It’s apparently his way of getting revenge.
Some parts of it I don’t find too surprising.
Perhaps if a few more of his fellow officers do the same, we’ll start having a rational discussion on drugs in this country.
…arrested for returning rental movies late…
My mind is now officially boggled. Can you hear it boggling?
Your boggling is contagious Mangetout. I’m wobbling and jiving away here too.
How the bloody hell does one get arrested for late return? Every single person I know would be incarcerated if they had such penalties here…shit, some would probably be eligible for the death penalty because of their overdue-ness I guess!!!
"I would look for cops. They were known to return movies late.
I feel bad about it, but it works."
Well, technically, keeping the movies longer than the official rental period can be described as theft. And when you arrest the mayor’s son, and then a city councilman - I can see how it happened. Add that an ex-brother-in-law was involved, and it all makes sense. Not in any rational crime & punishment way - just in a ‘let’s get back at this asshole now that he’s vulnerable’ way.
Don’t mistake me - I’m not saying that it’s right - just that it’s the sort of ugliness and pettiness that really closed small-town politics can end up with.
Are you sure? Legally? They were returned, after all. How would one go about reporting the theft of something that is in his possession?
A friend of mine gave a computer to a repair guy, with the understanding that he would fix it and return it. When he disappeared, I called the police, and was told by a very impatient detective that it was a civil matter, not a criminal one. Since she freely handed over the computer, with the understanding that he would return it and get paid, there was an implied contract. Why wouldn’t the same logic apply in the case of a rental movie? There, the contract is written; i.e., your membership agreement.
I don’t doubt that’s one of the reasons that the charges were dropped. When it came to trial it couldn’t pass the “straight faced lawyer test.”
That doesn’t mean that an over-zealous cop couldn’t find ways to fake up charges that might get past a judge. AIUI rental copies of movies require an additional license fee, to get around that part of the FBI warning about being licensed for private home use only. Which means that a rental copy of a movie is much more expensive than the same copy for you or I. So… if the cop presented the situation to the town judge (who was likely a friend of the mayor or city councilman) as a case of “That SOB has got X amount of stock, from the rental place,” with X being say $250 (two movies, AIUI) I can see how the warrant would get written.
I’m not saying it’s a legit warrant. Just that I can see how someone could make the argument to set it forth.
And when you called for your friend - you weren’t a cop trying to get back at a former cop, with the help of small town politics. (Also differing laws in different states define what is petty theft and grand theft.)
Narcotics officers target black people, Mexicans and college kids? Fuck, I never would have figured that out. How much can I pay for this DVD? I just found my holiday stocking-stuffer.
It’d be great if this lead to a discussion of how cops target certain people and how dumb drug laws are. But I think the conversation will be about an ex-cop selling a DVD instead.
As for small town police squabbles, our marshall ran against the sheriff. When he lost, the sheriff impounded all the marshall’s office cars because he said they weren’t authorized to have blue lights.
I betcha his movies were late.
It’s sound advice - If I ever start doing drugs, I’ll remember not to be Black or Mexican.
Except, the SOB didn’t have anything. The movies had been returned. The rightful owner had possession.
Bolding mine.
I’ve got two things to say - first, for a put-up job (Which is what I believe this to have been.), what do the facts matter? What is needed is something that looks faintly plausible. Not something that would actually stand up in court.
Second, because I like arguing (especially in absense of the details and facts of the case 
), I’ll also add:
Depending on the jurisdiction, the rules for petit theft and grand theft are very different. IANAL, but my understanding is that someone needs to actually still have possession of the disputed item to be charged with petit theft. In many jurisdictions, though, grand theft it only matters that you stole the object, not whether you returned it or not. Automobile theft is the usual example of this: If you steal Mr. Jones’ car, and drive it around for a day, then return it to his drive way, if Mr. Jones or law enforcement have some reason to think they can prove you stole the vehicle for that time, you can still be charged with theft. (At least that was how the law on automobile theft was explained to me in Driver’s Ed 20 years ago in Massachusetts. I may be misremembering, or have misheard, or simply been told bad information.)
I can see how a kangaroo court could twist the circumstances to make ‘theft’ fit the description of what happened.
Theft can be defined, for most purposes I think, as the taking of someone’s possession without compensation. For a video rental business where what the business is selling are basically days to house the video, by keeping the video past the return date you have denied the video business the use of its stock for each day that you had the video past the due date. If the video rental shop refused to accept late fees from the guy returning the video (provided the rental agreement allowed the rental place to assess late fees at its discretion in the rental agreement.) it might not even take the sort of legal shennengins to make things stick. Since by that point the video store will have the record of the late return, that is the loss of its product, and will not have accepted any compensation for it.
I’ll admit I’m flying blind here, and partially trying to back up a gut reaction I posted earlier, but I don’t think I’m completely out to sea.
Now I know what to get Mom for Christmas
I got two tips for you so you will never get busted. 1. Stop breaking the law. OK I know you won’t do that so onto… 2. Don’t smoke in your car you fucking idiot. Almost all the pot busts I have seen start because the smell coming from the car would knock you over. No profiling needed.
They interviewed this guy on NPR this morning. I got a good chuckle. Apparently his next dvd is supposed to be “How to avoid getting raided” or something like that.
He talked about a game he would play with trainees, when he was still a narcotics officer. He would ride along with them for an 8 hour shift, and offered to personally pay for the day’s training time if he could not manage to make at least one drug-related arrest in that 8 hour shift. He said that he never had to pay.
I too, would like to see conversations about this guy and his dvd catalyze conversations about re-thinking the “war on drugs”, particularly pot.
One of the tips was to have a cat in the car cos it would distract the sniffer dog.
So if I was a cop I’d now start pulling over and searching all cars with cats in them.
I’d name it Toonces
You mean, before the car has even been stopped? If so, I think you’re half bloodhound. If not, I think the officer is referring to deciding which cars to stop in the first place.
This is not true. This has never been true. It is debunked in every thread that brings up rental videos. Please, SDMBers, stop spreading this misunderstanding.
It is true that video tapes used to cost more when they were first released (rental pricing) than a few months later (purchase pricing), but it was due to market strategies on the part of the video distributors, not an extra license fee. And it hasn’t ever been the case for DVDs, which are rapidly becoming the only videos that are rented anymore, anyway. There is no legal barrier to my renting out my home video collection.
Another tip was not to hide your pot in coffee grounds, because the dog can sniff through the coffee. However, if you hide your pot in meat, the cops will think the dog is interested because it’s food (as he explained, the dog can detect food, and the dog can detect drugs, but the dog can’t tell the cops which one he’s smelling).
ETA: When I heard he said he used to pull over college kids, Blacks, Mexicans, and Vietnam Vets (since all were likely to have drugs), I figured: no wonder your success rate is so high; you pull over everyone!