The Shopping Cart Test: A Retired Cop on Safety, AI, and Getting Played

Three stories, one throughline: a retired LAPD cop telling you what he actually notices so you stop getting played.

One, the shopping cart test. Before you move anywhere, drive through and look at the shopping carts. Returned and put away, or abandoned all over the lot? It tells you more about a neighborhood than any brochure. Then call the local sheriff or police and just ask them about the area. I tell the story of David in Burbank, the neighbor in welding gloves the local PD already knew all about, to show you why that call matters.

Two, AI, a little bit of danger, danger, Will Robinson. The data center money just reversed, the labs are renting compute now, and the new fear being sold is that public AI can see your ideas and move on them first. I break down the car wash example, the "too dangerous for regular people" pitch, why privacy is already gone, and why everyone suddenly wants to sell you your own AI at home while memory prices climb.

Three, the Paul Pelosi Maserati hit-and-run. From a cop who worked hit-and-runs for years: a no-injury misdemeanor of a parked car gets almost no investigation for anybody. The story is real, the special-privilege angle mostly is not.

Be good to each other. Verify what you hear. Slow your roll.

Watch the video version on Loom: https://www.loom.com/share/86b5a5294e9544778e4ae7793b9f59e4

Buying or selling in Santa Clarita, or just want a straight answer? Call or text (661) 400-1720. A human answers. More at https://connorwithhonor.com

