The logistics of this is kind of interesting to me. Even if each of the victims reported them to the police, the value of the items from each theft wouldn't add up to much in the grand scheme of things. Construction equipment might raise more of an eyebrow, but the hand tools would even be noticed. Unless...someone was collecting all of those reports and analyzing them bigData style, o wait, we're talking about the police here.
Of course it was a civilian victim tired of the cops being unable to do anything. I say unable vs unwilling even though I'd also suggest unwilling, but I digress. It's the kind of theft ring that would just not motivate anyone to look at anything. I wouldn't be surprised to see that this has been going on for a really long time. It's kind of genius
> Even if each of the victims reported them to the police, the value of the items from each theft wouldn't add up to much in the grand scheme of things.
I don't think you know how expensive commercial power tools and accessories are..
They cited 15k items with a range of 3-5 million. At 3 million that's $200 an item. Hardly peanuts.
The article also says the tools likely came from a variety of sources
You say that like they knew it was there after investigating lots of very small value crimes which led to a very big take down.
Instead, a couple of cops followed up with a gift wrapped solved case of "locate my stolen items at this exact location", and stumbled into a big take down just because they decided today they'll do some real police work.
Had this one civilian not been pissed off enough to plant trackers, this caper would have continued for years.
I don't think you know anything about me to claim I don't know the value of tools commercial or not. I have quite the collection, come from a family of construction where my grandfather was a custom cabinet maker where I grew up in his woodshop. It's amazing how people just assume so wildly wrong.
Even at $200, that doesn't even qualify as anything more than a misdemeanor. The police are just not going to care if the victim even bother reporting it. I've had my battery powered lawn equipment stolen within the time it took me to push my mower to the front of the house and then walk back to the garage to grab the now stolen items. Of course I didn't report it to the police. Why would I waste my time as well as theirs? I even specifically qualified some equipment like construction equipment would potentially raise an eyebrow implying their value is more than my weekend warrior power tools.
Talking about totally being so far off base, and missing the point that you even attempt to use math to get to. However, even your math totally misses the point. If you think $200 gets the police excited, you are grossly putting too much faith in the system. It doesn't matter at all that somebody else thinks $200 is hardly peanuts. It doesn't move the needle at all in motivating someone doing some investigating. That is the point I was making. It's the perfect crime to run for a long time as even if it is reported, nobody is going to do anything about it.
Maybe you are familiar. But the point of calculating per item was to show its easy to take thousands of dollars out of the back of a truck in an instant. Most are targeted, as in this case as it was the second time, and not a crime of opportunity like you experienced.
They guy was a successful score in the past. More than likely, it was the same people coming back to see what else could be taken. Especially now seeing it was a large operation makes me even more confident that would be likely. Not really sure what your point is at all. Except you seem to think that $200 is enough to make a cops investigative socks go up and down which is the point of contention. Even an ant hill can get massive one grain of dirt at a time. Lots of ~$200 items adds up to a big number, but again, individually they are nothing to get police excited about at all. It's not even enough to claim on insurance. You're just really trying for some unknown reason to hold on to this fallacy of yours.
Because they were specifically shown the guy's items were there. They didn't find it for him. They took the data provided, asked for a warrant, and then proceeded from there. How is that confusing? It's not like they were expecting to find what they did. I'm actually surprised they even did that. There are lots of stories of people showing the police their Find It showing their device at a specific location and doing not a damn thing with that information.
Of course it was a civilian victim tired of the cops being unable to do anything. I say unable vs unwilling even though I'd also suggest unwilling, but I digress. It's the kind of theft ring that would just not motivate anyone to look at anything. I wouldn't be surprised to see that this has been going on for a really long time. It's kind of genius