“Major crime in New York City inched up this year, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Friday fingered the culprit: too many iPhones and iPads were being swiped,” Michael M. Grynbaum reports for The New York Times. “A rise in thefts of shiny Apple products accounted for the slight increase in the city’s annual crime index, a statistic that covers a number of felonies, including murder, grand larceny and robbery, Mr. Bloomberg said on Friday morning during his weekly radio show.”
“As of Monday, the Police Department recorded 3,484 more major crimes in 2012 than for the same period last year. The increase in Apple product thefts: 3,890,” Grynbaum reports. “‘If you just took away the jump in Apple, we’d be down for the year,’ said Marc La Vorgna, the mayor’s press secretary.”
MacDailyNews Take: Yeah, and if you took away the Jets’ losses, they’d have a perfect season going, too!
Grynbaum reports, “On the radio, Mr. Bloomberg said that Apple products appeared to be the preference for many thieves… ‘Put it in a pocket in sort of a more body-fitting, tighter clothes, that you can feel if it was — if somebody put their hand in your pocket, not just an outside coat pocket,’ the mayor said… ‘The proliferation of people carrying expensive devices around is so great,” Mr. La Vorgna said. “It’s something that’s never had to be dealt with before.'”
MacDailyNews Take: You know, because nobody’s ever sported a fine watch in their pocket or on their wrist, a string of pearls around their neck, or a pocketbook on their arm in the long history of New York City.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Obviously, the problem isn’t the Apple products, but the criminals who are stealing other people’s property, regardless of the property (be it Walkmen, iPods, iPhones, Air Jordans, Rolexes, wallets, etc.) they are stealing this year. Apple’s products are just the most popular and desirable currently; that’s what attracts criminals.
Bloomberg is a fkng idiot! Big soda drinks r illegal too! Total nanny state BS! Liberal blame everything except their own pathetic policies!
I agree! Bloomberg’s a fricken Repub, kick him out!
Agree, Bloomberg is a fricking idiot, he can change laws to put him in a 3rd term but he cannot put enough police to reduce crime in NYC. So people in NYC should use Andriod phones only to help reduce crime rate, what a plonker. Bring in Guilliani, the former mayor, he will tell the criminals where to shove it
You mean a democrap, idiot!
You’re the idiot. Bloomberg left the Democratic party and joined the Repubs in 2001. He says he’s an Independent now but in my books he’s a Republican.
Bloomberg is a RINO. He’s a Democrat, and not even a moderate one. No real Republican, much less a Conservative, would ban large soft drinks or blame inanimate objects for crime.
Furthermore: Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. If you make certain guns/ammo illegal, only the criminals will have those guns/ammo, making the law-abiding citizen less safe.
Bloomberg is a nanny state liberal who has no idea why things happen or how to correct them.
For example: Mass murderers kill others because they’ve lost their minds, if they ever had them. To stop such killings, our mental health system needs a massive overhaul focused first on identifying sociopaths and rendering them unable to hurt the rest of the population.
Another example: People drink giant sugary sodas because they are ignorant of what they are doing to their own health and to the rest of our health costs. They also probably don’t care what it does to the costs of health care costs, because they aren’t properly raised and care only for their own satisfaction. The basic problem is the destruction of the two-parent (one male and one female) family. Until that is rectified, there will continue to be a huge class of poorly educated, high crime, welfare-dependent losers sapping the system beyond the breaking point and killing this country.
Traditional marriage works. Proven for centuries. The sexual revolution caused many more problems that the empty, meaningless orgasms it spawned. Disease. Broken families. Lack of self esteem. Suicide. Drug abuse. All proven in many studies over many years.
If you think anybody with the will can’t get a lot of sugary soda to drink or any gun/ammo/drug/illegal thing they want in NYC, you must be a Liberal.
This is the crux of the problem in the U.S.A. today:
Misguided Libs/Dems/Progs insist upon legislating against human nature instead of using human nature to achieve the desired results.
Run for office! You seem to have all the answers.
