No lesson lost there. On the contrary, total dipshit miraculously did as he should once threatened with real consequences. The only asshole in this scenario is the thief.
“The warrant was issued because he STOLE a library book.” - fixed that for you.
Are you running low on tin foil? Cops really don’t have time to harass random idiots.
Agreed, theft is theft. That we should let people walk away with things without paying for them as a necessary cost of avoiding “a police state” just seems foolish. I can’t think of a society or a system of government in history
that ever approved of random theft by the lazy and the stupid (and if there ever was one, I wouldn’t want it in this country today).
As for a “tax increase”, I have no problem with the state fining the total cost of the process necessary to collect what the thief stole from the thief directly, preferably as ‘bail’ to get out of jail.
He can sputter about it like a wet hen after while the rest of us point and laugh. If he then wants to hire an attorney to fight it, let him. Stupidity should hurt.
I don’t know. I don’t see this as theft. To me, stealing a library book would be what Iggy’s acquaintance did: snuck a library book out of the library without checking it out. This is borrowing a book and forgetting (maybe intentionally) to return it (or losing it). I suppose it’s shades of gray, but it feels different than theft to me. I wouldn’t consider a friend who borrows a book from me, then loses it and doesn’t get around to paying for it a thief. (Or even if he has the book, and I just end up saying, “Fine, you can keep it, but you’ve bought it.”) I’d consider that person a bit of a deadbeat, yeah, but not a thief. And he’d never be allowed to borrow a book from me again.
Like I said above, send it to collections. Have it ding his credit report, if necessary. But arrest feels like overkill to me.
Where I live, that’s exactly what they do have time for. They roll up and down the streets running plates and pulling over anyone they deem “suspicious.” It’s a source of revenue, generally low-risk, and keeps them busy.
My theory is that because the number of people in town fluctuates drastically due to seasonal tourism the area is supersaturated with law enforcement during low seasons in order to achieve normal saturation during busy times.
When I owned a business, if I called them to get a trespass warning on someone, it was not uncommon for ten cops to be on the scene within ten minutes.
Why? Is it so appealing that it must be punished or else everyone will want it?
When it’s a child, have you noticed how rarely the little one is stupid? The kid has a learning disability, a sensory processing disorder, autism, etc. The kid can’t get organized because he has ADD. He can’t follow a series of instructions or turn in papers on time or stay on task or take a timed SAT because he has a condition beyond his control and needs accommodations made. His mom drank while she was pregnant or smoked crack, so he has poor impulse control. He has developmental delays, so he needs various medications and therapies.
These are tomorrow’s “stupid people.” The ones who start trying to prep for a GED then can’t stay on task long enough to follow through and actually take the damn thing, so they keep the book, ever-hopeful that one day they will. The ones who can’t make it to their minimum wage jobs consistently enough to ever get promoted. The ones who won’t have rent money and bill money and all their ducks in a row for a traffic stop.
Why “should” they hurt? Because they are disorganized, irresponsible, and incompetent? Because they stubbornly refuse to firmly grasp their own bootstraps and yank hard enough? Because they keep reaching for the beaker that says “get dumber” instead of the one that says “get smarter”?
Being MEAN should hurt. Harming others should hurt. Being stupid will hurt whether extra pain is issued or not. A society that crushes its weakest members is not a good thing.
I don’t see a parking ticket as theft, or a crime. But ignoring one eventually leads to serious problems, like being arrested.
I hear ya man. Going to jail over a 25 dollar parking ticket seems insane.
Yeah, pretty sure they don’t jail you in Chicago, either, for unpaid parking tickets, that I know of. Lawsuit, collections, the parking boot, and apparently they’re thinking (or have already implemented) deducting fines from your state income tax refund (or withholding your state income tax refund.) All those make a lot more sense for a debt than jail.
People are not gonna want to risk arrest to read a book.
And before you say “well, just return the book and you won’t” sometimes the library themselves lose the book but blame you. My mom once returned a book, then started getting notices about her “overdue book”. She eventually found the book. Shelved in the library. Because she had returned it.
So the system works.
If Mr. Enck had rented a car, refused to return it, and refused to pay the rental fee and late charges, I doubt Enterprise would have just shrugged and said “Well, we’re not renting a car to HIM again!” If he’d returned the car but not paid the charges then that might be considered purely a collections matter, but if he just kept driving the car around town without ever paying a dime for it then I suspect it would have taken less than three years for the police to step in.
Of course a public library is not a for-profit business like Enterprise, but a public library is also not your friend that lends you books because it likes you and thinks you’d enjoy a good read. The public library lends you books because its purpose is to provide the public with access to information that many people could not easily pay for themselves. If Mr. Enck had borrowed that GED study guide from a friend and kept it then that’s one person who would have lost access to the content. By stealing it from his public library he took it away from his entire community, including people who could not easily afford to spend $20 on a book but whose lives might be much improved if they could earn a GED. Since public libraries have limited funds then if the GED guide was replaced – which involves more than just buying a new copy, it also needs to be processed and the catalog record has to be updated – that took away time and money that could have been spent on other materials and services.
Let’s compare things on the same scale here. What would happen if I didn’t return a movie to the video store (I’m dating myself here) I rented from? Will they put a warrant out for my arrest? Or what if I don’t return the disk to Redbox or Netflix?
We can analogize all day to death. I personally think it’s way disproportionate. You’re not going to change my mind on that, as I’m not going to change yours.
No, the system did not work. Having to rectify yourself a fuckup of the system does not make that system “work” in any useful definition of the phrase. If the “system” had a procedure in place for dealing with possible misshelvings and errors, and the book was found on account of this procedure, then, yes, you can credit the system. But not when you have to go and find the book yourself that THEY shelved that THEY didn’t account for to prove you’re not a deadbeat.
In those cases, they would charge you for it’s replacement - likely an insane amount for some spurious reason. My brother was charged $90 to replace a movie he lost, back in the days of VHS - a movie readily available for about $30 retail.
The library doesn’t have that option, and would be taken to task for requesting financial info or making a requirement that all users have credit card info on file.
Oh.
I can’t help it. I want to be mean and crush weaker people. Not my fault: mom smoked, drank, and did crack while she was pregnant, so that’s why I’m mean and want to crush people now.
What happens now?
State laws vary, but in Virginia (I don’t live there, it was the first official hit I found) you can be charged with fraudulent conversion for not returning leased property, and just failing to return it is considered evidence of intent.
I don’t know if a video rental agreement would count as a lease, but back in the heyday of video rentals you had to sign for every rental.
Procedures are in place for dealing with possible misshelvings and errors. Step 1 is identifying there’s a problem. When TBG’s mother alerted the library staff that the item in question had never been taken off her card even though she returned, that would trigger a search for the item. Which would have been found on the shelf and then the block would be removed from her card. That is the procedure and it worked perfectly.
That TBG’s mother felt the need to look for the book herself is neither here nor there.
If you don’t like analogies then perhaps you should have focused on the part of my post that was not an analogy:
Mr. Enck’s selfish, irresponsible behavior caused harm to his community. Not being allowed to check out any more library books obviously wasn’t enough to deter him from stealing that GED guide or persuade him to bring it back. He had plenty of opportunity to make things right before his arrest, but he chose not to.
And, like I said, I do not think that’s an appropriate punishment. You disagree. I don’t think we’re going to change either’s minds on this.
From what TBG told us, we don’t know whether that happened or not.
We don’t?
[QUOTE=TBG]
My mom once returned a book, then started getting notices about her “overdue book”. She eventually found the book. Shelved in the library. Because she had returned it.
[/QUOTE]