The worst of it is that money forfeited is NOT returned to the person it was stolen from. This is one of those things that is so obvious everyone thinks that this is what happens but in fact does not happen in many cases. The police may themselves sell the recovered stolen goods instead of returning them. You don't have any recourse.
So the only thing you can achieve by reporting a theft is that someone gets subjected to the US justice system (assuming they do anything at all). It is highly unlikely you get anything back. So you shouldn't do it to recover your goods.
Furthermore, reporting anything to the police has extra consequences:
1) they will investigate, and may find something wrong with you
2) they may report it to other government organizations which may use it in ways you did not anticipate and really don't want (e.g. child services: your house was broken into and is "not livable")
3) just the association, or that the neighborhood sees police officers near/in your house will spread and may have consequences.
There's nothing to gain from using the justice system and everything to lose.
While these things happen, it's an overly negative view. A citizen reporting a theft has a very low probability of a negative outcome from his interaction with the police.
>nothing to gain from using the justice system
Insurance may require the theft to be reported before they cover any claims.
> Insurance may require the theft to be reported before they cover any claims
Yes, that's the reason to report.
Another reason not to, if you don't have insurance: creepy cops being creepy at you. Story time:
Walking home with my then-housemate after dinner that involved drinking, we were mugged. Minor violence, lost our wallets.
I called the cops. They wanted to come the next day to do an interview, which I declined, pointing out they weren't going to try to find the wallets, so what's the point? At which point cop starts getting weird, first saying they need their statistics for better funding. I still decline, and he says "Well, we'll send someone anyway" and hangs up.
Sure enough, a cop shows up the next day. I tell him I don't need his services and he starts pressuring me for a report. At this point, I'm pissed and tell him to leave; he makes vague noises about maybe not responding to this block very quickly in the future; I barely manage not to say something really rude that most likely would have escalated things.
My policy now: if I'll probably die anyway, or if it involves enough money that I can't ignore it, I might call the cops. Otherwise I'll take my chances that inviting more shitty people to a shitshow will just turn it worse.
You are conflating two different things. Asset forfeiture for assets used in a crime and asset seizure of stolen assets. The former the government generally keeps as it has no rightful owner (eg a car purchased with drug proceeds) while the latter is dispersed among aggrieved parties as equitably as possible based on the amount recovered (Bernie Madoff; Mt Gox; David Brooks; etc).
> conflating two different things ... asset seizure of stolen assets
Yeah, seems like I was, in the general case of stolen assets, sorry. My example applies to the more limited case of sale of stolen assets to a buyer, where there's enough conspiracy between seller and buyer, and the buyer is an unpleasant career fence. It happens often enough: there's a specialized network of fences (dealers in stolen goods). Given the efforts the parties make to keep their operation covert, conspiracy is easy for the government to allege. And the civil forfeiture against the money used to buy the goods proceeds without a hitch. Yet the fence is not indicted.It happens at scale, you can be sure that false positives (honest citizens who happen to look bad) get burned too.
Except of course that if a car is purchased with drug proceeds the government will keep the car AND get the money back from the vendor if they can.
So if they actually manage to do that (obviously people don't generally commit crimes because they're swimming in money), then no, this is wrong information.
I don’t know if you’ve recently taken a look at what else is allowed to happen in America, but I think this is perfectly in line with the other insanity.
It’s interesting, since in daily life it seems almost normal.
The fact that people like the idea of revenge and getting back at their attackers? The fact that corruption is rarely a serious problem as long as a justice system functions relatively ok? Because some parts of America are chaotic hellholes?
So the only thing you can achieve by reporting a theft is that someone gets subjected to the US justice system (assuming they do anything at all). It is highly unlikely you get anything back. So you shouldn't do it to recover your goods.
Furthermore, reporting anything to the police has extra consequences:
1) they will investigate, and may find something wrong with you
2) they may report it to other government organizations which may use it in ways you did not anticipate and really don't want (e.g. child services: your house was broken into and is "not livable")
3) just the association, or that the neighborhood sees police officers near/in your house will spread and may have consequences.
There's nothing to gain from using the justice system and everything to lose.