Connor T. MacIvor, CalDRE #01238257, Sync Brokerage Inc. DRE #02031490.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Shopping carts. I know. Okay. Just follow me. I worked every bureau the Los Angeles Police Department has. Now I did some of it in traffic, which when you work a traffic bureau, you kind of get the best of both worlds. So your main function is traffic enforcement and taking uh traffic reports. Okay. And it's it's some patrol might look at that and say, well, that's kind of that's not being a real cop at that time. But we rolled on everything. It depends on the traffic unit, I guess. But my partner and I, Sam, we rolled on it all. We rolled on the 211s in progress. If we could get there first, we would. We would jump on everything, the shooting calls, the the all of it, the whole nine yards, because we worked 18 Tom 34. That's a southeast division in South Central Los Angeles, or South Los Angeles. I'm not sure how you're supposed to say that now. So we had access to being able to do everything. So we were in 77th, we were in Southwest, we were in Southeast, we were in Harbor, we were all over the South. And so it was, it was really an awesome place to work. And then, of course, patrol, at least the people we were working upon working with on that M mid-P. shift, and that was from what 5 o'clock in the evening to about 3 a.m. in the morning, the patrol guys loved us and girls, of course, because we would show up and handle their traffic. So if they got a deuce, we would go there and clean it. That's a DUI suspect. And if we jumped on a 211 in progress robbery or some of these really high stress fancy calls, then they would clean it. If we caught, you know, a guy stealing a car, a Code 37 vehicle stolen car, then most of the time they would clean it so we could handle traffic. So, you know, say what you want, but it was it was a pretty good world. Now, of course, there are those traffic people that they go to traffic to get out of that. But Sam and I, we were, you know, very much into that. So that brings me to shopping carts. So I live in Santa Clarita Valley. That's where that's where my real estate business is. And it really does come down to the shopping carts. You say, what the hell is he talking about? Shopping carts. Whenever you go into a city that might be somewhat dangerous to live in and has a high crime rate, you'll notice that shopping carts are everywhere in the parking lot at the grocers, at the different stores. They're everywhere. They're not put back where they're supposed to be. And I thought that was an interesting observation. But in Santa Clarita, most of the time they're all put back where they're supposed to be. They're not left in the park or not. They're not stuck in between cars. They're actually put back in the proper receptacles for shopping carts. So next time you're thinking about real estate, thinking about maybe moving somewhere, you know, do yourself a favor, drive through those different areas and look at the shopping carts. How are they being placed? Are they being handled? Are people taking the 12 to 14 seconds to take that shopping cart back and put it up? That's all you need to know. Total investigation. Plus, also call the local cops, the law enforcement, whether it's sheriffs or police, and say, hey, listen, thinking about relocating to your city. I'm coming from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and I'm going to be, you know, I'm calling Tennessee or whatever the hell it is, and then ask them what they think about these particular neighborhoods. And I would do that as well. Even if you're coming up from San Fernando Valley out to Santa Clarita Valley, I would also make that phone call. We have Los Angeles County Sheriffs here. I'd give them a call and say, hey, listen, Jack, I'm moving out here from this, don't call them Jack. I'm moving out here from the San Fernando Valley and I'm going to move into this area in Valencia, North Bridge, North Park, whatever it is, or Saugus or Canyon Country, or New Hall or Castac or Stevenson Ranch or Valencia or whatever. So just give them the area and they can tell you if there's a crazy person that I live by. The only reason why I say that. So if they don't have the crime, but maybe they have a frequently frequented, visited, frequently visited location by local law enforcement. I owned a house in Burbank way back in the day. Brand new cop. Just went to South Traffic Division. So I was a couple years off of probation, probably 93, 94, on Magnolia. I didn't know who to, I didn't even think about it. Right. And back then, maybe you didn't pay much attention to it because everything was kind of safe. That area in Burbank was wonderful. But there was a crazy guy. If I would have called the police, the local police, we would have found out about David. Yeah, David, he wore welding gloves. I would see this cat. Some white, white guy with uh a short sleeve shirt, didn't have a tie, but a buttoned-up tie that you would wear to a business. And he had welding gloves. I mean the thick welding gloves. In the middle of summer, and he would he lived like on the other side. We we had a T intersection teeing into our house, and he lived on the left side of that street. So from the front of my house, I could see him out maybe four or five house up houses up on the left. So anyway, he would leave and he would go to 7-Eleven. 7-Eleven was probably somewhere, so that was Magnolia and Victory, Victory Turns. And then so this would have been Victory and Olive-ish. That's there's a 7-Eleven, I think there probably is. So that's where David would go. I followed him one day. But then he would come back. And the reason why he had welding gloves on is because he was old holding a double super big golden, maybe 44 ounce only, but it was a lot. And he was because it was cold. So he wasn't that crazy. But every once in a while he would come in front of my house, just start screaming, just screaming at the top of his lungs. So come to find out, Burbank PD knew all about David because they would show up there at least three or four times a week when his mom didn't give him his meds. And he was in his 50s at that time, you know, maybe maybe 40s, but you know, he he's not he's not all there. So that's what you want to do. Make sure you call up law enforcement, see if there's any David types or whatever, and then also drive through the areas there and see how the shopping carts are being taken care of. Number two, AI, artificial intelligence. So now we've