Two cowboy hats were taken from a passenger at the Sacramento airport on September 1, as they were enroute home from Burning Man. They were Stetson hats which can be hundreds of dollars each.

The passenger, Max Segura, posted an airport camera photo of the person they say did the crime. The police are not looking for the perpetrator – this is not a high priority crime to investigate.

In California, theft valued at under $950 is generally a misdemeanor as a result of 2014’s Proposition 2014. That’s still a crime, but isn’t going to get much attention most of the time.

That was a pretty bad decision, especially in the Bay Area, and voters regretted it. So in 2024 Proposition 36 passed allowing repeat offenses under $950 to be charged as felonies and letting prosecutors aggregate multiple thefts from different victims or jurisdictions to reach the $950 value threshold for a felony. But as a one-off, this isn’t super interesting to law enforcement.

So victim wants to find the woman in the footage, and – it seems – have the internet do mean things to her. Although it’s possible they could follow up with a lawsuit.

I’m not sure I’d rely on Facebook for this. The reach of TikTok seems better, plus videos are great for cross-posting to other platforms. If they have a photo of the hat, they might use Google Lens to see if that same hat is posted anywhere (such as an online marketplace for sale).

Crowd‑sourcing can generate leads, but those leads aren’t always… accurate. The internet may find her, but they also found Sunil Tripathi and declared him the Boston bomber.

So first I’d probably check with TSA and with airport lost and found?

What’s most interesting to me is that they gained access to airport security video. There are few places with more cameras than an airport! It’s something that airlines use all the time when they’re investigating incidents. It’s not only accessible to law enforcement. But it’s rarely something a passenger can get their hands on directly.

The peanut gallery has gone into full investigative mode, and declared that “the Hamburglar” – whose “picture you can smell” needs to “give back the hats, Karen.”