A good aftermarket cat which meets federal emissions standards (not legal for CA/NY) is less than $500 for most vehicles. A CA compliant model can be twice that, or more. The question is, of course, for people who own a car with CA compliant emissions–but don’t live in CA or NY–can you get away with installing the cheaper 48-state version? I assume yes, but hopefully won’t ever have to find out.
As long as police continue to practice the “shoot first, think later” tactics they’ve used to shoot people who didn’t need shooting, and then throw lavish resources into defending both the practice and the officers who murdered their victims, there’s going to continue to be opposition to the police. The “defund the police” movement gained massive traction after a Black man was murdered by torture for supposedly passing a counterfeit $20 (which, by the way, was never actually proven). Passing a counterfeit bill does not merit the death penalty, and even if it did, the cops should not be in the position to pass down and then carry out the sentence.
If we want catalytic converter thefts to stop, the first step is to reform our police. Note that I said reform, not defund even though I do support diverting funds currently used to pay for police intervention in mental health crises for which they are not trained. “Defund the police” is poorly named and poorly marketed, but the intent behind it is sound.
As long as the police are concentrating on running pointless speed traps and arresting people for having small amounts of street drugs in their pockets, not to mention killing people unnecessarily, then they are not concentrating on driving/walking our neighborhoods, learning who the residents are and watching for non-residents doing things they shouldn’t be doing. And that provides opportunity for criminals to steal our catalytic converters.
As long as police adopt a wannabe soldier “thin blue line, us vs them, officers at war with the ‘civilians’” mentality, then they are not doing the job for which we hired them which is to integrate with the community and work toward community safety. And yes, if they are going to continue to decline to do their job in favor of bullying the populace, I would support defunding them and replacing them with people who would actually do what we’re paying them for.
Every traffic stop where a cop pulls a Black guy over because of his skin color while using some lame excuse to convince precisely no one that the stop is justified is not only a societal crime itself, but also a waste of time that could be better spent finding the real criminals who are stealing our catalytic converters.
If any of us went into work and not only failed to do the job we were hired for, but also murdered the janitor, we’d get fired. Why the resistance to doing the same with cops?
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Not all cops are like the ones we see on the news. Unfortunately there are way too many for my liking. I have at least 5 relatives who are in several different positions as police officers in NY, NC and MA. They don’t like cops like Derek Chauvin any more then we do. One of my cousins is in a position to make sure it doesn’t happen in his department. He’s one of the 3 captains.
I’ve personally witnessed a co-worker get pulled over twice by police for no reason. Both times they said he looked like a suspect in a robbery. And both times there were ZERO reported robberies with a 30 mile radius by anyone who remotely looked like my co-worker. Could it be because he was AA and driving a new Infinity? This kinda crap has to stop.
Some of these cities could save a lot of money in wrongful death lawsuits by putting a stop to this crap. Minneapolis paid out an additional $17,000,000 besides the one to George Floyd in 2020 alone.
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I know. In my former career I spent a lot of time with cops. Most of them are not like Chauvin. However, allowing even a minuscule few to be like Chauvin creates problems for the entire profession. Chauvin was a known bad egg long before he murdered Floyd, but he stayed on the force because there are significant mechanisms in place designed to defend cops regardless of whether or not their actions are defensible.
Even though most cops may not be looking to abuse people, they do tend to close ranks around all but the most egregious bad cops. Some of that is because you naturally tend to defend the profession in which you work. Some of it is due to bad training (“above all you must go home at night and other cops need to know that you always have their back,” etc).
The bottom line is that without community trust, even the good cops can’t do their jobs effectively. And part of earning community trust, beyond not murdering people who don’t deserve it, is going to have to be a re-think of the way officers approach policing, right down to the language they use to describe non-cops. Cops are civilians too, and attempting to elevate themselves over the public by referring to us as “civilians,” usually in the same breath as that “thin blue line” crap is counterproductive.
But beyond the institutional attitude shift that’s needed, there’s also an approach to the job shift that’s needed. We’ve had a number of cats stolen from vehicles near my house. I almost never see a cop in the neighborhood. Even when they claim to come into the neighborhood because I called them for a problem, they don’t show up. And then they get mad when I tell them I know they didn’t show up because if they had, I’d have seen their car on my cameras.
