On a military base, it's not so bad. They genuinely need to police drunk driving because you have a lot of young people with decent incomes on their own for the first time. Most American military bases are pretty aggressive about policing traffic issues, and it's apparently all to the good.
They do things like place some crumpled car as a billboard somewhere prominent to remind you daily what your car might look like if you drive drunk, then post a count that gets updated daily "Days since last deadly accident" or something like that.
And on the base in question, we had on base housing. One of the duties of the police was to let you in your house if you locked yourself out accidentally. (I did once.)
But this article starts with a stake out actively trying to tempt someone to steal something. It's essentially entrapment, or not far from it.
That's not entrapment. At least in the US, entrapment has to pass two tests:
1. Was it a crime the suspect was unlikely or unwilling to commit otherwise? (The "subjective" test.)
2. Did the actions of officers cause a normally law-abiding person to commit a crime? (The "objective" test.)
In other words, entrapment is when the police actively cause somebody to commit a crime they wouldn't have otherwise committed in similar circumstances.
In the article, the police just left a case of beer inside a car. The police created a passive opportunity, but that's not enough for entrapment... the act of steeling that beer was entirely self meditated.
That sentence has two qualifiers. I still have two people telling me I'm wrong.
In my youth, I would have agreed that a thing should just not be touched if it's not yours because maybe they will come back for it. Someday.
I'm still inclined to generally err in that direction, but I'm less judgy than I used to be of people who would be inclined to feel that a perishable -- like beer -- left out in the open for days on end must be basically abandoned and up for grabs because people don't typically buy consumables like that and leave them sitting out for days on end.
It's not normal behavior. It was intended to be temptation. Whether it meets the legal definition of entrapment or not, it makes for a town I don't really want to visit. There's no telling how far down this slippery slope they will go to keep themselves entertained and prove their paychecks aren't simply a waste of money.
I raised two kids. I've thought quite a lot about such things. I think setting up a "test" of that sort to see who will fall for it isn't nice behavior and shouldn't be done, especially not if your real motive is merely because you are bored.
I don't understand how you think this way about ownership. If it's not yours and you don't enter into a transaction (the transaction can be implied in the case of give-aways) wherein the previous owner grants you ownership, then it stays not yours. Things in a car are pretty unambiguously not up-for-grabs to anyone who doesn't own the car.
I was raised to be extremely upstanding and responsible etc. But you can take that too far, which is why we have and need laws that cover when certain things end: statutes of limitations, laws declaring when property is deemed abandoned, etc.
Every state in the US has laws in place that spell out under what conditions the government or another party can claim your real estate. The local government typically claims it if you haven't paid your taxes in X amount of time and resells it. If it is mortgaged, the bank can claim it if you fail to pay for X amount of time.
States also spell out when a total stranger can file legal claim on your real estate. This usually involves them openly living there, getting their mail there and paying the utilities and the like for a number of years.
Most states require a period of between ten and twenty years. The most liberal states only require five years. The most conservative -- Texas -- requires 30 years.
Countries that don't have solid processes in place for returning seemingly abandoned real estate to use by allowing some other party to establish legal claim to it wind up having extremely thorny problems, including intractable poverty for large swaths of the population.
Problems with trying to establish clear legal ownership in countries with overly conservative laws or traditions in that regard is one of the biggest challenges faced by Habitat for Humanity. Lack of ability to readily and easily say "We don't think they are coming back for it, and if they do, too bad so sad, time's up" actively undermines a functional society far worse than the occasional petty crime (such as some swiped beer).
I'm personally excessively conservative about such things. But I'm old enough to recognize that different people draw those lines in different places and that people less conservative than me don't necessarily deserve to be viewed as bad actors. They certainly don't deserve to be tricked into committing a crime so that bored police officers have something to do.
Simple: you inform the police that you think that car has been abandoned, and you let them deal with it. You can't just jump-start it and drive away because you think it's abandoned.
Ownership is just a notion. It's a custom our society has invented, probably pushed by people who had things, and then tried to convince everyone that this was the norm.
In more tribal societies it's not uncommon that people have no notion of ownership, or that it's less transactional. People who steal who I have met generally believe that it's the fault of the victim to have left that item up for grab. Just to say that the notion is quite fluid between people.
I think most people in the places that I frequent have very similar training on customs pertaining to personal property and ownership as I do, and that differences in how they act on that training is less to do with different customs and more to do with allowing yourself to shape your moral framework to match your desires rather than the other way around.
I need help with this one since you have some experience.
