Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car • Hacker News Board

Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car

#41

Post by WalterBright » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 5:52 AM UTC

If someone drops something in my car, and I unwittingly drive off with it, it is still not mine. But I did not steal it. If the person asks for it back, and I refuse, then I am stealing it.

All the police had to do was knock on his door and ask for it back. If he refused, that's grounds for theft. If he denied knowledge of it (like if it had just fallen off somewhere) that doesn't sound like sufficient grounds for a search warrant, and if the search warrant did turn up evidence of some unrelated crime, that evidence shouldn't be admissible.

I'm no lawyer, but that's what sounds right to me.

(I don't agree that Finders Keepers is a legal basis for ownership, or that leaving your door open means it's ok to steal, or that a bank error in your favor means you get to keep it.)

Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car

#42

Post by zik » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 5:53 AM UTC

nordsieck wrote: post #37

gamedori5 wrote: post #32

Legally, what is happening when the police put a tracker on a car? It isn't a gift, or a transfer of ownership - otherwise the police retieving it would be theft. On the other hand, the vehicle owner should not be held responsible for damage to a device they don't know about. Does it become lost property? If the disappearance of public property attached to a vehicle can be used to justify a search warrant, this seems…

IANAL My understanding is that it's the Police's property. If you find it, you can probably legally remove it from the car, but you can't keep it or prevent the Police from recovering it. This might be interesting to you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_by_finding

Since you don't know whose tracker it is maybe the best thing to do is "lose" it again. Drop it down the nearest drain so you can plausibly say you never saw it and it must have fallen off.

Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car

#43

Post by ddingus » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 5:53 AM UTC

Flozzin wrote: post #35

ddingus wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new doctrine is escalation of force to compliance. I have that info from public court, on the record. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21603136 Protect and serve died decades ago. Today, people literally die at the hands of police for errors, questions, mistakes, and failure to demonstrate blind compliance. <---that is no joke.

I just recently saw the video of the guy picking up trash with a claw/grabber and being told to drop his 'weapon'. Several police showed up to stop this threat from cleaning his property. Luckily though, no one was shot, and the officer that started it all resigned.

I got lucky in the 90's. Ended up in holding for a few hours. Officers escalated a fairly benign scenario into me getting roughed up.

They delayed court many times, while trying to make their poor case worse.

I took it to trial, won, and those officers were gone.

Things are way worse now. Be careful.

The attorney I had filled me in. The prosecution presented escalation of force to compliance at my trial.

Not doing what they say can escalate to death. The initial event can be ANYTHING.

Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car

#44

Post by jakelazaroff » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 5:56 AM UTC

panny wrote: post #29

FussyZeus wrote: post #5

Disgusting abuse of power manages to catch a criminal. Is that our only metric for success now? Putting people in prison? Might as well shred the constitution, apparently we're ready to burn everything it stood for to prevent people from getting high. I know I sound dramatic but it is honestly impossible to overstate how damaging to privacy rights and how much horrific police militarization can be directly and indire…

>Is that our only metric for success now? Putting people in prison? Might as well shred the constitution You just threw that straw man straight down a slippery slope. >apparently we're ready to burn everything it stood for to prevent people from getting high This falls under "punching Nazis". Do you want some guy going around punching people? No, of course not. But if he's punching Nazis, then hey, let him do his thi…

What straw man? What slippery slope? That's literally what's happening here, and it's the argument you're making: "this man is a meth dealer, so the ends justify the means".

Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car

#45

Post by nordsieck » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 6:03 AM UTC

zik wrote: post #42

nordsieck wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL My understanding is that it's the Police's property. If you find it, you can probably legally remove it from the car, but you can't keep it or prevent the Police from recovering it. This might be interesting to you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_by_finding

Since you don't know whose tracker it is maybe the best thing to do is "lose" it again. Drop it down the nearest drain so you can plausibly say you never saw it and it must have fallen off.

> Since you don't know whose tracker it is maybe the best thing to do is "lose" it again.

Often, knowledge of surveillance almost completely diminishes its effectiveness. If you know your car has a tracker on it, the police won't get anything useful out of it, because you won't drive to any place you don't want the cops to know about.

Leaving it in place also has the advantage that you don't alert the police that you know about the surveillance.

Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car

#46

Post by lazyguy2 » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 6:04 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #41

If someone drops something in my car, and I unwittingly drive off with it, it is still not mine. But I did not steal it. If the person asks for it back, and I refuse, then I am stealing it. All the police had to do was knock on his door and ask for it back. If he refused, that's grounds for theft. If he denied knowledge of it (like if it had just fallen off somewhere) that doesn't sound like sufficient grounds for a…

If you hide something on my car to spy on me then it's not reasonable to expect it back if I find it. Charging somebody with theft for something like this is effectively rewarding the police for being incompetent.

One of the worst mistakes in modern government is pretending that the people 'serving' have more rights and privileges then everybody else.

