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

washingtonpost.com

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

#161

Post by Clubber »

tsimionescu wrote: post #57
giancarlostoro wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse is the whole guilty until proven innocent scenario the media (and our society) has created. All it takes is being a suspect once to have your life turned inside out. For years people will suspect you of whatever horrors were committed by someone else. The founding fathers are rolling over as they say if they heard where this country has gone.

You can't say that media and public shame are worse than the abuses of the criminal justice system. Your life may get turned upside down if you are simply accused of some crimes (especially sexual crimes), but you may very well bounce back. Getting rightly accused of possession of light drugs and ending up in prison is a much worse outcome, and it happens to many, many times more people. And unlike the celebrities th…

>Getting rightly accused of possession of light drugs and ending up in prison is a much worse outcome, and it happens to many, many times more people.

Can we just agree that both are a perversion of our justice system?

Blackstone's formula, "Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" was very influential do the people who designed our initial legal system. The reason it is important is that if innocent people believe they will be prosecuted unjustly, they have no incentive to stay innocent. This of course will turn us into a lawless society.

https://twistingtruth.wordpress.com/better-10-guilty-men-go-...

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

#162

Post by bluGill »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #129
huffmsa wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be, but legal precedent is a bit of a mixed bag on the admissibility of evidence collected during the execution of an invalid warrant. If a judge finds that it's not the polics'd fault that the warrant was invalid, they can use it. If it was there fault, it's probably inadmissible.

How convenient for the justice system to have a built in plausible deniability. A few winks and nods when asking for the warrant and all is admissible.

I've always thought that all evidence is admissible. However without a proper warrant the officer collecting evidence is guilty of a felony more sever than the crime he is investigating.

The only flaw I see is how to get the state to prosecute officers of this crime...

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

#163

Post by Jamwinner »

rosybox wrote: post #56

However you may feel about the theft charge, if you find a tracker on your car, don't take it off. It's an occasion to call the police. Someone is either committing a crime by tracking you illegally or you're letting the police know you found their tracker. Maybe they'll remove it, as once the tracker is known to exist it's useless. If you want to go the route of civil disobedience and take it off on moral grounds, y…

This is terrible advice, are you a lawyer?

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

#164

Post by h4waii »

tw04 wrote: post #147
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…

So if I put a bumper sticker on your car and walk away, then come back 3 months later and ask for it back and you refuse, then that's stealing? Really? Because I'd say me putting something on your private property is vandalism. And you removing said vandalism is in no way a crime. They didn't have a warrant, and their device wasn't identified as belonging to the authorities. Just because the police vandalized your pr…

IANAL, but doesn't vandalism sorta need destruction or damage to happen?

That level is destruction is open to interpretation, but it still requires some form of destruction or damage to be classified as vandalism.

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

#165

Post by lmkg »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #153

Lots of hypotheticals, fun reading here. My thought: Isn't there something about bearing witness against yourself? In America you're not required to do so. Isn't removing a tracking device something like pleading the 5th? Others suggest you should return it to the police, but it seems to me there are way better approaches to that than handing it over. Its a tracking device, right? They're going to find it, wherever y…

Installing the tracking device requires a warrant, meaning it's classified as a "search," not as testimony. It's 4th Amendment territory, not 5th Amendment.

If removing the tracking device is pleading the 5th, then putting the tracking device on at all would be a violation of the 5th Amendment. You can philosophize a testimonial aspect into almost anything, but the courts take a more narrow view of what gets protected by the 5th.

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

#166

Post by Hamuko »

itronitron wrote: post #49
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

The police arguing that something being in your car doesn't mean that it's yours is a good thing for the bag of cocaine and explosives in my car.

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

#167

Post by a3n »

h4waii wrote: post #164
tw04 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I put a bumper sticker on your car and walk away, then come back 3 months later and ask for it back and you refuse, then that's stealing? Really? Because I'd say me putting something on your private property is vandalism. And you removing said vandalism is in no way a crime. They didn't have a warrant, and their device wasn't identified as belonging to the authorities. Just because the police vandalized your pr…

IANAL, but doesn't vandalism sorta need destruction or damage to happen? That level is destruction is open to interpretation, but it still requires some form of destruction or damage to be classified as vandalism.

The application of the bumper sticker is the vandalism, just like graffiti.

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

#168

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

DagAgren wrote: post #100
freeopinion wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd settle for experimenting with "same". If a regular citizen can't plant a bug, neither can police. If police can conduct a stakeout, so can regular citizens. They just have to follow the same process. That might include going in front of a judge and getting a warrant. If a regular citizen could break up a bar fight, the police should be able to take the same actions. If police can set up a sting operation, so shou…

So which do you think makes more sense: Police are not allowed to arrest people, or everyone is allowed to arrest?

Everyone is allowed to arrest. Police only get that power as an extension of their citizenship.

There was a curious case a few years back of a non-citizen who had been a military police officer and became a civilian cop because nobody checked his documentation. His military activities were perfectly legal but all arrests made as a civilian were invalid.

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

#169

Post by tw04 »

h4waii wrote: post #164
tw04 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I put a bumper sticker on your car and walk away, then come back 3 months later and ask for it back and you refuse, then that's stealing? Really? Because I'd say me putting something on your private property is vandalism. And you removing said vandalism is in no way a crime. They didn't have a warrant, and their device wasn't identified as belonging to the authorities. Just because the police vandalized your pr…

IANAL, but doesn't vandalism sorta need destruction or damage to happen? That level is destruction is open to interpretation, but it still requires some form of destruction or damage to be classified as vandalism.

Sure, and I doubt you would take someone to court over most definitions of vandalism. But I could pretty easily argue that when they affixed it to my car it scratched the clearcoat resulting in $XXX of damage.

CLEARLY he's not going to counter-sue, but it's ridiculous to claim it's THEFT when you violated my privacy/trespassed on/against my property while affixing the thing to my property (without a warrant) in the first place.

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

#170

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

wodenokoto wrote: post #84
lazyguy2 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So police and firefighters shouldn’t be allowed to run red lights?

Not unless they are operating an emergency vehicle. That requires lights or siren to be active to qualify. Emergency flashers on a civilian vehicle do the same thing for everybody else.
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