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EV Owner Arrested Over 5 Cents Worth of Electricity From School's Outlet
sl4shd0rk writes "It seems you can be arrested in Georgia for drawing 5 cents of electricity from a school's outdoor receptacle. Kaveh Kamooneh was charged with theft for plugging his Nissan Leaf into a Chamblee Middle School 110V outlet; the same outlet one could use to charge a laptop or cellphone. The Leaf draws 1KW/hour while charging which works out to under $0.10 of electricity per hour. Mr Kamooneh charged his Leaf for less than 30 minutes, which works out to about a nickel. Sgt. Ernesto Ford, the arresting officer, pointed out, 'theft is a theft,' which was his argument for arresting Mr. Kamooneh. Considering the cost of the infraction, it does not seem a reasonable decision when considering how much this will cost the state in legal funds. Does this mean anyone charging a laptop or cell phone will be charged with theft as well?"
He's obviously in the pocket of Big Oil.
You save only 59 seconds over 8 miles by going 75 instead of 65. Do you really have to pass that guy? Do the Math!
In most states, Theft under $5 is just a ticket... Theft under 5 cents is a PR nightmare. :)
from Ars:
"A short time later, he noticed someone in his car and went to investigate—and found that the man was a Chamblee police officer. "
So, cops just randomly enter other people's cars? I know I used to always lock mine if I wasn't in it.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
He has virtually zero risk in such an arrest.
He enhances his standing, knows he'll get a conviction and won't face a drunken driver or armed robber. Easy hit for his weekly arrest and ticket actions.
I bet if the "suspect" was named "John Smith" and white he might not have been arrested.
I'm surprised that didn't make it into the summary.
I suspect it is about establishing precedent and combating the idea that EV owners are entitled to "free" power, not about recovering costs in this specific incident.
If he filled up his thermos with water from the bathroom sink, would that be theft as well?
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
Does this mean anyone charging a laptop or cell phone will be charged with theft as well?
Yes, they certainly will.
But there should be a certain amount of common sense when enforcing the law. First did the school complain? If the school did not complain, did the officer ask the school if there was an issue? If there was an issue, I am sure the officer or the school could have approached the man and asked him to stop using their plug. They could even post a sign saying "please do not use our plugs to charge your devices." All of this would have been cheaper, more effective and infinitely less hostile than arresting the guy.
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels.
Okay. So WE all know it was just $0.05 after the fact, but put yourself in the place of the cop. Someone has a 1+ ton electrical machine plugged into an outlet. Just how much energy is being taken? Without knowing the power, the cop has no idea.
To the cop or average person, the electrical cord is analogous to a siphon.
Anyone caught siphoning gas from a government car into their own car is going to be arrested. This looks like the same thing to the cop.
Well, the water fountain was designed and installed for free water. And there are outlets in public places for free electricity to top off one’s phone. But I don’t think that was the case here. I see this as more akin to your next door neighbor running an extension line over to your home to borrow a little electricity – and failing to tell you. It might be for only a small amount but it is not good behavior. I think that a stern warning might have been better unless it was a chronic problem.
It's about an 8.3A draw. It's not going to burn down the building, even if another such draw is happening. I'd be surprised if the breakers are rated for anything less than 25A, and wouldn't be surprised to see 40A breakers.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
So what was the outlet there for? If it's on a public building but not meant for public use, it should have been secured, either by locking it or having it shut off inside the building. Actually, the drinking fountain comment is a good point. Obviously, a drinking fountain is there for public use. But what if it's just a faucet? Is getting a drink from a drinking fountain okay, but not a faucet? Is charging a phone okay, but not a car? Where is the line here?
Other than the obviously boneheaded ignorance highlighted by the amounts involved, there needs to be more clarity on which public facilities are available to the public and which are reserved for the institution.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
In colder parts of Canada, there are outlets provided in parking lots so that drivers can plug in their electric battery/block heaters.f - It kind of ruins your day to not be able to start your car because the oil has gotten too thick. I would not be surprised if the same faculties are available in Western US states and Minnesota. My thoughts on seeing the title was that good-ol' quote from Cool Hand Luke. - Whut we have heah is a failure to communicate.
I think the discussion is not around whether the activity would be legal or appropriate. It's more around whether the arrest is really the proper way to handle that infraction. It's akin to beheading someone for swearing in public.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Don't hyperbolise.
Did the cop know or reasonably suspect that a theft was being committed? Yes.
Is he required to know exactly the local electricity rates, the rate of the consumption of the car, the time it was plugged it down to the nearest second, the cable losses, and the discount that the school gets on electricity supply before he can make an arrest? No.
