Posted on 12/26/2007 8:55:14 PM PST by hole_n_one
Twenty-five years ago, in the summer of 1983, I was working as the midnight hostler in the Croton-Harmon shops of Metro-North (the commuter railroad that runs north and east from Grand Central Terminal in New York). A hostler moves the cars around as needed, and back then working midnights was all I could get, so I took it.
One night, walking through the cars, I noticed a wallet on one of the seats. I picked it up and turned it in at the office. Didn't even bother to open it and look inside.
Turns out it belonged to one of the producers of CBS' "60 Minutes". Got a nice letter out of that one. Still have that letter someplace, I think.
- John
Damn! You had a chance of making a conservative out of him! jk. Too bad people even think about taking things that are not theirs.
It would be one thing for property to be easily accessible if someone wanted to steal it and they went ahead and took it. It would be another of there was an undercover officer nearby who made statements like "Take it and I'll split the good with you. Go ahead. No one is around. I'll watch for you." Or something similar to get the person to agree to commit an act that they wouldn't normally do.
As best as I can determine, the points made by Titus are essentially that he doesn't like sting operations, so the police shouldn't do them.
This particular operation might not have yielded any arrests so they might not run it in the same area for a while. Manpower deployment and budgets are not things that Management likes to squander if the results are not positive. That doesn't mean that they won't run it again in the future if circumstances warrant it. Especially around Christmas!
I wonder what would happen if a citizen left a large box of donuts in plain view in an unlocked car outside a police station?
In most areas of the country, the donuts would spoil because the police wouldn't touch them. You might contact NBC and suggest that they do a sting operation.
If I were an officer and I saw a bunch of donuts in an unlocked car I wouldn't touch them for two reasons:
1. They're not mine.
2. They might be adulterated.
In other words, the police are smart enough to recognize their own tactics.
That’s one way to look at it. Another way is that the police are reflective of most of the population and don’t take things that aren’t theirs.
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