(TikTok screencap)
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The first time I saw one of these was at a Fourth of July gathering in a public park. I saw the high blue lights and I figured it was marking some kind of portable police resource center. I had imagined some basic first aid and some officers ready for emergency assistance. I had imagined something that was partly a service and partly community outreach. I had imagined something with positive features.
I was so disappointed to find out it was just cameras. Quite an emotional trip in my head there, from “We’re here to help!” to “We’re watching you, fuckers” in the space of a moment.
But I guess the cops in my suburb are no better than the cops in any other suburb.
"We’re here to help!” and “cops” in the same thought is wild lol
We’re here to help “property owners and wealthy people”.
Sometimes the first thought is what the propaganda you grew up with said
No cop wants to help anyone but himself.
Has anyone told the crackheads how much copper is in that thing?
It’s got wheels and everything. You can literally just roll it right to the scrap yard.
Crackheads? Looks like it was designed by methheads.
My first reaction was, damn, is that from that episode of Top Gear where they made the stupidest RVs imaginable? What janky nonsense is this, I wondered before reading the comments.
Hate it. It’s so annoying. The stores in the area hate it because it pisses people off and they complain to the stores and them the stores are like we hate them as well but the cops put them there.
I once had the lovely privilege of listening to a police higher up (lieutenant or something?) happily crow about setting these things up. I was just trying not to scoff as he said it was super effective, and yet his little slideshow showed absolutely diddly squat in any changes in the metrics they were using.
They’re more annoying than the guy who use to setup a speaker and and do busking in the parking lot. At least he provided some kind of service and not…that.
the stores are like we hate them as well but the cops put them there.
If they’re on a store’s parkinglot, they’re trespassing if they’re there without the store’s consent. That means they can be removed.
I’m assuming the higher ups for one of the more corp stores allows them there. The people actually working the stores hate them.
I guess that kinda depends on the business structure. Are they fully owned and operated by the main corporation? Or are they licensees of the store’s name and brand? If it’s the first one, some humdrum middle manager could do what you said. If it’s the later, those surveillance things could be trespassing.
Most stores are tenants of a landlord. Even those Walmart warehouses are leased, often both in land and structure.
Even if they are tenants to a lease, the doctrine of quiet enjoyment would prohibit a landlord from being able to freely agree to having police property sitting on the store’s parking lot if their lease covers the parking lot. It’s kinda like renting a house with a yard: your lease is for the house and the yard surrounding the house. A landlord cannot just come on top the lawn and start ripping it up without the tenant’s permission.
A landlord cannot just come on top the lawn and start ripping it up without the tenant’s permission.
On one hand, yes. On the other hand that’s only as enforceable as a tenant can fight it.
In practice it happens. Unless the tenant has the resources or there’s a legal advocacy group dedicated to that specific issue, owners tend to be able to do whatever they want so long as they use the argument of ‘protecting my property’.
The settlement and restitution just ends up something like the owner keeps their stuff there and maybe you get to terminate your lease tomorrow without being forced to pay out the whole eight remaining months of the lease. But that’s anecdotal.
Regardless it’s the people working at the store who don’t like it. The owner class loves this shit and hate poor people.
hey look! free solar panels and $500 worth of copper!
All wrapped up in an easy-to-roll package
I sold my old car to a crackhead. He had way more chill than any kind of AI surveillance.
Was your old car made out of crack?
Believe it or not, crack heads need cars too. You can’t go fucking anywhere in this country without a car.
Did you ride along on the test drive?
Lol no he gave me $900 and we went our seperate ways. Pretty standard, honestly.
Tell crackheads that there’s 50 pounds of copper and two catalytic converters in these things.
Lol 50? They would do it 2 lbs.
You can also get the same effect by telling a meth head who hasn’t slept in 7 days “hey, I think that things watching you”
Those solar panels look pretty nice…
Come to think of it, yeah… These things will be real nice to have after the collapse.
A modestly sized, but complete and mobile off-grid solar system, just waiting for you to hitch it to your car and pull it away. Tear the cameras and lights off of it, then use the solar panels, batteries, and associated electrical equipment to power whatever small electrical loads you need.
They’re probably just waiting for someone to do that. I think the crackhead approach is safer here.
“After the collapse” he says, with no idea what powers my posting >:)
For real. Why the fuck would you wait? This whole thing depends on us destroying this and anything like it.
Why the fuck would you wait?
Because this thing is recording video all around itself and I don’t want any cops visiting my house.
At trailers with GPS still get stolen and never recovered on the regular down south. Might be slightly different because it’s the cop’s property, but if you can kill off the tracing and WiFi early and leave it in the woods somewhere for a month you’d probably get away with it.
There’s a reason we can’t identify most ICE agents. Replicate one tiny piece of that outfit, walk less than a mile and you’re golden.
Well??? Don’t hold back, tell us about the internals and where the tracking devices are.
Think less heist, more looting. Batteries in the bottom, panels up top, charge controller in between are the good bits
I thought it was led screens where big brother could give a “behave as a good citizen” - on repeat every day.
No, that screen is in your pocket.
Big Brother Loves You, Join ICE
Shit, even my ears perked up at that…
Or like one stick of ram
Forget telling crackheads there’s copper, tell gamers there’s ram modules on there they could solder to their GPU
There actually might be… brb
They know.
Specifically engineered to keep out “undesirables”.
What the hell is that thing anyway
I’ve only seen them in retail parking lots. Cameras. They can play audio.
Can they play Sandstorm?
That’s da rudest thing I’ve seen in years
Solar powered, wireless, remote, battery-powered, GPS tracked, overly-designed mobile CCTV/loudspeaker/strobe light trailer. This one in particular is manufactured by a company called LVT, who are one of the major manufacturers of these.
I’ve only ever seen them in Walgreens, CVS, and McDonald’s parking lots. Blinking away with the brightest blue LED all fucking night.
They’re all over Colorado
They are kind of almost somewhat reasonable on those job sites where they’re almost done building the apartment complex, but maybe only because it’s so temporary
This is an insane comment. There is absolutely nothing temporary about these. They may be in that lot temporarily, but it won’t move more than 100 meters before it meets its destination.
These are valuable. Deface and steal them.
Maybe they’re used differently in different parts of the world. I’ve only ever seen one of these and it was a temporary location at a construction site.
Seen in Kentucky at gas stations.
They are in every single shopping mall parking lot by me. Need to go to Home Depot, one of these. Target, you guessed it, another one. Maybe you need to go to the grocery store, there’s another one there for you. Every single place near me has them.
I think I’ve seen these in LA.
Always wondered whats the use case. If I see these in the parking lot, no deals inside are pulling me there enough to stop by.
I work in a suburb of Cincinnati and the car dealership right across the road from my office has a couple of these. I can see them from my desk and it makes me seethe.
Mobile CCTV station, they’re used on construction sites a lot.
Joke’s on you, I get to see both.
Wtf are these things
Mobile surveillance stations. Typically solar powered with a backup battery, and the inevitably monstrous result of surveillance capitalism.
I’m not saying anyone should do it but in the photo it appears there’s a drainage ditch nearby. It would be real shame if someone with a ski mask and a plateless truck were to relocate it there.
It would be hilarious if some crack heads stole and stripped it for copper
It wont be “crackheads” stripping for precious metals. The community will need whatever comes from that fucker
All it takes is giving your local crackhead five bucks, then we have less cameras and they have three meals a day.
Excellent post title, sounds like the PPV event (that should be freely available to the people) of the year!
I’d put a twenty on the crackheads winning by TKO in the third round 😁
Break spybox.