They should have less.

Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car

#47

Post by root_axis » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 6:08 AM UTC

rdlecler1 wrote: post #13

senectus1 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Disgusting abuse of power manages to catch a criminal. Is that our only metric for success now? looking back over the years, from the outside, I think that's been the american attitude all along.

Yes, let’s take an outlier and extrapolate that to a universal. There are bad people everywhere and in America there are a lot of tools to discourage and identify that behavior.

Police abuse is not an outlier, it's a horrifying reality that many people face.

Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car

#48

Post by wahern » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 6:09 AM UTC

stevenwoo wrote: post #30

2804t3qwp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to hear more about this if you don't mind expounding on it some. I realize that in a certain light that's how it looks (I'm no stranger to a lot of what used to be called conspiracy theories, including the long history of illegal surveillance) but honestly it's always looked to me like the powers that be, in America, genuinely try to operate in a benign fashion. I realize that's not the same as operating in…

This was covered in popular culture most famously by The Wire, written by retired police beat reporter David Simon, it's called "juking the stats", each police district is judged by different crime stats, and promotions are based on those stats, so naturally everything evolves to optimized for better stats. Not only that, on the judicial side in America over the past 50 years, funding has not kept up with the increas…

A great, empirically based, comprehensive look at the devolution of criminal justice in the U.S. can be found in "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice" by the late criminal law scholar William Stuntz.

TL;DR: The trend started nearly 200 years ago, though for various reasons it accelerated in the mid 20th century.

Some reviews:

"The book is eminently readable and merits careful attention because it accurately describes the twin problems that pervade American criminal justice today―its overall severity and its disparate treatment of African-Americans. The book contains a wealth of overlooked or forgotten historical data, perceptive commentary on the changes in our administration of criminal justice over the years, and suggestions for improvement… Virtually everything that Professor Stuntz has written is thought-provoking and constructive... Well worth reading." -- Justice John Paul Stevens, New York Review of Books

"This volume is exceptionally rich, insightful, provocative, and well-written. It is bound to have great influence on academic thinking, and perhaps in time on the criminal justice system itself... Stuntz's book will repay much closer scrutiny than I can give it in a review… [An] important book." -- Richard A. Posner, New Republic

Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car

#49

Post by itronitron » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 6:15 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #41

If someone drops something in my car, and I unwittingly drive off with it, it is still not mine. But I did not steal it. If the person asks for it back, and I refuse, then I am stealing it. All the police had to do was knock on his door and ask for it back. If he refused, that's grounds for theft. If he denied knowledge of it (like if it had just fallen off somewhere) that doesn't sound like sufficient grounds for a…

>> (I don't agree that Finders Keepers is a legal basis for ownership

you don't even have to find it, if something is in your car then the cops will insist that it's yours, although that doesn't necessarily make it a legal basis for ownership

Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car

#50

Post by 2804t3qwp » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 6:22 AM UTC

Flozzin wrote: post #23

2804t3qwp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to hear more about this if you don't mind expounding on it some. I realize that in a certain light that's how it looks (I'm no stranger to a lot of what used to be called conspiracy theories, including the long history of illegal surveillance) but honestly it's always looked to me like the powers that be, in America, genuinely try to operate in a benign fashion. I realize that's not the same as operating in…

While there is no catching a criminal in this situation. Asset forfeiture is abused. This is where police take items, usually cash, and keep it. There is no trial, just a seizure of property. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/12/1/16686014/p... It's a good example of what I mean. There are others, I'm just not going to post them all. The police seem to optimize for stats and profit. And the cities/counties…

This is a fair criticism, and in line with the comment I replied to, but I still don't know if I agree with the overall sentiment of cynacism. While I'll give you the leaks about Prism/Five Eyes/Mail Espionage (the original government surveillance!), etc. the same documents are in line with what a pattern of being motivated by a fear of being unprepared to defend the greater society from upheaval would look like. Obviously metric gaming is the self serving side of that desire, and I'm being a bit of a devil's advocate here, but a department that doesn't receive adequate resources can't perform its function adequately. At the same time, American justice (I don't know much of other systems) has a long tradition of not just being a government product. Our system is designed to be corrected, lawsuits are easy (if funded) because the (ideally) other side of productive authoritarianism is civil resistance (physical sure but also legal punativism). I realize that these aren't reasons to not be cynical of our LEO organizations, but I guess that's why the cynicism seems strange to me, it's also not a reason to doubt the overall outcomes of the justice system. Whistleblowers (and their checkered history sure), civil disobedients (looking at you MLK and Malcom X), plain old litigants (gay marriage) are the counter balances to the sometimes hostile nature of the bureaucratically empowered entities in the American government. Is the system perfect? Obviously not, maybe not even optimistically close, but it's certainly not something indicative of a populace motivated purely by metric performance from my perspective.