Things to do while unemployed and bored

[PawPaw]

I've been a cop for over 30 years, and I tell everyone the same thing when I'm sitting around in blue jeans.

If my brethren pull me over, and ask permission to search my car, the answer is a definitive NO. Even if I am absolutely certain that I have nothing to hide, the answer is still NO. Then I'll ask if I'm under arrest and if I'm free to leave. If they tell me I'm being detained, I ask them "how long"?

I'm not going to argue with them, nor am I going to be anything but polite and courteous, but at that point we've gotten into "reasonableness". After five minutes I'm going to again ask if I can leave. And every five minutes thereafter. I'll also start taking notes. Names, times, places, that sort of thing.

Oh, and remember. You always have the right to remain silent. If you're driving a motor vehicle, you have to give them your driver's license, but after they've ascertained your identity you don't have to say a thing.

[dfwmtx]

I wish that the few times I tune into COPS I could catch that episode they shot in Soviet Russia. Otherwise, you're right, they're all the same.

[PawPaw]

One day I was visiting a friend in east Houston. We were sitting around the house drinking beer and he asked me "You want to watch Cops?"

"yeah", says I, so we moved our chairs out to the front porch.

It was a re-run.

[Cybrludite]

If it wasn't for alcohol and low IQs, Cops wouldn't have made it past being a pilot for a series.
There are no Dr. Hannibal Lecters and Professor Moriartys in real life.

The ones who come close end up on A&E hosted by Bill Kurtis (Or they used to), rather than on Tru-TV with Donnie Bonaducci and Tonya Harding.

[Aglifter]

IE, Soros.

And, my gut tells me the heads of the Mexican cartels cannot be stupid.

[SoupOrMan]

I'm still surprised that my dad has never done a version of MST3K for "Cops."

[Weetabix]

IE, Soros.

And Congress

[skb12172]

On the other side of things, there are a hell of a lot of folks whose intelligence is 1 sigma or more below the mean. They are disproportionately likely to be criminal (80% or more habitual criminals are below mean intelligence), and far easier to catch.

Law enforcement is triage process. They have limited time and energy, limited people, limited resources.

Given the relative numbers, relative difficulty, and gross societal impact of their crimes; it's FAR more useful and effective for law enforcement to successfully pursue hundreds of thousands of idiots; than to be mostly unsuccessful, expending huge energy and resources, in pursuing the few hundred geniuses, who's crimes are mostly white collar.

And yet, there are some white collar criminals who go down...publicly and spectacularly.

All the same, I understand your basic premise. A retired cop of my acquaintance once told me that he's glad most criminals are so stupid. Otherwise, given the resources/manpower available, most of them would never be caught.

[308Mike]

On the other side of things, there are a hell of a lot of folks whose intelligence is 1 sigma or more below the mean. They are disproportionately likely to be criminal (80% or more habitual criminals are below mean intelligence), and far easier to catch.

Law enforcement is triage process. They have limited time and energy, limited people, limited resources.

Given the relative numbers, relative difficulty, and gross societal impact of their crimes; it's FAR more useful and effective for law enforcement to successfully pursue hundreds of thousands of idiots; than to be mostly unsuccessful, expending huge energy and resources, in pursuing the few hundred geniuses, who's crimes are mostly white collar.

And yet, there are some white collar criminals who go down...publicly and spectacularly.

All the same, I understand your basic premise. A retired cop of my acquaintance once told me that he's glad most criminals are so stupid. Otherwise, given the resources/manpower available, most of them would never be caught.

AYUP - and for the most part, they hang themselves (especially those with big egos who think they're so smart they can talk to the cops about what they've done without having the smarts to realize they're screwing themselves. MOST of them simply can't NOT talk about what they think they've gotten away with. They're so impressed with themselves that they have to tell or brag about it to SOMEONE!!