Cops need to spend a lot more time interacting with the community, and that includes getting out of the squad car and walking around the neighborhood. We’d have a lot fewer cat thefts and other crimes if the criminals knew the cops tended to hang out in neighborhoods rather than hiding behind trees on the highway looking for easy speeding tickets.
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@Joe-630 catches on quick but I don’t call people names. I was pulled over once because the guy thought I had a beer but it was Coke. Guess that was a crime, huh? I didn’t have a gun, or drugs, and didn’t run. On my way in a couple minutes. In fact a year ago, I was pulled over by a black policeman late at night. No problem again. He was nice and I was nice. What a world. I didn’t end up dead.
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here in NY the police have stand down orders coming from the governor. its not that they do not want to do their jobs.
and its a little unfair to blame all cops for the actions of a few bad ones.
thats like saying one member of CAR TALK gave bad advice, they all must give bad advice.
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Considering how few “good” cops stand up against and work to remove the few “bad” ones, not to mention Police Unions fighting so hard to keep bad cops on the job, I don’t think it is at all. Due to their job, the police should be held to a far higher standard then we are here at the Car Talk Community.
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Already been done. We can’t pay cash for cat converters, copper, and a few other high value items. Check is mailed 3 days later. Material is held for 3 days. ID is required on all purchases, as is tag number. That’s the law, not everyone follows it.
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Hold on a minute…if cops are looking for easy speeding tickets rather than policing the community…were either of the two cases you recently cited (Floyd, and I can’t recall the other) involved in a traffic stop?
Seems to me in most cases if a criminal (even petty crime) complied with what the police said, we wouldn’t have an issue. No, no one “deserves to die” for a petty crime. And I don’t believe police intentionally kill people as a rule. If you have to use force, things escalate. I, for one, would kind of tend to think I was putting myself in harm’s way if I decided to resist the police. And I speak as someone who’s been cuffed a time or two. Take cat converter theft for example. If you’re under a car, you’re a suspect, right? So, let the police do their thing. Even if you’re just under there checking for loose heat shields lol. If you don’t let them detain you, what are they supposed to do? Ask more nicely? Prove they’re a better wrestler? No, you’re getting tazed, or kneed, or whacked with a club. It’ll hurt, and it’ll look inhumane, and ultimately, I suppose you could die.
“Thin blue line” is supposed to mean they’re what separates the citizens from harm, as I understand it. Not an “us and them”. And yes, I agree that going home at the end of the day is more important for the cop than the criminal.
You can’t defund the police and slow converter theft or any other crime. And it would be a bad call to send a social worker alone to…much of any disturbance. So you’d need police there as backup, like you stated. So maybe we need to fund police more! Put a couple of social worker/officers on the payroll. Crime rates are up. Defunding the police and social workers will not help that. Seems to me more police are needed and no one who isn’t committing a crime should have any issue with more police. Besides, they already get paid a pretty low wage (in this area at least) to do a job that requires you to carry a gun for protection. Who’s going to want to do it for less money or with less backup?
I don’t disagree with everything you said, but I do with quite a bit of it. A lot of cops just seem to TRY to be intimidating, and I don’t get the point of that. But then again, if you enforce rules on a daily basis, I guess it’s hard to keep a friendly attitude. Everyone you deal with is probably a liar or has an excuse, etc. So that would get old.
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Sometimes that is called “officer presence”. Their appearance of command of the situation can prevent issues with dealing with a call. Just like a drill sergeant, their presence commands respect and generally a person would obey without further escalation.
Our neighborhood doesn’t have a problem. Everybody is law abiding and gets along. If we see a police car drive by once a week, we wave. Other neighborhoods are like war zones and the policing needs to be different. Get stopped out in western Minnesota and the response will probably be a lot different than in northern Minneapolis. You just can’t stereotype police everywhere.
Now we know what works as far as reducing crime as Rudy demonstrated in NYC years ago. That is a proven case study. Is there another case study where social workers instead of police have reduced crime in a crime ridden city? It’s just so much pandering and ----.
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Thinking again, gets me into trouble every time. Just wondering if catalytic converters had serial numbers when one was stolen put the serial number into a database, try to sell it possession of stolen goods. No serial number no dice.