I couldn’t stomach the pay cut.
That’s bullshit. Haven’t women in NYC been wearing expensive diamonds on their hands, many that cost far more than apple products, but you’re not blaming that are you?
The problem is low life scumbags. If police afrested people for vagrancy there would be no crime.
Another whiny liberal who doesn’t believe in personal responsibility. I’m surprised he didn’t blame the Bush tax cuts.
Clearly we need to get rid of Apple products to get rid of crime.
Sound familiar?
Clearly. If there were no iPhones, then these criminals wouldn’t exist.
It’s only the “assault” iPhones. You know, the ones that are all black and semi-automatic, where you just push a button once and it calls somebody. Gangsters use them all the time in drive-by textings. The ones with the pistol grips up front are especially bad…er, sorry, wrong thread. Never mind.
Actually, we ought to get some NYC newspaper to publish and interactive map with the names and addresses of all the concealed iPhone carriers…no wait! That would be EVERYBODY!
Right on!
And, hilarious to boot!
Maybe the problem isn’t Apple products. Maybe the problem is that New Yorker’s see someone else’s stuff, and they steal it.
“…theft of SHINY Apple products…”
So matte Apple products will be the only ones allowed for sale in NYC 😉
Excuse me while I completely ignore whatever Nanny Bloomy is prattling on about now.
This makes no sense as you have already dropped 300+ words on Bloomberg.
Obviously if iPhones cause crime, they should be banned.
Get Obama on that right away.
Perhaps he can simply give iPhones to all of his constituents, so no one has to do without, or steal to get one. Don’t worry, taxpayers will pick up the tab.
Will this year ever end?
It’s as if “they” are attempting to make every possible assault on our intelligence before the year to end all stupid years fades away.
Sadly my friend, I believe 2013 will be worse.
You got that right.
I say “just say no” (over and over again!
Throw blood into the sea and the sharks go into a frenzy. Say that, “Theft of iDevices correlates with the 87% peak in App downloads”, and the Rabid Republican spins the situation out of all proportion. Liberal this, Liberal that….my god! Puts sharks to shame.
It is hilarious to watch the comments here about Bloomberg being liberal!
As far as NYC and crime is considered, before Apple devices came about, thieves had fairly few attractive targets, and they probably went for them (yes, Rolex watches, diamond rings, pearl necklaces and similar). Never before, however, have such expensive things been so widely available to thieves as they are today, and this is primarily due to the explosion in iDevices. Thieves will go for what is easy to steal, and expensive to sell. This is why old-style cellphones (“dumbphones”) very quickly ceased being a major target for pick pockets — you can’t get more than $20 for a phone that comes free with a voice-only plan. Same thing with Android phones today: it is really not worth an effort (not to mention risk) stealing a Samsung Galaxy when you can’t even get $100 for it used, if the next person has a $700 iPhone, which you could unload for over $400 easily. Both targets are equally accessible, so obviously, thieves will prefer much more expensive iDevices over much less expensive (and more difficult to fence) non-Apple stuff.
This is perfectly logical to anyone with common sense. And Bloomberg is obviously NOT blaming Apple for it; he is blaming careless users (and is making a few suggestions along the way).
Are you saying that ‘careless users’ are to blame for someone thinking that it is OK to steal something? With that logic, I can see no end of possibilities of victims to blame for crimes against them. When are we, as a society, going to put the blame where it belongs? The criminal is the only one to blame for their own actions.
Amen.
Jesus guys calm down… All this really says is that Apple products are valuable and lots of people have them… This is good news
And that even thieves won’t steal Android devices because carriers are already giving them away.
Typical liberal blame-shifting. Maybe Bloomberg can learn from Obama and find a way to blame the crime on Boooosh! There’s no end to the Predrag-types who’ll just lap it up.
Right on.
Did you notice libs NEVER blame people? Only inanimate objects like iPhones or guns.