And if you read the article, he didn't - he made a report, the arrest came when the facts came to light.
If a kid runs out of a shop chased by security with an armful of things, the cop doesn't need to itemise what he has and whether it reaches a certain figure. You arrest, then you investigate, which is the purpose of the arrest, and then if necessary you "escalate" the arrest to a formal charge.
Being arrested means NOTHING except detaining you on reasonable suspicion of a crime until it can be ascertained whether a crime has been committed or not.
Fact is, he didn't arrest him, that came later when they checked facts. And he can arrest him because he has more than a reasonable suspicion that he took something (a product or service) that didn't belong to him, without permission, and with the intention to permanently deprive the owner of it. MORE THAN reasonable. In that he could see him doing it first-hand and query him about it and get an admission ("Yeah, but it's only 5c!" is basically an admission that you did it if you have anywhere near a half-decent lawyer on the other side).
What part of this confuses you? He was arrested, after much consultation, for a crime he admits doing, that a policeman caught him doing, which the school did not give permission for him to do, petty though it is.
You know what? I bet if he'd asked the school and even said "Here's ten cents for the school charity, can I just plug in my car outside for a minute so I can get home?" they'd have told the police that it was authorised and there'd be no issue.
Here on Earth and not Planet Black and White, there is thing called, "correct response to a problem". Here on Earth, we handout measured punishments based on the actually crime committed and the damage done to the victim. The offender in this case stole 5 cents of electricity. Which, while technically is a crime, is not a large one and not one worth the time of a police officer. If, for some reason, it did come to the attention of a police officer, they should have issued a warning since that may have all that is needed. Having a state employee deal with this is a net loss to society and its people since the officer could be doing other things like chase murders and rapists.
Linux O Muerte!
If you wouldn't have done it at a random stranger's house, why would you do it at your children's school without asking?
The same reason I'd take a piss in the school restroom without asking, but not in yours.
De minimis non curat lex. Laws were invented to prevent harm, not categories of behaviour. Your point is fundamentally misguided.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
then a dime. Pretty soon you're talking about real money!!!
I see this as more akin to your next door neighbor running an extension line over to your home to borrow a little electricity â" and failing to tell you.
Reminds me of a buddy of mine who owned a business, and had contractors working on another building, decide to "use" his power without telling him. Well his solution was to send the company a bill labeled "asshole fee: $250" amazingly it was paid without a second though. I've heard of it happening in other places as well.
Om, nomnomnom...
Agreed. The line is not well defined, and it is ludicrous that with those ambiguities (why exactly is his car different from a phone, or a laptop?) the police would go to his home at dinner time to arrest him days later.
They intentionally arrested him at 8p. A time when it's hard to get paperwork/representation/hearing, and thus chose that he be forced to jail overnight. Jail overnight! Not for drunken driving, not for violence or endangerment, for an ill-defined "theft". Why would that be a reasonable course of action? If the police picked up someone over a week later for a night in jail for a stolen *anything* with small value, everyone would likely see agenda/corruption driving the decision.
Would they have done that if I plugged in my laptop? My phone? Is this outlet only for maintenance's use? If so, why isn't it secured against this "theft", tampering, or adolescent darwin-award experimentation? If it's for student or community use, why is this a problem?
Is this school private or public? What rights does he have as a student's parent vs. a student vs. anyone else? Could we expect that if one of the faculty charged their phone there, that they too would spend a night in jail?
I suspect it's got a lot to do with politics and a regional dislike of environmentalists or liberals. I'd be very happy to learn otherwise, because the police selectively seeking punitive punishment for what materials goods you possess, and what they infer those goods mean about you is not a great direction for us to be heading.
Getting diabetes AND salmonella would be a bad weekend.
If you read the TFA, you could find some more information even though this does not answer all of your questions but still give you some more perspective to the situation.
Sgt. Ford says the officer should have arrested Kamooneh on the spot. But he didn't. Instead, the officer filed a police report. Then 11 days passed, and two deputies showed up at his house in Decatur.
"They arrested me here at about eight o'clock at night," Kamooneh said.
Ford said he sought the arrest warrant after determining that school officials hadn't given Kamooneh permission to plug in his car. Ford said Chamblee Police did so without asking school officials if they wanted to prosecute the alleged theft of electricity.
Through a fortunate coincidence, the number of hours in a year and the average cost of electricity in the U.S. ($0.12/kWh) means if a device is plugged in 24/7, the Watts it draws translates almost exactly into $ per year. Most laptops draw about 30 W while charging. A phone about 5 W. So if people were constantly using that outlet to charge their laptops and phones 24/7, the school or business would only pay $30 or $5 extra in a year. They may very well decide that's small enough they'll just pay it as a convenience to their visitors.