Can you cite the source on that? I don’t recall seeing that, and I can’t find anywhere that says the governor ordered the police to stop doing their jobs. I’ll respond after I read the article you point me to.
I only cited Floyd, and they were responding to the call from the store owner accusing him of passing the counterfeit money. They did not just happen to come upon Floyd while patroling.
That would be nice, but George Floyd was completely restrained and on the ground, yet he was killed. Philando Castile was doing exactly what the cop told him to do, and got killed. 13-year-old Adam Toledo showed his hands when ordered to by a cop, and got shot anyway. Charles Kinsey was on his back with his arms raised in the air when a Miami cop shot him. He asked the cop why. “I don’t know.”
The idea that a compliant Black man will avoid getting shot by a cop is a myth. It simply doesn’t stand up to reality.
In that case it would be awfully nice if they would stop harming the citizens.
First, you are not a “criminal” just because you are having an interaction with a cop. So yes, if you’re lying under a car and a cop wants to talk to you, and then he gets scared because you are wiggling out from under the car and might have a gun and so he shoots you, that is absolutely a problem.
Second, cops sign up for a job where they know they will sometimes be in danger. They get paid, generally very well (in this area at least), to be in danger. If they wish to then assert that killing unarmed citizens is just the price we have to pay to keep cops safe, then we should not employ them as police officers. Or, put another way, if they’re too scared to do the job without shooting anything that frightens them, then they need to find another line of work.
As you said, the majority of cops don’t shoot people. But the flip side of that is that the majority of people in the country do not shoot police officers, and so cops need to stop pretending that every traffic stop is the one where they will get murdered. I’m not saying they should not be careful, but they also need to get a lot better at assessing situations so that they don’t “get scared” and kill people.
What we really need to do is address their training. Cops are trained to view everyone as a potential cop killer, and are then told that the absolute priority is that they not get killed. That’s wrong-headed. Not everyone is a potential cop killer, and it is not OK to shoot someone who is not a danger just because you think they might be one.
Through training, we are scaring the hell out of cops, and that needs to stop. We are telling them the woods are full of monsters, and then giving them a gun and telling them to go explore the forest. Of course they’re going to be terrified, and they’re going to want to shoot anything that startles them. With such training, it’s not at all surprising that we end up with trigger-happy cops.
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I dunno. Databases are usually out of date though. I had to replace my cat that rusted off. I don’t even remember what I did with the old one, but if it had a serial number, would I have to prove it was my car to stay out of jail? If I sold the car or junked it, someone needs to update the database and who would that be, DMV, police, FBI? Of course in the old days all we had was a rusted out muffler that no one would bother stealing. Progress and EPA created the problem? What’s new? happens over and over down that crooked path of unintended consequences. Of course then in some places unless the cat is worth more than $900, no crime is committed anyway.
it was told to us by 2 police officers that responded to a call made by us. 2 weeks ago my brother-in-law was driving my 90 year old mother back from the doctors. there were a dozen of atv riders on the main 2 lane road each way. they were pulling wheelies and purposely tying up traffic. when my brother-in-law gently tapped on the horn so he could pass they started attacking his vehicle. when he got home he called. they responded, wrote a report and said there is nothing they could do because they have stand down orders and it comes from the governor. I think thats better than a 2nd hand news article.
Stand down to what? Got to go to NYC end of August,
@cdaquila - looks to be off the rails…
this was in suffolk county ny. but Im sure its just not for just here. 2 cops were shot in NY city over the weekend. I didn’t here why yet. crime is out of control in the city. cut 2 billion from police budget and did away with under cover units. the police have no backing from the government.
Where could they put the serial numbers that a grinder could not get at to remove it but still be readable by whoever needs to read it?
Unless, of course, the cops misunderstood what the governor said, or were lying about what he said…
If the governor of NY issued an executive order forbidding cops from doing their jobs, I guarantee it’d be international news immediately. It didn’t happen.
Waiting for a news article on many subjects will be a long wait. As discussed many times already many items are simply not reported. Even when reported you need to read with much discrimination to get at any actual facts and not opinions. Murder of not death of . . . Got to be kidding though not knowing crime and assaults are not rampant in NYC. Couple days ago a 23 year old slashed in the chest coming out of a restaurant after ignoring catcalls. Wear armor.
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