Cargo trains in LA raided for Amazon packages

I had to laugh at around 1:15: “This video shows a police officer chasing suspects off the tracks, but he didn’t make an arrest.” More accurate would have been “This video shows a police officer moseying in the general direction of some unidentified people off in the distance.”

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I’ve seen worse:

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not exactly the japan bullet train

If you think that’s slow, you should see the speed of the Amtrak passenger trains that have to give freight trains the right of way in the U.S.

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I am not saying it did not happen…but, I am getting the same vibe from this story as I am the ones about rampant shoplifting in like San Francisco

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Back in the early '80s, when I had no car, I’d frequently hop a slow-moving freight to visit my girlfriend across town in Dallas, since they had to slow down for grade crossings.

One memorable night, the driver apparently decided that such rules were for chumps, and started accelerating shortly after I was aboard. As we approached my “stop”, I had to decide between jumping and risking a broken ankle or ending up in Houston.

I hate Houston.

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Fair enough. This is just outside the area where they’d be switched or loaded/unloaded. Clearly it’s a problem, has been a problem for quite a while, and they still do nothing about it because there’s no money in preventing it. There IS money in ginning up a lie about rampant crime so that they can get police beefed up on the public dime while private companies keep hoarding their profits.

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They are stroking the anti-homeless and soft-on-crime narratives, hyping the gang theft meme, and carrying corporate America’s water to boot. Like VISA with credit card fraud e.g., they don’t like to talk about it, because everyone is still turning a profit, and we all know where money comes from.

The shippers and the vendors are insured. The buyers are merely inconvenienced. The homeless make a buck. The insurers are still profitable. The trash can be scooped up if we hafta. Capitalism built this. What’s the problem?

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I was actually expecting him to help himself to a few packages, but that most likely didn’t happen until he was sure the cameras were off.

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TSA has a mandate to secure ALL American transport, not just feel up cute girls and grope guys at the airport.

TSA has almost completely ignored the freight rail segment other than some token efforts in marshalling yards and ports done mostly at the railroads’ expense.

Robbing trains in interstate commerce used to be a serious federal felony but like the Post Office, the Feds no longer seem to much care what happens to your stuff. (Unless it’s pro “vote by mail” and then some parts of Congress will take action because god forbid it should be easy to vote.)

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This sort of thing pops up into news reports every so often. In Chicago a few years ago there was a problem with folks stealing firearms from freight trains. Back in the 1980s there was a problem with folks stealing from slow moving Conrail trains in Hudson County, New Jersey.

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Huge amounts of wasted materials in the litter and discarded packages? A rich country that prefers petty thievery to spending money on housing and basic employment/support?

According to Union Pacific, “Union Pacific agents have made hundreds of arrests, but less than half are booked and some are released in less than 24 hours.”. https://www.up.com/aboutup/community/inside_track/la-cargo-threats-aggressive-response-220116.htm

I’m not sure that I’m a big fan of UP’s prose style, which left me cold and clammy. Perhaps, that’s in keeping with UP’s carefully burnished image as a faceless corporation?

Bought a pair of shoes from Walmart a few weeks ago, fit great so I ordered two more pairs last week. They said they’d be here this past Monday.

I just checked and like the post above shipping is delayed with no update.

So I wonder who is wearing my shoes.

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I ordered some N95 and KN95 masks on December 24, supposedly to arrive by January 8, and haven’t received them. The company says they handed the package over to UPS, but there’s been no update to the tracking info at all since the tracking number was created on the day I ordered them.

The company says I should just wait, because other customers have reported their packages suddenly showing up late without there being any scanning or updates.

Impossible to know whether it’s been stolen somewhere along the way, or if it’s just that UPS is totally overwhelmed at this point from all the online ordering plus employees being out sick with Covid plus probably hiring inexperienced temp workers.

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I orrdered an antique book from France (for an insane amount of money), after the initial updates (package awaiting pickup, label created) , it sort of hung around for two weeks in limbo (somehere in Le Havre, on board a boat, who the hell knows), until it was delivered and all those intermediate entries sort of updated themselves. Package trackers give an illusion of control, but I don’t know if they work like that in reality.

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I put in an order to my pharmacy for my next prescription of insulin pump reservoirs on the 7th; they’re usually here by the next week. This past Tuesday (11 days later), I’m on the phone with my endocrinology nurse getting “unofficial” information on how long I can refill the same reservoir, after which she took the opportunity to get some new ones to me ASAP. They’re waiting at home for me right now, luckily.

Since the supplies for the pumps are provided by an outside party, even though I still put in the order through the VA’s pharmacy tool, I don’t get a tracking number, nor do my doctors. I wonder if whoever has your shoes has my reservoirs, or more likely the syringes used to refill said reservoirs!

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I had a package that was delayed during transit since mid Dec and it shipped out of California so i was 100% convinced that it was stolen, but on Tuesday it randomly came up again. It made a trip to AZ and then back to CA for whatever reason, the person i talked to floated the idea that the zipcode might’ve been wrong but i won’t know if that was the case until i see the package. Still it sucks for the people whose packages did get stolen or were indirectly impacted by these thefts.

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I bought a DJI drone in the before tines, I knew it was coming from China but I thought importers or at least large importers had some sort of fast track through customs, nope, they do not.

It got hung up in Alaska for a couple weeks and then one day the tracker was updated that it was on it’s way.

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