Here is the concept:
- First, put a mask on. A medical mask like an N95 is best.
- Next, get a super cheap beater car, paying cash or stealing it, eradicate the VIN markings, and attach fake paper license plates.
- Start committing your property crime of choice, but leave your car close by.
- As soon as a citizen or police officer approaches you, run into the car and turn the car away from the person trying to stop you.
- Make sure to leave at high speed, to make the police break off the chase.
- Finally, get out of the car with your gains, and head to public facilities to change clothes.
- You might try to hold onto the car by swapping plates and repainting, but only if you think you didn’t get a police helicopter and you have scouted the area to see that there are no cameras watching you.
This approach works because:
- With masks on, even facial recognition cameras can’t pick you up.
- Fake paper license plates aren’t being challenged.
- If police try to use force to stop your property crime, they’ll be put on trial. (And, no rational private security guard should make a “mistake” like Murwanashyaka Francois of Gaithersburg and try to take any action about loitering or any other activity on premises.)
- If police try to use force to stop you from running to your car, they’ll be put on trial. (and for sure the civilians like Jason Lewis of Northeast Washington, D.C. can’t use force on you without going to prison; they have to call the cops and watch you drive away)
- If police try to use force to stop your getaway car, they’ll be put on trial.
- If police try to chase you at high speed, they’ll be put on trial.
- There are not enough cameras or helicopters, reliably to track people outside of high crime or high visibility neighborhoods.
- Cars are relatively cheap.
- Forensics about who was in the car at the time of the robbery, are unreliable when cars are passed around the neighborhood, being bought and sold casually.
It’s even better to do this as a youth, because if you do happen to get caught, jurisdictions like Washington, D.C. and Maryland will sentence you to drastically reduced penalties, even as a repeat offender.
How could you stop it? Without creating a technological police state and maintaining generally due process/proof beyond a reasonable doubt, your only options are to allow the citizens and/or police, violently to stop the criminals, and/or to allow them to carry on a high speed chase (given that this also is dangerous/violent to the participants and bystanders).