1 kW to charge an EV is an entirely different matter (it's actually probably closer to 1.5 kW which is about the safe limit for most residential 110V 20A circuits; 1 kW is probably the battery's charge rate after thermal losses). Allowing your outlets to be used to to charge EVs would drive up your electric bill by hundreds of dollars a year per outlet to a max $1500. So it's perfectly reasonably for a school or business to prohibit visitors charging EVs on their dime.
Or from the EV owner's perspective, if you can leech a 8 hours of electricity from your workplace and random stores and schools 5 days/week for a year, you'll have stolen about $350 worth of electricity by the end of the year. That's what this is about, not 5 cents. Saying it's about 5 cents is like saying a bank robber should go free because he was caught before he actually managed to steal any money.
He could be the officer assigned to the school, hence he would have jurisdiction - but as you said we don't know.
If the EV owner has a child at the school, then he might very well have reasonable belief that he could use the electricity since he's technically paying for it. Hell, with public schools all people in the district are paying for the electric bill.
This is an issue we'll have to address, since no reasonable person thinks there's anything approaching criminal with someone plugging their phone in while waiting in a reception area. But plugging in the car outside while on school property and presumably with official business at the school is somehow different?
The only difference here is likely the scale of the draw, since an EV is going to draw significantly more power in total than a phone ever would.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Did you get that out of your A$$, or thin air? You are quite incorrect.
I'm a BSEE-toting master electrician.
1) Commercial buildings, like that school, must have minimally 20 Amp minimally circuits- never 15.
2) A 20 Amp breaker trips at 20 amps. 16 amps is the max continuous load current allowed (80%) but NOT the trip current.
3) There certainly ARE 40 amp receptacles!! I've installed MANY! Go to your favorite hardware store and look for stove/dryer receptacles and you'll find them. There are several sizes and styles in 30, 40, and 50 amp range, including 3 and 4 prong (4 if neutral is needed - NEVER share ground with neutral!)
And then you have twist-lock connectors which can go to hundreds of amps...
Please don't write so authoritatively when you (obvious to me) don't know what you're talking about. You're misleading others who will easily believe you.
I'm getting pretty tired of seeing extension cords snaking through parking lots and parking garages.
I don't think the issue here is just five cents; some places can't handle the capacity this puts on their systems or wiring, or perhaps they don't want the liability of you screwing up your car thanks to faulty wiring, and suing you for it. And hell, what if some bright person uses a cord that's too light of a gauge for the current, and ends up starting a fire or hurting someone?
Charging should be done where appropriate, not wherever anyone wants.
Saying this as an owner of a car that gets plugged in, I totally agree. Stealing power is stealing power. Common sense says if you aren't paying the bill on that outlet, you ask whoever is paying for it before you plug in, you don't assume its okay.
That's good for a couple of reasons. It avoids situations like this (and this isn't, by any means, the first time its happened), and it also gets the discussion about charging going... lots of places will tell you no problem. Places that don't may or may not have legitimate concerns about it. Considering how many times I've popped breakers with my charging cable, its entirely reasonable for places to say no. This isn't plugging in a cell phone charger, its plugging in a device that nearly maxes out a typical residential circuit.
The thing that is stupid about this article isn't that the police considered it theft (it absolutely, unequivocally is), but rather that the police arrested someone for the theft of something worth so little. I could *almost* see a justification if the guy was arrested on the spot because the officer didn't know the electricity was worth so little, but after a few days of "investigation", it should've been obvious that the amount falls well below the lower limit of what people are arrested for where theft is concerned.
IMO, the guy who plugged is car in is the jackass in this -- its because of people like him that people who actually *ask* run into problems.
I'm getting pretty tired of seeing extension cords snaking through parking lots and parking garages.
Why? How does it hurt you?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
if you get up to 1.81 jiggawatts, then you can choose your own time period
Chamblee Middle School (http://www.chambleems.dekalb.k12.ga.us/) is part of the Dekalb County (Georgia) School System. DCSS is the most fucked-up school district in the USA. The former Superintendent was arrested for theft by taking, the replacement Superintendent abandoned her job and the current Superintendent is a political hack who lacks the qualifications required to hold a teacher's license. The former COO was just found guilty of racketeering. The DCSS school board was removed by the state Governor and the school system is currently on "Accredited Probation", the only school system in the country with that status.