shifted again, and that's what's amazing about this technology. We've shifted from everybody needing to build out all these data centers, and that's kind of that's slowly being retracted from. And now the people that have a lot of the data centers, a lot of the compute, these various companies, they're starting to sell it to people that want to use it. So a couple things. All the money that was invested to build out all the data centers, is that going to be needed? And I know that it was probably real money, but I don't know what it's being used for. Is AI actually going to move to this place of super intelligence? Is that possible? And I believe everybody at the top running the machines believe that it absolutely is. And maybe it is, but maybe getting there isn't a data center compute. We need more of that thing. Maybe it is some kind of a wrapper or a new design or the new way that they make it work better than actually having to build out more room, more compute, more energy, more of this stuff. Maybe it's kind of a nuanced way to actually make it perform and become this super intelligence. And if that is the case, then that that that road is probably super fast. It's one or two good ideas away. I remember years ago, Sam Altman said something like, you know, we're a few good ideas away or something of that nature. Yeah, I still think that's that's prevalent. Now, maybe some AI comes up with a good idea, but in the application layer, that good idea is what's going to push it. So you have some companies that are starting to pull back and they're renting out that data center space. You have Elon Musk, they have their rent a lot of their space out to anthropic. I guess Meta recently had announced that they're going to rent out some of their space as well. And it actually did good for their stock. And I guess they said, well, do more of that. And it looks like that maybe the AI thing isn't, well, that's right now. No even need to say that. I'm not going to be one of those people. So keep your eye on that. That should be interesting to see. And then also make sure that when people are telling you about AI, you understand the game. Right now we have Palantir, that cat. The news is saying he blew up. I don't know. I think that's just how the guy talks. He was just talking about what he believes. So right now, the next bigger story is they're talking about how when you go to your AI and you start to ask at things, you start to inquire about things, it basically knows your IP, your intellectual property. It knows exactly what you're doing in the communication of your ideas, and then of course they can extract it and it be it can become this. So case in point. If I have an idea that I'm going to open up a car wash, I know. So bear with me. So I'm going to open up this car wash. Let's say the robotic arm was already done with AI. Then Anthropic sees that I'm using Anthropic's clawed code to try to figure out the best ways to put together a car wash, and then I come up with some brilliant nouveau idea that's never never been thought of before, never been applied to a car wash, and I put that in there, and then all of a sudden, within a few days, as I'm still contemplating what to do, then Anthropic moves, and now they own all the car washes in the United States. So that's that's the extrapolation of that particular theory. Now, of course, it's probably not going to be car washes. We don't have the physical realm. But you know, if I have an idea about some memory product, or if I say, you know, maybe we need to do this and maybe that takes off, them taking those ideas. So in response to that, that fear that's now being created, because remember, they gave us Fable V, they gave us Mythos, OpenAI has a new model, and everybody's pulling back, saying, oh my God, it's way too dangerous for people. So just give it to the people that you owe. No, they don't say it like that. They say, give it to your trusted people, whatever that means. So you know the trusted people aren't just using it to check their own systems for safety. Hell no, they're using this to build out some stuff so nobody will ever be able to catch them. That's what they're doing. Because if you think about it, the more advanced and intelligent you are, as long as you stay on that stick, as long as you continue, you're probably going to win, whatever winning means. If you come up with an idea for a real estate company, a real estate idea, and you keep pushing forward and you're nimble enough to make those changes, and you're nimble enough to call in the best experts, and most of those best experts now are going to be artificial intelligence in some way with some different human elements that maybe know the execution layer better and the systems layer, so we can see the end and also has their history layer as well, knowing where the real estate companies of the past failed, because some of these new ideas might be rebuilt on a mechanism of failure, but with maybe a small little change that makes that potentiality of success much greater, so then that actually works. But you want to make sure that if you're going to start doing these things, that's where this game happens to be now, where they're saying these AI companies are potentially going to start scraping and pulling out our own intellectual property and ideas. Not that it hasn't happened before, don't forget, all of our stuff. Not that I have a lot of important stuff because that's not me, but the entire internet was scraped, all of our chats, all of our interactions, all of our whatever, probably email. I, you know, that's that's a big accusation. I'm not gonna fall back and say that was the case. But if you think there's privacy anymore, sorry. That ship has sailed. And should we accept that? You go be you. I have 50,000 things in this room right now that are listening to me do this broadcast, and they're not even active. But I know I can yell out, hey Siri, and she's gonna say something. So how does she know I was gonna say hey Siri? Hey Siri. There she is. But smart TVs, right? They have a certain thing that you sign when you're going to use them. Your iPhone had a certain thing you signed. This camera had a certain thing. I had to sign uh these boxes back here, these machines, these PCs, Macs. Yeah, you all have to sign something. And if you bother to read that 50 pages of God knows what that is, like I didn't either, yeah, I'm sure we gave it away. It's probably been given away a long time ago, at least in some way, shape, or form.

