I was in agreement with you on this until the people said they ran right by a police officer and noticed him but didn’t hand him the bag.
I suppose if they are really really late, that could make sense.
But it’s hard to imagine someone thinking they’d rather go through the hourse of hassle of tracking down the owner and bringing the bag back, when all they had to do is hand the bag to a police officer and say “I found this sitting over there, gotta go”.
My guess is they were thinking that if they couldn’t identify who owned it, they’d keep it. A lot of people think the law allows finders to be keepers.
Still, since the law allows them 10 days, there’s no way these arrests should stick up in court.
>>>Still, since the law allows them 10 days, there’s no way these arrests should stick up in court.
Regardless of how the court decides, the court still takes in the court fees.
The NY/NJ areas have been running ‘fund raisers’ like this for about a year now. Each one getting more and more ridiculous.
Why would I hand the bag to a third party that is likely to ignore it, when I have the intent to do my best to return it?
Your standard NYC cop would likely reply, "What am I, the fricken lost and found?"
Have you ever turned anything in to the police? I found a traffic cone in my back yard that was plainly marked property of the city I was living in at the time. I called the city information desk to ask what department I could return the cone to and that I would drop it by the office on my way to work in about half an hour. They said they would send someone over right away. I said I really have to leave for work no later than 30 minutes from right now. They said no problem. Someone will be on their way any minute now.
Ten minutes later, a city police cruiser stopped in front of my house. I met them in the front yard with the cone (again, clearly marked “Property of ... “), handed the cone and spent the next 30 minutes answering questions, showing the officer where I found the cone, being asked over and over whether I knew who took the cone, whether I suspected who may have taken the cone, how I thought it may have ended up in my yard, whether I had seen anyone wandering into or through my yard lately, just about every question you could guess. With, of course, Officer Friendly taking my every word down in his handy-dandy little notebook.
Try explaining to your boss you’re late to work because you foolishly tried to return stolen property to the city.
Never again.
Now, imagine you’re in New York City, you find a bag, your train pulls up, and you see an officer. Run to the officer, stuff the bag into his hands, turn and run for the train.
Ya think the officer is going to let you board the train?
At the very least they will have to take down all your personal information. They are not just going to let you just hand over the bag. What if the bag had 20,000 dollars in it and when the bag was return the person said where's my money and all the police can say is (I don't know I didn't take down any information.) I am sure that the police are willing to take the chance of being shown as incompetent rather than inconvenience someone by making them wait while they fill out a report. Besides it doesn't matter. The law is they have 10 days to turn it in and so have the right to decide to turn it in later.