British cops stealing to 'prevent' stealing? This would never go over well here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Autoblog...
England is a very strange place. Not only do they like having a royal family, but they talk like this: "Oi. Buncha southy Londoners are suddenly stroppy over the constable's wonky plan to nick exposed swag from their unlocked cars. Kind of a bollocks plan, innit?" Naturally the coppers are chuffed about the whole thing, claiming they're just teaching gadges that couldn't be arsed to lock their cars a lesson.
In other words, in an area of South London called Richmond, police have taken to opening unlocked cars and removing valuable items like laptops and cells phones. They think they are doing nothing wrong and teaching careless people a lesson. Of course, because of British common law they apparently aren't doing anything wrong at all. Said police supervisor Jim Davis, "Technically we are entering the vehicle but we are not committing a crime. It's a common law duty to protect (people's) property."
Aside from, oh, you know, the police locking the unlocked vehicles, we have mixed feelings about this particular program. On the one hand, they are taking pre-stolen goods right out of the criminals' mouths. On the other, no jury (in Texas) would ever convict you for shooting someone taking property from your car. Seems to us like a lorra lorra gert plonker method to sort out the wheat from the chavs.
What is this "common-law" that gives the police the right to seize property for no reason? I assume they give the property back, and just take it down to the station so it's not stolen for good, right?
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^^ assuming they do just that as well - they can't seize it and not give it back right?
They whole theory behind this is "we're taking this for safe keeping since someone COULD steel it since your car is unlocked."
I guess its to scare people into locking their cars. Honestly though - I bet they find some weird shit in peoples cars. Could probably put up a website posting it all, get advertisement fees then put up their own telling people to lock cars. Its a win/win/win! (office!)
Don't think it's going to be effective at all. People who are careless enough to leave their car unlocked will remain being careless once they resume custody of their "stolen" goods. If anything, it will just cause an increase in complaints to the local PD's IMO. Honestly, who thought this would be in any way, shape or form useful? My guess is that this is a facade simply to hope to catch people with illicit materials in their car ... but now since it's legal, searching a car without a warrant goes out the window. You get your stuff stolen and if you want it back, you get to pay the hefty fine associated with other belongings found in your vehicle during the search.
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