Gotta say, for anyone worried about the surveillance state and stuff, NYC is the perfect city. Through a unique combination of a dense, diverse, super populated metropolis and pure incompetence, you really can disappear in the crowds.
That’s simply not true anymore. Our NYPD operates the so-called “Domain Awareness System”, which is a combination of good old database connected to terminals in patrol cars and precincts, as well as metadata-rich security cameras. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Awareness_System
The system doesn’t get talked about very much, but even regular patrolmen are trained to use it effectively. It’s built to accommodate a variety of use cases ranging from tactical support (“suspect headed north on Amsterdam Ave, but then we lost him - where did he go?”) to general investigative duties (“who usually comes by this store on Mondays at 9am?”) and, based on what I’ve heard from cops, works really well.
He was caught sleeping on the street at 10:30 AM, so maybe not exactly a master of evasion, but still, 2 days to catch him ain't bad.
He was caught 2 hours after the police sent an alert to people's phones by someone who got the alert, but not too quickly for Anil Dash to criticize the alert as useless:
