What kind of fucked up logic is this?
Someone breaks into your dwelling, even if they stole nothing, it should be reported. And yes, the police want a report on it. It could be a link to a pattern of other break ins.
.
We have businesses here that prosecute every instance of shoplifting. Should we not show up because it’s just a candy bar? If we stopped showing up for petty crimes guess what would happen, genius.
Our local matrix reveals that businesses that prosecute every instance of shoplifting have … Wait for it …less instances of shoplifting.
Since the OP is asking what the legal solution is to this particular problem, I’m guessing that making an assumption as to what the police want and deciding to withhold both information and solid evidence, and assuming that said evidence is the personal property of the burglar, just ain’t legal.
Now, if the question was “Could I get away with withholding information and keeping evidence?” my answer may be different…but it wasn’t.
It was a big car, a boat, and the guy at the yard it eventually got to said they used it for sheet metal. Maybe they were frustrated it was so hard to steal.
A few weeks later I saw a 60 Minutes about car theft with a segment filmed more or less exactly where my car got stolen.
This obviously sarcastic use of the word “genius” comes across as a personal insult. Don’t do this again outside of the Pit.
I’m guessing that you did not notice what forum you were in. This is FQ (to be fair, the thread is drifting a bit out of FQ territory). Dial it back, please.
It’s already been said, but in *general, there is no affirmative duty to report a crime. The only real issue beyond that is whether and at what point the property may be considered abandoned, and that has already been discussed as well.
Although I might also want to quickly peruse my jurisdiction’s statute on tampering with evidence to see if it could apply. FWIW, an essential element in my jurisdiction is “knowing that an investigation or official proceeding is pending or in progress.” If I decline to report the crime (as is might right) and have no other reason to believe an investigation is ongoing or pending, then I suppose I’d be in the clear on that point as well.
But then again, it could also be committed if “knowing that an offense has been committed, alters, destroys, or conceals any record, document, or thing with intent to impair its verity, legibility, or availability as evidence in any subsequent investigation of or official proceeding related to the offense.”
So I guess I’s have to be careful about that.
*Might be some specific thing exceptions, such as discovering a corpse.
A few crimes are said to be mandated reporting by all Citizens- treason, Immediate threats to life, that sort of thing, but i dunno how often that is enforced.
Several years ago, I had a Chev Blazer that was stolen. Exactly one month to the day the police recovered it. The thief had been using it as transportation. As such, it was full of their stuff. When I picked it up I asked the police what they intended to do with all of his possessions? Their response - “nothing”. They told me I could keep them if I wanted them.
They asked me if I was interested in testifying against him. I did, he went to jail.
As a non US few datapoints, I have found our local police always interested in even trivial attempted breakins.
Some friends of mine were off overseas and I was checking in on their house occasionally. I arrived one day to find the front door mangled around the lock and a very large screwdriver on the ground. Police were quite happy to come, check everything over, we checked inside, and got a report. My friends had to get the door replaced and got a free screwdriver.
Which brings to mind an assumption in the OP’s question. That the object dropped by the thief owned the object. I would bet that the screwdriver left was stolen.
Similarly, I had a car stolen many years ago. It was found (my father literally walked past it in the street) a few days later abandoned in the city. Inside was a bunch of mail. Nothing that pointed to the thief, rather an indication they had been stealing other people’s mail. Again, the police were actually quite interested in that and they took it all. No way did I own the mail now.
If you get burgled, and an escaping thief drops something of value, my first thought would not be, “what was his is now mine”, but rather, “who did he steal this from and how to I get it back to them?” The law most certainly does not consider a stolen item the property of the thief, and any idea that there is a direct legal pathway bestowing ownership on you is fanciful. Which is why such items go to the police and are available for other victims of the thief to reclaim. Only going to you after a suitable time if no claim is made. Which is what you would expect if it was your stuff that was stolen.
Failing to disclose possession of such an object likely places you in a difficult legal position. The bad outcome is that the thief is caught, and tells the police they dropped the stolen item whilst fleeing your house. Something that will likely line up with when the object was stolen in the first place. (Such as they stole it right before breaking into your house.) Legal owner of the object is going to be pretty keen on getting it back. You do not have any claim to the stolen object. A reasonable person would suspect a dropped valuable object was itself stolen.
Depends on the object, I’d say. A large screwdriver is something that doesn’t cost much and is useful for breaking into houses, so it’s quite plausible that the thief might have legitimately owned it.
But if it was used to break into a dwelling or locations inside a dwelling it then became a burglarious tool. The courts in my state ruled this negates the legitimacy of possession and the plausibility that it was possessed for non-nefarious purposes goes out the window.
I can’t imagine an at least semi competent LEO not taking it as evidence.
Identification of material by the alleged victim is also extremely important. If the burglar dropped an item he stole from a different dwelling can the current victim ID the object as his/hers.
Sure, I’m just saying that that’s not an item I would necessarily expect was stolen. The burglar might lose legitimate ownership of it on using it for burglary, but they still likely had legitimate ownership of it before that.
My friend drowsily opened the door to loud knocking early one morning, to be asked by the police if he owned an axe? And did he know where it was? And – at this point, the other policeman became frustrated by the slow sleepy answers, and pulled out an axe: “Does it look like this?”
Decades ago while I was still living at my Dads’ I was out shopping with my fiance for my engagement ring, and came home to find a guy in my walk in closet holding my 22 semi automatic, he ran off (I was stunned and just stood there, not the best genetic trait to have) and weeks later I found his wallet in the closet. I didn’t recognize him but saw the address the street behind mine. I was considering going to the house and demanding an accounting but called the sheriffs office instead. They told me “because you’re family” that the kid was arrested and some other stuff about him that they were not legally allowed to say to just any other victim. They recognized me from working in the file room at the sheriffs office but having taken law, I knew they were not allowed to disclose names or information on juveniles. I never assumed the wallet was mine, nor any part of it but handed to my co workers.
