

Robbery Suspect Tracked by GPS and Killed - WestCoastJustin
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/17/nyregion/robbery-suspect-tracked-by-gps-and-killed.html

======
brownbat
US drug abuse patterns have suddenly shifted over the past decade.

Prescription painkiller overdoses used to hover around the number of overdoses
from heroin. In a few short years, they increased sixfold.

[http://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/public-
health...](http://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/public-
health/heroin-use-in-the-united-states-data-and-recent-trends)

[http://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/PainkillerOverdoses/index.html](http://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/PainkillerOverdoses/index.html)

[http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/topics-in-
brief/prescr...](http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/topics-in-
brief/prescription-drug-abuse)

[http://www.drugabuse.gov/about-nida/noras-
blog/2013/07/presc...](http://www.drugabuse.gov/about-nida/noras-
blog/2013/07/prescription-painkillers-are-claiming-more-womens-lives)

"Lojack in everything" is really cool, could push us towards a theftless
society. We still have a lot of work to help people escape drug dependency,
though.

Planet Money had an episode on Suboxone, a pill used to treat addiction, that
was a pretty alarming look inside the insanity of US drug policy:
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/07/31/157665908/episode-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/07/31/157665908/episode-391-the-
anti-addiction-pill-thats-big-business-for-drug-dealers)

They see Suboxone as a sort of "miracle drug," a few people object to that
description: [http://www.thefix.com/content/trapped-
suboxone](http://www.thefix.com/content/trapped-suboxone)

Either way, the podcast does a great job at illustrating just how complicated
and intimately political pharmaceutical manufacturing has become.

~~~
rdl
I think consumer goods getting cheap relative to real property and other non-
stealable things, and expensive things becoming online services with
activation components, already is pushing the returns to theft down.
Certainly, ATMs, credit cards, ACH payroll, etc. has pushed the returns to
theft down (vs when people carried a lot more cash, or kept it in their
homes...)

~~~
jgalt212
yes, as per Piketty, r > g

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rayiner
The technology has little to do with the punchline of this story. A convict
and a suspect in an armed robbery pointed a gun at NYC police officers. He was
shot and killed. Nothing new or unusual.

------
ihsw
How long until people start using portable RF detectors/sweepers?

How long until people use these devices to manipulate police officers into
shooting who they want?

~~~
lmartel
Hopefully someone innocent wouldn't aim a handgun at a police officer.

~~~
hga
Nothing hopeful about it. There's something like 8 million citizens who are
licensed to carry concealed right now, plus no license is required in Alaska,
Arizona, Wyoming, and Vermont (never was for the latter). I'm one of them, and
we by definition don't routinely aim our handguns at police officers, else
we'd at minimum lose our license.

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cottonseed
Last summer, a guy held up a pharmacy near where I was living in Somerville
and dropped the (lojack'ed) containers in our garbage.

~~~
dredmorbius
And ... ?

What sort of response did this prompt?

~~~
cottonseed
A bunch of cops showed up. Oddly, they didn't seem particularly interested in
talking to us. They immediately suspected a neighbor who had a history of
trouble with the law. They even briefly had him in cuffs outside his house,
but let him go when they caught they caught the real guy elsewhere.

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scalene
Is it worth keeping drugs off the non prescription market if it just leads to
robberies and the killing of those robbers?

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tgb
"As officers closed in, the man pointed a handgun in the direction of at least
one of the officers; one or more of the officers opened fire, killing the man,
the police said."

Why "one or more"? Is this unknown to the police or do the police just not
report such things to the press?

~~~
Argorak
"one" implies that the officer who fired the deadly shot can be easily
determined.

~~~
gojomo
Some have suggested all ammo sold should be traceable to the buyer. If that's
a good idea, perhaps we could start with the much-smaller task tracking all
ammo issued to law enforcement. (A chemical-tagging mechanism like SelectDNA
could help identify kill-shots even when the bullet passes through the victim
or is otherwise unrecoverable.)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SelectaDNA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SelectaDNA)

~~~
hga
Even at handgun energies, I find it difficult to imagine DNA surviving the
heat and flame associated with firing, and enough being recoverable in the
pass through case.

Actually, the smokeless powder in handgun ammo pretty much doesn't finish
burning up by the time the bullet exits, resulting in a muzzle flash problem
at nighttime, and that burning powder ought to do a good job of burning up any
chemical taggant. It's probably telling the gun grabbers have never seriously
suggested this (vs. tagging powder or brass).

Then there's the traceability problem. Lots of ammo is bought in bulk,
especially by police departments, it would cost vastly more to get customized
ammo for each officer, be a total nightmare to try to get it to designated
officers and keep it isolated to them. You can't realistically demand an
officer never hand a spare magazine to another, especially in a firefight, and
ammo is generally a fungible item.

It would _never_ work in a civilian context, it would be vastly more expensive
as noted above, we'd boycott any manufacturer who tried such a stunt, and
since in the US we buy the vast majority of ammo it would stick.

Also note US civilian ammo production for all types is above 12 _billion_
rounds per year, and I've read rimfire ammo (e.g. .22 LR, not considered by
almost everyone as suitable for self-defense) is only 3-4 billion of that.
Those numbers strongly suggest taggant approaches are impractical.

------
rdl
From a purely tech nerd perspective, I'm interested in how these pill bottle
tracers work. Do they just rf beacon, or do they maintain a cell data link and
periodically report position.

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negativity
...as for the technology used, it's kind of like the 1970's-era transponder
from the movie No Country For Old Men (except GPS instead).

------
gojomo
Eventually, drones will be able to follow and even shoot the suspect. Don't
worry, other specialized "judge & jury" drones flying in close formation will
ensure due-process is rapidly followed.

Simply because it's a great story on some related issues, I'll again recommend
Neal Stephenson's "Jipi and the Paranoid Chip":

[http://www.vanemden.com/books/neals/jipi.html](http://www.vanemden.com/books/neals/jipi.html)