unknown 12:26

All right.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

So privacy, we've already given all that information away. The internet companies, the the AI companies, they've used that to train their models. And pretty soon, I guess now they're kind of out of data. So now they're gonna make up their own stuff and they're gonna start using that to train these models.

unknown 12:42

Great.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

As we move through and we watch how these things are being developed, and we have people that are, you know, running with pitchforks and torches. Some people are saying, oh, it's gonna end everything. Some people saying, oh, it's gonna save everything. And I think the capability of it saving is very much there. But we still have humans wanting to play, human. And sometimes when humans play human, I see it in the different bureaus I work with the LAPD. In some areas, because of economic factors, because of whatever, the crime rates seem to be more. And don't even dare call me out on which areas. But you just look at the statistics. There's more shootings in particular areas, there's more, there's more murders in particular areas, more drive-by's in particular areas, more drug-related arrests in particular areas. Now, can you pin that on saying, well, that's just because the cops go in there and they're racist and they want to make those people, those people, whatever fits into that category, well, they want to make those people guilty of these things. So they go in there and they plant dope and they do all this stuff. Well, we heard about the CIA doing this. So all of that, I don't know. You you fall into whatever you think is right. But ultimately, those statistics, they exist. Now, whether they're manipulated to help all of us, you look at AI now, you look at the way they're building that out, and now they're saying these companies are going to take your IP. I don't know if that's the case. But right now, if somebody's a plumber, they could feasibly go and and see how they're doing it because the plumbers use an AI, uh open, uh not an open source, a public-facing model, a Claude or a Chat GPT or a Gemini. And even when you're in incognito mode, or whatever some of these systems call it, do you really think it's secret? I mean, do you if if you start talking about killing somebody, you shouldn't be killing or killing somebody at all or doing something horrible? I think these systems track that information, I would guess. I don't know if anybody dials the cops, but why test it? Why put yourself on anybody's radar? We're already way too exposed anyway, right? There is no privacy. So let's just step back a little bit and not uh get so dangerous with ourselves. Now, they're talking about these models taking that IP property. I've said that 15 times now. What do you do? So now companies are coming out saying, well, you got to get your own AI. You got to install it at your house, you got to go buy one of these uh these Sparks or one of these different machines, this AMD machine, or you need to go buy a Mac Mini, you need to buy a Mac because they have unified memory, you need to get a PC with a 50-90 processor. You know how how much those have increased? Apple's gone up $500 to $1,000 per machine, if you can get them, because all of that memory, all of that RAM, all of that is being hoarded by the data center people. So is that convenient that they're it almost appears that they're not needing as much yet, they're hoarding all of the other because prices are going up? Is that clever or is that on purpose? Or is that really true? Is that the way it is? Now you have other people making that information layer saying, hey, this is something that you need to pay attention to because the next good idea you have, one of these companies is going to take it. So what you need to do to protect yourself is get yourself your own AI installed at your house so you can talk to it. I don't know the answer, but these are things to watch out for. And now you have a lot of people talking about that, and I think that news is just going to continue to grow. Last thing I want to talk about is Pelosi, Maserati. I guess the husband of Nancy, retired Nancy. So some of the news outlets are just freaking out saying, well, he wouldn't have the same privilege as the rest of us because he hit a car, fled the scene, he hit a parked car, fled the scene, his heart car crapped out, and I guess he was contacted or they figured out it was him later. Okay, great. I I like that. That's a great, great story. Here's the thing hit and run misdemeanor. Yes, it's a crime. No, you shouldn't do it. You know, God forbid, maybe there was somebody sleeping in that car, they could have been killed or whatever, the parked car. But fleeing the scene, yeah, that's a problem. Now, was he drunk? Don't know. Was he high on drugs? Don't know. Has he been arrested before for DUI? I think, but I don't know. I'm not 100%. I think they have some previous, they're they're tying that into. I guess he had a previous DUI or a previous encounter, an investigation