsthatneverhappened.
Either way, you find yourself wondering which is more peculiar – having sociopathic tendencies, or merely aspiring to sociopathic tendencies and dishonestly bragging about acting them out.
Strange times.
you find yourself wondering which is more peculiar – having sociopathic tendencies, or merely aspiring to sociopathic tendencies and dishonestly bragging about acting them out
Heh, exactly. Meant to point that out as well. I think there’s a lot of this out there. They not only make up Thingsthatneverhappened where they are the victims of nasty Trumpitytrumptrumps or similar raaaaaaaaycists but a lot of the bragging about doing revenge crap like this Thingthatneverhappened is somewhat encouraged by the fact that the police, especially in leftist enclaves, fail to address the vast majority of such political-infused crimes that do happen. Thus the more timid can prop up their street cred without having to put forth any real effort. Yes, I believe they are that lazy.
To me the tell is in the amount of detail in the brag. They subconsciously think they need some detail to make their fake story believable. It’s a bit of a tell with weak liars. But a thug who actually commits such a crime and is willing to brag about it will be much more vague in the details. “Yo, I thumped a racist trumpster and took their wallet” not “Yo, yo, yo, I thumped this guy wearing a MAGA hat down on Bleaker street and threw it in the trash at the Exxon station”.
Yes, I believe they are that lazy.
Excuse me for quoting myself but re-reading that I’m reminded of an old (truly) racist joke that ended, “They’re afraid their kids would be too lazy to steal”. Seems like a lot of racist thoughts and ideas and such from 30-40 years ago are behaviors that some of these fools actually aspire to.
Right, heading off to an early dinner with the in-laws. Tomorrow’s ephemera is scheduled to materialise just after midnight.
Play nicely. Use coasters.
Oh goody, your Newspeak word of the day.
the marketing is effectively being targeted not at kids, but at well-meaning progressive parents
Feminists, ruining Christmas mornings since 1969.
Eight books on Ruth Bader Ginsburg, mostly for ages 4-8 … surely even childfree aunts in Brooklyn would have the sense not to buy this stuff for their niece (or nephew as would be interjected by the kind of person who promotes these kinds of books). The bigger market must be bulk buying from school libraries and from book-of-the-month schemes supposedly for encouraging children to read.
schemes supposedly for encouraging children to read.
Successfully encouraging kids to read is to find out what interests them. In the 80s (when my girls were little) Progressive educrats despaired of “Goosebump” books (kinda like the comic book moral panic of the 1950s)… I think I bought everyone of those because my girls devoured them. The twins enjoyed them, but loved books on snakes, bugs and dinosaurs even more.
My stepson loved Greek mythology … but I guess that’s out now.
Oh goody, your Newspeak word of the day
As Steveageddon said…
“I call it being self-partnered.”
I’ve been encouraged on a number of occasions to go partner myself. Other times, I’ve been encouraged to partner a rolling doughnut whilst airborne.
None of these suggestions have been offered in a friendly way. Emma may want to think this through a bit more.
“Self-partnered” is oxymoronic, as partnerships require >1. Shouldn’t Ms Watson use the “sole proprietor” designation?
She’s filing business taxes, right? I didn’t read the article. I was too disappointed by her hideous bangs (I’m still right about this – and needing to go back 40 years for a handful of exceptions only proves it).
her hideous bangs
Heh.
Album title.
her hideous bangs
Sounds to me like an 18th century stage farce by Sheridan or Goldsmith. Could be the sequel to “She Stoops to Conquer.”
…and needing to go back 40 years for a handful of exceptions…
Back 40 years, OK; she is now 43, so this ain’t a picture of her as a 3 year old, then there is always this lady, and this one.
I think maybe you need to get out more, or perhaps, this may help…
I think maybe you need to get out more
All those images are of properly done bangs. The image of Emma looks like what happens when the 4 year old gets hold of the scissors to cut her own bangs.