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Man Arrested After Charging iPhone On London Overground Train
An anonymous reader writes: 45-year-old Robin Lee was arrested after he used a socket on a London Overground train to charge up his iPhone. He was handcuffed and arrested for "abstracting electricity". Robin was then charged with "unacceptable behaviour" after "becoming aggressive" when objecting to his first arrest. The Guardian reports: "Speaking to the Evening Standard, Lee said he had been confronted by a police community support officer on the overground train from Hackney Wick to Camden Road on 10 July. The Overground is part of Transport For London’s wider network that also includes London Underground and the buses. 'She said I’m abstracting electricity. She kept saying it’s a crime. We were just coming into the station and there happened to be about four police officers on the platform. She called to them and said: ‘This guy’s been abstracting electricity, he needs to be arrested’.”
Yup. Let's spend thousands of dollars worth of man-hours and paperwork and court time over 10 cents worth of electricity.
Would it be any different if he was charging a cheap Nolkia - or even his shaver?
We were called to Camden Road London Overground station on Friday 10 July to a report of a man becoming aggressive when challenged by a PCSO about his use of a plug socket onboard an Overground train.
While arrest may have been an overreaction, the guy was using a socket clearly marked not for public use and then seems to have become aggressive when asked to unplug his phone. Maybe he needs to look at his own behaviour as well.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Don't you think a reprimand - "you can't do that here sir" - would have been more appropriate? He probably 'stole' less in monetary terms than if he'd used an excessive amount of loo paper.
Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
No story here.
Your absolutism costs lives. It locks people up who shouldn't be and follows them around for the rest of their lives. It also creates marginal deterrence problems. Proportional responses to violations of malum prohibitum "crimes" are called for. Proportional responses to malum in se crimes are even called for, but for malum prohibitum crimes there is no justification for absolutism.
To plug your phone into the wall should not be to get arrested, unless there is a gigantic sign saying "PLUGGING INTO THIS IS PROHIBITED." Even then, it should get a $50 civil fine and nothing on your record. What's more, it *shouldn't* be prohibited unless it creates problems.
You work at a really, supremely, fucked up place. In the sane world, newer classrooms have outlets at every desk so students can charge their laptops, at the podium so speakers can plug their laptops in, and in offices so workers can plug in their phones/laptops. And no, an electrician doesn't test every single phone and laptop before it gets plugged in because WHAT FUCKING PLANET ARE YOU FROM.
Outside of schools, public places like airports and bus stops have outlets for people waiting around. And airplanes and trains often have outlets at the seats. Perhaps you've noticed that portable electronic devices like computers and phones have become more common in recent years. That likely has something to do with the recent explosion of outlets in public places.
And perhaps -- no, almost certainly -- your school, like so many primary and secondary schools, is run by a neurotic, petty dictator who gets off on controlling every possible aspect of students' and others' behavior, and who will use any possible excuse, no matter how stupid and absurd ("fire safety"), to exercise this control.
Just curious, is your school also one of the ones where students or employees will get expelled for having premarital, consensual sex with each other?
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
These would be the sockets that say "not for public use" on them. The sockets that are provided for the cleaners to plug their vacuum cleaners into and, if used when the train is operating, could be subjected to power spikes and liable to fry your electronics and cause a fire? Yeah, I have no sympathy. I don't doubt the police could be doing better things (although I'm no engineer, if this really does pose a serious safety risk, perhaps it is a good use of their time) but when you're on someone else's train you play by someone else's rules. If that means not using the sockets, so be it.
^ Lame.
Disciplined for charging a phone? You employers are retards.
No good reason why parents shouldn't charge their phones.
You are getting pissy about 0.1c worth of electricity and a risk of fire so low it's not worth thinking about.
You're a control freak and a really stupid one at that.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
switch them off from the fusebox while not in use by the cleaning crew - costs nothing and is also safer
So you think it is far more appropriate for them to have to develop a nonstandard plug rather than trust in the honesty and decency of the citizens of the UK?
Actually, I think a better policy would be "Need to charge your phone while you're on the train? Use our outlets!" It would be a good PR move for them and help build goodwill.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
The best engineering is the type of engineering that prevents people from doing the wrong thing with minimum expense. Using non-standard plugs and outlets is bad engineering; it requires costly ongoing retro-fitting as new cleaning equipment is purchased, and even then passengers might be tempted to tamper with a "live" electrical outlet in an attempt to make it work with their chargers.
But I would assume that the cleaners are not going to be cleaning the train while it is in service, correct? So, you have a master electrical switch in the train for "operational" and "maintenance" modes. When the train is being cleaned, it is placed in maintenance mode, and the power outlets are live. When the train is in operational mode, the outlets are disconnected. Very quickly the passengers learn that the outlets don't work. Problem solved.