for DUI. I don't know how far that went, but they're using that kind of to talk about this. So when I worked, whatever Bureau of LAPD, when I worked traffic, hit and runs all the time. A lot of times, if the suspect car was gone, there was only TC damage to the vehicle that was parked in front of the house. And even if it just happened and the people left, if there was no license number, no make and model of the car, we would go and look around, but that was really about it. And that was if we even did that. Now, if somebody was injured, now you have a hit and run felony. So it rises from misdemeanor to felony, then it's it's a little bit more hands-on. But if it's a hit and run death, if a K traffic or a uh a kill or a death is a result of the hit and run, oh yeah, dollars to donuts, it's gonna be a full big deal. They might, and if it's somehow related to city property, even bigger, but they're gonna have people go out there that are aren't just your regular traffic cops, it's the really smart traffic cops that went to school to get tar one, tar two certification. Like I think every Chippy has that. So they're all kind of dialed into that whole brainy thing. That's why the vehicle code is their Bible with the CHP. There's lots of stories on that. No humor, but yeah, lots of stories. But back to that, so they would call out the fancy people to do that. But you're talking about a cat that smashed his Maserati into a car, knocked it up on the curb, and then fled the scene. They're not gonna check paint chips, they're not gonna check paint transfer, they're not gonna check skid marks, they're not gonna do a diagram, they're not gonna, there just isn't that investigation. Now, if his front license plate fell off on the ground and you have that low-hanging fruit, okay, yeah. All right, so you got the front license plate, you know, maybe you can, you know, call the RTO and and or dispatch and say, hey, listen, give me the, give me where this plate comes back to, and then go bang on the door and he opens up all drunk and his car smashed out in his front yard. And maybe you have a little bit to go on. But other than that, they're really not treating him any different. Now, yeah, I know who he is, and he's all fancy pants and he's related to God, apparently, and all this other stuff. But I don't know if that was really any different than anybody else would happen. I think the difference is who it was. Now, I'm nobody's fan. You know, I'm not a fan of Newsom or any any of these folks up there. I don't even understand their concepts. Maybe that's why. Maybe they just make me nervous. And it's it's bad for me to be nervous. So maybe that's where I'm coming from. But I I want to be, I want to be rah-rah, sis boom, bob, bugs bunny, bugs money all day long. But I can't because it's it's not there. It's yeah, it's a great story. And yeah, he's got to be just a horrible person to do this. And yes, he was trying to get away with something. And yeah, you call the police, and the police knew this was who it was, so they covered it up because they don't want Newsom firing him. Yeah, all of that. So all of that, I love all of that. That's all good stuff, but yeah, it's just not there. I mean, maybe they find out later. Maybe the lady that's wearing a wire that had it around Newsom all that time, maybe, maybe he's talking to her this morning on the phone. Oh, wait, that already rolled out. Maybe he's doing it anyway, you don't know. But anyway, that's when you start feeding the misinformation. There's a lot going on in the world, folks. Just please be good to each other. Verify what you hear. Don't jump in anything too soon. You know, slow your roll a little bit. When you're leaving your house, don't be so quick to leave. Give it a second. When you open your garage door to pull out or walk out, have a look. Be nosy. Be that trained observer that most good on-the-job police are, because we pay attention. Once you retire as a cop, you become dull as a spoon. You're not that sharp razor-edged knife. You're like a spoon after that. But when you're in uniform and when you're on the job, you're always thinking. You're always thinking, you know, is that somebody I arrested? Especially when you're getting mad dogged in the supermarket. You're in Stater Brothers and you're there in the checkout line, and you have somebody just leaning on you bad, and they got the prison tats, and maybe a couple of drops here next to the eye, and they're just, they're just into it. Yeah, you know what happened. You know you arrested them. Or they're looking at you and your fanny pack and your your pompadour thinking, yeah, that's a cop. Mustache to that whole thing. Anyway, all right. I hope you're well. Thank you for watching. And please comment below. Got three great stories here. You know, starting with the shopping carts. Then we went into AI, a little bit of a danger, danger, Will Robinson, and then finally into the last part of it, which was Pelosi. And uh good for you driving at almost 90 years old. Love it, love to see it. Connor with honor. We'll see you in the next one. Thanks for watching.