School bus 6am with its blinking lights in Mountain View CA about 8 years ago my wife got pulled over for driving past (she slowed down but didn't stop and wait). So if this happened at 8 am it would have been kinda legit. This was at 6am where there are no kids outside, taking buses.
No. You don't get to make that call. A stop sign (or in this case a school bus that obliges you to stop) means stop, so you stop.
Perhaps a school started early because of a special event? Perhaps a driver in training was making his rounds with an empty bus? You can't know. Don't try to water down reasonable traffic laws because you think you know better.
It's not entrapment, because no decent driver would be tempted to ignore a school bus with its blinkers on.
> You don't get to make that call. A stop sign (or in this case a school bus that obliges you to stop) means stop, so you stop.
Suppose you're on a motorcycle, you come to a traffic light, and it's red. It's the middle of the night, there is no traffic, and the light will never turn green, because your motorcycle isn't heavy enough to trigger the sensor in the road.
This is a pretty common case. Do you need to leave the bike there until day comes and car traffic arrives to save you?
All traffic lights I've encountered that are triggered use magnetic triggers and work with bikes. Additionally their failsafe for night operation is to go into yield-traffic mode; the yellow light blinks, indicating that the intersection is no longer governed by the light but by the normal right-of-way. As a last option, you can trigger the pedestrian light manually by getting of your bike.
This is absurd; you so clearly have not ridden a motorcycle in California or maybe at all; the number of lights that aren't triggered by a motorcycle is quite large; so large that there is an accessories market for adding a "larger magnetic field" to bikes; getting off the bike is just asking for someone to run you over because they weren't expecting a pedestrian on the roadway (one of those roadways I can think of off the top of my head had a light that wouldn't trigger on a winding freeway off ramp; I was always fearful that a motorist would kill me at this particular light).
No, I haven't ridden motorcyles in California, since I live in Germany. We probably just have better traffic lights. They even trigger when I use my bicycle!
Why are you fearing being run over when walking along a red light?
You have better traffic lights then. Many US states have laws the specifically allow motorcycles to run red lights as long as they stop and wait a certain amount of time.
The situation you sketch is not comparable to the school bus case. Most traffic laws have exemptions for dealing with a force majeure; either explicit or implicit by condoning any reasonable behaviour necessary to mitigate the problem.
You're not stuck in the school bus scenario unless the cops who put it there maliciously keep its blinkers on for an unreasonable amount of time until you do pull up again after stopping (which then might be classified as entrapment). rhacker's wife didn't stop.
> The situation you sketch is not comparable to the school bus case.
So what? The argument I responded to didn't use any aspect of the school bus case. It was "You don't get to make the call. A stop sign means stop, so you have to stop."
And that argument is obviously bunk. A red traffic light also means stop; it is perfectly comparable to a stop sign.
It depends on the state, as a number of states have "safe on red" laws for motorcycles.
In the case of Virginia, motorcycles and bicycles can proceed through the red light after the light cycles twice (skipping their lane) or two minutes. They still have to stop. They still have to yield the right of way.
I have taken a school bus at 6am (on a Saturday, no less) to a regional school event the next state over that started at 9am. My old high school had a "Zero Hour" during weekdays that started at 7:05am for those who had to work after school to support their families, or other obligations like sports in the afternoon. Busses serviced these kids. Combine that with the fact that children are high risk to cross the street without looking both ways for oncoming traffic, and school busses (and only school busses) are traditionally painted yellow as an alarm to the community to be very careful around them as there is a good chance it is hauling children and exceptional caution is to be given.
Government property on a military base that isn't locked down/guarded is pretty much fair game since everyone will reallocate resources if they are mission critical...and everyone knows this so if you really want to keep your stuff you need it guarded.
Personal gear exempted from this rule since Joes typically don't steal from other Joes unless they enjoy painful retribution.
> On a military base, it's not so bad. They genuinely need to police drunk driving because you have a lot of young people with decent incomes on their own for the first time.
The stereotypes about boots buying Dodge Chargers, Mustangs, Camaros and such on 21% interest rates are very real.
source: personal experience, former civilian military contractor
They do things like place some crumpled car as a billboard somewhere prominent to remind you daily what your car might look like if you drive drunk, then post a count that gets updated daily "Days since last deadly accident" or something like that.
And on the base in question, we had on base housing. One of the duties of the police was to let you in your house if you locked yourself out accidentally. (I did once.)
But this article starts with a stake out actively trying to tempt someone to steal something. It's essentially entrapment, or not far from it.