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Police Busted When Tracking Device Found On Car
uh oh notes a story from Down Under where a police investigation came to a screeching halt as a man being investigated by the police found tracking devices in two of his cars, ripped them out, and listed them on an auction site. "Ralph Williams, of Cromwell, said he found the devices last week in his daughter's car, which he uses, and in his flatmate's car after the cars were seized by police and taken away for investigation."
I would have simply removed them, disabled them, taken them out on some back road, and run over them a few times, followed by a thorough beating with a sledgehammer. The police won't admit they were there, so why should you? Then they'd have to admit to them to get them back, and you could plausibly say you never knew they were there, and thus couldn't be held responsible for their disappearance.
Now if you want to get really funny, leave them powered up and transmitting on aforementioned backroad for a few minutes, make sure they get at least one location transmission off, and then beat the crap out of them.
Assuming the police are responsible though, and they aren't admitting it is theirs, I'd imagine it is fair game. They can hardly complain about him selling their property if they deny it belongs to them.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
The insurance industry would love that as well.
- We only cover your car if you drive according to the law. Three years ago you were going 2mph above the speed limit, hence you invalidated your policy and we are not obliged to pay.
- Why didn't you notify me then?
- According to the policy, we're not obliged to do that either.
- Are you obliged to do anything?
- Maybe, but we're not obliged to answer that question.
...it's like what McCain said about torture.
Sometimes, the good guys need to break the rules in order to do the right thing. This
doesn't mean that disrespect for the rules in general should be ensrined into the law
or SOP. If the situation is really serious enough that you need to ignore the usual
rules then you need to be prepared to take any of the consequences for breaking them.
This is especially true for anyone that is supposed to be "setting an example".
If you are a cop and aren't willing to take the consequences for breaking the rules,
then it's pretty obvious that the situation doesn't warrant breaking them. Being too
lazy to get a judge's signature is not a good excuse. Writting the law so that cops
can be lazy as a matter of routine is not good.
This is the part of "being Dirty Harry" that tends to get missed.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
"but what about smaller areas where a warrant at 3am means having to wrest an old man out of bed?"
Then you wake them up. Or you do your job properly, and plan better, so you don't have to go and bother someone at 3am.
(and that's hard to do)
Since when is surveillance ever an issue of immediacy? You usually engage in it over a protracted period in order to slowly gather evidence. Also a warrant hardly ever takes more than a day or even a few hours to get in any country I ever heard of. Anyhow, what Judge is going to refuse a warrant for a bugging device considered so important by the Police that they have already installed it?
This seems to be a deliberate loop-hole in the law to allow for warrant-less surveillance. The very fact that a regular police force investigating a fairly low-level crime uses this tactic kind of implies that this is fairly widespread or typical behaviour as well.
Yet another reason never to go to Australia.
Have you never heard of OnStar? That fits exactly what you describe - a perceived additional sense of security and safety by having a corporate entity (or a law enforcement or other governmental agency with or without a warrant) track your every move and even listen in on your conversations remotely. The courts have sided with disallowing OnStar's use for listening in on conversations inside the vehicle, but all it will take is one judge and that's out the window. OnStar's just one more good reason not to purchase a GM vehicle.
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." --attributed to Benjamin Franklin
>How's that for a toothless system?
Yes, it's pretty stupid. Why don't you stop wasting your time and money impounding their equipment and just let them grow? It's completely harmless.
Its probably safer to not be found planting a device on a police car if you're currently under investigation for torching a cruiser.
This is false. If a meter wench put clamps on your wheels, they do not then automatically belong to you. And if someone welds a can of caltraps under the rear bumper of your car (to be shook loose at random), you can not be held responsible for accidents that's caused by them.
And no, if a burglar drops his wallet with $1,000 on your floor, that doesn't make the money yours. He may be guilty of a crime, but that doesn't give you any rights to what's not yours. Crime must not pay, neither for the perpetrator nor the victim (when it becomes profitable to be a victim, people will seek to become one, which increases crime instead of lowering it).
Transference of ownership occurs when both parties agree to it. It's not enough that one person thinks it's an ownership transfer.
What this guy did was theft. The police might or might not have broken a law by placing the devices on his car, but that's irrelevant to the ownership of the devices.
If I find something electronic that I don't own attached to my car, I call the bomb squad.
And the papers, because they'll want to cover the argument between the military guy with the flack-jacket and the police guy with the red face.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
My understanding is that he called the police and asked if they'd left anything in his car. They explicitly said "No", disclaiming any ownership. Perhaps the cop who told him that -- acting as an agent for the police department -- should be charged with theft, but the gentleman here was at worst guilty of receiving stolen property. Since he received it in good faith, I don't think any such charge should go anywhere.