No way do they want to lose a vote, regardless of where it comes from …
perhaps if the Second Amendment were in effect in New York City, the iThefts would lessen dramatically. Fsck you, Bloomberg.
I’m surprised that piece of shit isn’t blaming the NRA.
MDN – you guys get your panties in such a bunch over the smallest things. Bloomberg wasn’t wrong in anything he said. 3,400 more crimes and 3,800 of crimes were apple thefts. That means if you subtract the apple thefts, crime in NYC is down 400 incidents. C’mon.
Lol. And if you subtract the Jets’ losses this year they’re undefeated!
His conclusion is convenient, though. Without detailing iDevice thefts from previous years, we can’t know if crime was up due to iDevices. A hundred more jewelry thefts, a couple hundred more purse snatches, etc., with zero increase in iDevice thefts, would still give the same numbers but a very different sound bite.
“The increase in Apple product thefts: 3,890”
Not just total Apple thefts, so he’s right. But MDN has become a right wing blog, so any excuse to start name calling the left is jumped on very quickly. Wow has this site gone down the tubes
If you notice the thieves aren’t stealing Android goods! In fact people might get shot for owning an Android instead of having an Apple device. I can hear it now: “Your iPad or your life” “What?! All you have is a crummy Nexus 7???” “You are so dead yah cheap bastard…” BANG!!
Mayor Bloomberg may be right. Had my iPhone 4 stolen in Toronto while at a family gathering in Chinatown, through my own carelessness. I walk out of the restaurant forgetting my iPhone for just five minutes and by the time I return is was. None of the employee owe to missing iPhone plus when I mention the police they more just laugh at me and said go ahead. I did the usually made a police report, suspended the account with my cellular provider, and even find my iPhone was useless because who ever stolen was smart enought to turn it off or remove the SIM card. The bottom line is selling a stolen iPhone is way easier then jewellery and Rolex watches, at least with these items the police mada a more honest effort. The police in Canada along with Rogers and Apple really just do not give a fuck about your stolen iPhone they just prefer you go buy a new one, even though they have the ability to track it the moment they reactivate the iPhone via iTunes. As for the Jets if they would have start Tim Tebow at the beginning of the season they might still be undefeated and the Toronto police will recover my iPhone 4.
Uhhhh Mr. Bloomberg; when at some point in the future you gain some real world life experience, you may realize that crime is a people problem, not an inanimate object problem.
Thieves steal stuff because they have an evil streak, or are completely evil. Same for shooters, but not politically correct to say that. So I won’t.
Crime isn’t up.
Crime REPORTING is up, because now there’s a chance the cops can do something about it: Find My Phone!
Add this to the jobs Apple creates in the United States.
Let’s put the blame where it really belongs—squarely at Apple’s doorstep. If they didn’t make such irresistible products, thieves wouldn’t be forced to steal them!
Well Apple is becoming the favorite whipping boy for every perceived failure of the American system. Apple is responsible for all the evils that bedeviled good ole America. Wall Street decides to punish Apple because Apple does not want to listen to its market wisdom or borrow billions from its banks for unnecessary expansion, thus threatening its powers of usury over Americans. The failing New York Times decides to crucify for every wrongs committed by corporate America so that it could get page views. Google, Amazon and other mediocre corporations accuse Apple of wallgardening so that it can persuade Americans that getting stuff free and surrendering their privacy is the sensible things to do. And now New York City’s mayor, to deflect his failure to protect New Yorkers from thieves, is blaming the iPhone for his dilemma.
To wash America of its sins and omission, it’s very convenient to make Apple the biblical sacrificial Lamb.
Sometimes things are just simple.
Fact’s are: 3,484 more major crimes and 3,890 were for Apple products.
These are just facts. Doesn’t say anything about Apple being “bad”. It actually says that Apple is “good”!
How did Apple, a corporation so Liberal, conceived by a hippy who asked everyone to drop some acid, attract so many Rabid Republicans? It is a mystery indeed.
Hey Bloomberg,
Just ban NYC and be done with it. The west coast will appreciate it!