It's just like dealing with hookers. We RARELY arrest the ones working the upscale hotels (those with their own restaurants and bars). Frequently, these ladies keep a VERY LOW profile, dress classy, and you'd never believe they are a hooker just by looking at them. They take good care of themselves, work-out, eat healthy, and frequently take college classes. They work the hotels to bring in good income and usually don't have to work more than a couple days a week (depending on their income needs and/or how their savings goals are coming along - I met one hooker who was well on her way to saving enough to buy a house with close being able to put 50% down - in SoCal, and that's a damned good sized chunk of change). I've actually had the opportunity to talk to a couple of these women, and they were VERY intelligent and articulate. They had the unfortunate timing to get caught up in something only slightly related and because their "John" got busted for something else, they got dragged into the investigation - OTHERWISE, we would have never caught them. These women are RARELY the victim of crimes, or are attacked by their "dates". After all, their "dates are usually married men or successful businessmen and do NOT want any information regarding their "date" to get out to ANYONE.

Compare that to the hookers/street-walkers working the boulevards and main streets. These women are relatively easy to spot, aren't very intelligent, dress low-class and slutty, usually have heavy drug habits, and don't take care of themselves. They also are an eye-sore for the neighborhood, they leave the remains of their activities behind for others to have to deal with, they frequently STINK, and have no standards for who they have for customers. These are usually the ones who are victimized, attacked, and/or killed for a variety of reasons. These women use their income to usually buy drugs and use their money and bodies to buy room at a hotel/motel. They have few goals in life other than their next fix. They are usually good intelligence sources regarding street crimes and gang shitheads doin' their thing.

The low-key and smart criminals are the ones we rarely run into; the other type is what we usually have to deal with - since that's what the population (and politicians) scream about the most. NO ONE cares about the hookers working the hotels, even though Vice knows all about them. Usually, they are used for criminal intelligence gathering, so we leave them alone as long as they don't get caught up in something outside of their control. Even then, they usually get prosecution breaks since they are actually very valuable for police intelligence (but regarding things much more higher up the food chain than simple street crimes - they're good for putting people in compromising positions to help us get them to talk about other things they know).

YMMV

[Greg]

There are no Dr. Hannibal Lecters and Professor Moriartys in real life.

Oh no, there are... but there aren't many people 4 or 5 standard deviations from the mean intelligence, by very definition.

Of those few who are so intelligent, there are vanishingly few who are deliberate, serious, criminals (as opposed to those who simply ignore laws they consider stupid and low risk to ignore... those are common).

This is because there are so many other things with an excellent risk reward ratio for them to do; or, because they are so little concerned with material things, or so concerned with risk that there is no point (their personal evaluation of risk/reward assigns little value to material wealth, high value to risks, or both).

For those very few of the hyper-intelligent who choose to pursue crime, they very rarely get caught, and even more rarely see any kind of courtroom, never mind punishment.

When they do make that choice, it's usually for one or more of a few reasons:

1. They recognize that the law is stupid, often pointless, and usually easily circumvented, with very little risk of actually being caught or punished if one is smart, careful, and manages risk properly.

2. They have a driving need to prove themselves smarter or better than the less intelligent, or the system which is run by them.

3. They are bored by almost anything, other than beating the system, or other people, at their own games.

4. They are incredibly intelligent, but come from a place or background (corruption, lack of education, repressive government etc...) where there is little or no opportunity for the intelligent to gain advancement commensurate to their intelligence.

5. They do not set out to be criminals, but the law is in the way of, or interfering with something they DO care about; and they find the law either stupid, or unworthy, or just too easy to circumvent; to allow it to get in their way.

6. They don't believe what they are doing is, or should be, a crime.

1, 5 and 6 are pretty much a unit- all those go together and you tend not to see one without the others. I know a lot of people like that, they tend to be rather good, honest people with strong internalized senses of right and wrong that they live by... It's just the law is stupid, 'illegal' has little correlation with 'wrong', and they care far more about wrong than illegal.

2, 3 and 4 also tend to be a unit. Corrupt environments turn otherwise decent people into this. I once worked with a guy, an immigrant, very patriotic, AF veteran, he'd always be willing to help out a friend with *anything*. But he was an immigrant from Russia and tended to have rather a dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest approach to life. He worked in IT but as a side business he was an ebay scammer. He left hints in his listings that what he was actually selling was *pictures of merchandise", not merchandise, sold at 'too good to be true' prices. His opinion was that greedy bastards too stupid to read the listing carefully enough to note they were buying a picture, got what they deserved and that he wasn't doing anything wrong, rather he was performing the service of offering comeuppance to greedy people who weren't as smart as they thought.

Of course some extremely intelligent people really ARE truly malicious. You avoid those people, or make yourself useful to them while minimizing contact.