It wasn't an entirely novel idea. Around the same time, I saw a comic, something like a rock/brick tossed through a house's front window, with a note tied around it, like a stereotypical intimidation/threat. Except the note was an ad for a local window glass replacement service.
My parents lived in an apartment, several apartments in our house got broken into. My dad went to a reinforced door company to get a quote. It was almost 10.000€, a ridiculous amount! We didn‘t get it.<p>A month later we had a break in while I was home alone. He took off when he saw me. We got the door. Now we got a bulletproof 10.000€ door.<p>To this day I am convinced the door company sent the burglar.
I have a similar story. In my hometown the owner of the Mercedes salon paid money for each emblem that was broken of a car's hood. It was around 2000-2005. I know this from the owner's son.
The ol' thumbtacks on the street near the tire-shop routine... but actually doing it.<p>BART should've just stopped replacing them because it was already depressing and created a feeling of unease even when it was just a few years old. BART is a symptom of the dysfunctional, lower-classing of American mass-transit in contrast to masses of unyielding cultural exaltation of the single occupant vehicle in gridlock. Hurray that they dug a tunnel under the Bay, but scant few actually want to board a tram that seems perpetually foreshadowing of an escape room or serial killer scene.
I'm not sure if it's still the case since we moved away a few years ago, but the 24th St BART escalator used to be in a constant repair loop. It would get fixed for a short period, operate for about a month, and then go back to being out of service. Made me question if a similar scheme was in operation.
Such rampant pillaging of taxpayer dollars should have been more severely punished. If I was on a jury I would have sent them to jail for 20 years and slept well that night.
Makes me wonder if window repair companies like to get in on rioting to boost their revenue:<p><a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hsDQDDrL9Yo">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hsDQDDrL9Yo</a>
So the mistake was in outsourcing the crime. Had they kept a tighter circle of perpetrators, probably could have kept the scam going for significantly longer.
> <i>BART filed a $2.16 million civil suit against Hurwitz, which was pending in Alameda County Superior Court as of 1982. It's unclear what became of the case, and searches for news of the suit came up empty.</i>
"BART filed a $2.16 million civil suit against Hurwitz, which was pending in Alameda County Superior Court as of 1982. It's unclear what became of the case, and searches for news of the suit came up empty."<p>And herein began the second scam...
Otherwise known as a “perverse incentive”, or “the cobra effect”, for when a bounty was created to get rid of the snakes, causing people to breed them instead of hunt them.
I wonder, grafitti aside[0], how much of the social panic around "vandalism" can be tied to similar dynamics. Not necessarily outright rackets like this one but perverse incentives at least.<p>Also it's easy to see how slashing a seat or breaking a window is vandalism but somehow we've decided anti-homeless architecture and literring pedestrian spaces with subsidized rental e-scooters isn't even if it also drastically reduces quality of life by modifying shared public spaces.<p>[0]: I dislike how grafitti and defacement is lumped in with functional damage as "vandalism" except for rare cases like road signs. I like to think that there is a tangible difference between changing the appearance of something and damaging it in such a way that it is no longer fully fit for purpose. Even if one believes that "maintaining property value" is a primary purpose of a building's wall or "providing ad space" is a primary purpose of a train exterior, I'd argue that there is a clear moral difference.