Some recent news coverage of Dekalb County School System:
Court upholds law used to suspend DeKalb school board members: http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/court-upholds-law-used-to-suspend-dekalb-school-bo/nb4Cx/
Ex-DeKalb school official found guilty of racketeering: http://www.11alive.com/news/article/313666/40/Verdict-reached-in-DeKalb-corruption-trial
DeKalb teacher accused of beating special needs elementary student with stick: http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/dekalb-teacher-accused-beating-special-needs-eleme/nb26M/
School superintendent negotiates settlement in expensive legal battle: http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local-education/school-superintendent-negotiates-settlement-in-exp/nb89X/
DeKalb Schools placed on probation: http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/dekalb-schools-placed-probation/nTYSp/
DeKalb’s graduation rate under the new state formula: 58.65% (Meaning that 42% of Dekalb Students DO NOT GRADUATE!) http://dekalbschoolwatch.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/dekalbs-graduation-rate-under-the-new-state-formula-58-65/
No, the outlet should be fine at 9 amps. If it can't handle that safely, they are in violation of code.
For reference, the EV was drawing 1 KW. A hair dryer or a sopace heater draws 1.5KW.
So it's really down to 5 cents worth of electricity.
Actually, a 15A breaker may or may not trip at 15.1A. There is quite a bit of fudge room in the spec. You can pull quite a bit more than 15A on a 15A breaker for a short period of time.
Google for "Circuit Breaker Characteristic Trip Curves" for what may or may not trip a breaker.
Some interesting facts:
It is possible to pull between 95-115% of the rated current of a breaker basically indefinitely without it ever tripping.
It is possible to pull 150-240% of the rated current of a breaker for 60 seconds before it trips.
It is possible to pull 300-600% of the rated current of a breaker for 10 seconds before it trips.
It is possible to pull 900-2000% of the rated current of a breaker for 1 second before it trips.
Finally the car owner could be electrocuted or electrocute someone else if the outlet or car is misconfigured, exposing the school to risk.
If the school was so badly wired that plugging in to an outlet could cause that kind of damage then someone is exposing everyone in that school to an awful lot of risk, and it's not Kaveh Kamooneh.
1KW/hr is a meaningless unit.
I agree that it's completely wrong here, but it's not necessarily meaningless: you could legitimately say "The energy consumption was increasing at a rate of 1kW/hr"...
Need to type accents and special characters in Windows? Use FrKeys
Which raises the question: why did Nissan design it to only pull 1KW from a slow enough 110V outlet when it was perfectly capable of delivering 1.5KW?
Are you sure the wire gauge he's using is capable of safely delivering 40 A? You can't just upgrade a breaker and get more electricity. Not safely at least.
What makes you think it's there for the benefit of the public? It's more likely there for the sole use of custodial/maintenance staff.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
No, a breaker doesn't immediately trip at 0.1A over. Not even close.
And you say there are 40A outlets? No kidding. I would think you'd know the names NEMA 14-50 and NEMA 6-50 (stove/dryer outlets). This article isn't about NEMA 14s or 6s or the rare 5-50., it's about regular NEMA 5 household outlets ("standard 115v nominal household (NEMA 5-15p) plug is rated for 15 amps").
Please tell me your name so I can know I'm not having you wire my house.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I wouldn't be that upset if they sent him that bill instead of the crazy arrest.
The Leaf owner in question is a habitual troublemaker who violated orders of the property owner already (per the link to 11alive.) He also argued with the cop and refused to admit a mistake. (If he did that, the cop would let him go.)
Such a person would throw that bill away and come to that school to recharge as matter of teaching them a lesson. An arrest record is just deserts for this behavior, if the report is accurate. The society does not need antisocial egotists.
It's not like they would have hundreds of people charging though, there aren't that many outside outlets within reach of a parking space.
Expect all outdoor outlets to be locked as soon as enough EVs start charging without permission. The liability is far greater than the cost of stolen energy.
"There certainly ARE 40 amp receptacles!! I've installed MANY!"
There's NEMA 5-30, 5-50, 6-30, 6-50, 10-30, 10-50, etc. Where do I find a NEMA x-40? I won't limit you to naming a favorite hardware store - name anywhere on the Internet.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
If you were actually concerned about expense to taxpayers, you would be complaining about the cop wasting police department time and money, and the court's time and money, and you would have a point. As it it is though, you're just being silly. -Jay-
Do you have an electrical outlet on the outside wall of your home? A water faucet? Please let us all know where we can come and charge and wash our EVs at your expense.
When you go into a restroom in a park, do you take a couple of rolls of toilet paper home? It's there for the public, after all.