And it will starve again unless you learn the meaning of the law!
The answer is of course “no”. It is absolutely not legal to steal a loaf of bread to feed a starving family. It’s called petty theft or shoplifting which is a misdemeanor.
It’s not even morally justified. What if every starving person decides they want to snatch something from the local grocery store? The store would soon be out of business.
However, unlike Prisoner 24601, you generally don’t go to jail for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread. At most you’d get a year in prison and probably much less. And with the extenuating circumstances, you’ll probably just get a few hours of community service.
Remember that everything produced, including a loaf of bread, is a product of someone else’s labor and agreements freely made between various people. It may not seem that way because you just see what comes out the end of a vast complex supply chain. But imagine there were two people. Me - making my own bread out of grain I harvest and some other guy who is starving. They can make some sort of bargain or arrangement or appeal to my sense of charity. But that other person’s need does not give them the right to make me a slave.
What do you think would happen to you? OK, you see a baby and break the window and it turns out to be a cabbage patch doll. No baby was in danger. What bad thing will happen?
As for the idea that you’d get in trouble for making a call to 911 for something that wasn’t an emergency, that’s just nonsense.
How often do folks get in trouble for calling 911? Have you ever heard of this happening? To a real person, not some guy your friend’s uncle heard about one time.
You have to look at the wording of the statute and the elements as defined by the legislature. For instance in my state’s criminal mischief statute it says the actor must purposely or knowingly damage tangible property. So that’s covered. But then it uses the term “recklessly.” If you break a window to rescue a child you are not acting recklessly. As with many statutes (but not all) intent is important.
And no the further intent of feeding someone the bread does not count because it lacks immediacy.
Matter of opinion. Letting one’s family starve is also not morally justified. Since morality isn’t legislatively codified, this would be a Great Debate, not a question with a factual answer.
We are talking about the laws in this country at this time. Give me an example of where someone is literally going to die if you don’t steal that bread. There are programs and charities to keep that from happening. You may have to jump through some hoops and it might not be pleasant but there is a way. That bread is not saving someone’s life. A better example would be grabbing orange juice off the shelf to help someone going into diabetic shock or taking items to make an improvised tourniquet.
And the 911 operators are supposed to evaluate from your call what is it that is happening.
In the child-in-car scenario you should not just “call 911 and get the hell out” but if feasible notify anyone nearby who could assist, e.g. run into the Mall door and say to the first rent-a-cop or shop manager you spot “Hey! There’s a kid locked inside a closed car in your lot!”; after calling, *someone *should be able to wave in the responders and point them in the right direction (are you going to make them go looking inside every silver grey SUV in the lot?).
A good faith honest-mistake call does not automatically become an unlawful false alarm just because by the time the response arrived the situation was otherwise resolved/rectified. OTOH calling and then cutting off contact and running away does make it look like deliberate mischief.
29 years ago, when we first got 911 service, but prior to cell phones, I was on the opposite side of a street about 2 blocks from my house. There was a cement boulevard in between where I was driving and the two cars across that street. One car had t-boned the other. As people were getting out of the car and it was a residential area, I figured it was safe enough for me to drive the two blocks home and call 911. I did so and because I couldn’t identify the “injuries” the operator advised me I was committing “mischief” by calling 911 and was rudely told I could be up on charges.
Soooo…if that can happen, I can’t even imagine what would happen if you sized up an “emergency” and with 20/20 hindsight it wasn’t as severe as you thought. No, I’d rather not run that risk. If there’s blood apparent or a car on fire then that removes the subjectivity.
A cat that sits on a hot stove once will never again sit on a hot stove. But she won’t sit on a cold stove either.
So once, 30 years ago, a 911 operator scolded you for calling 911. And ever since then you’ve been deathly afraid of calling 911. And all that goes to show is that some 911 operators are bad at their jobs.
Did you actually get charged? No, you got scolded once 30 years ago by a 911 operator. Who was probably violating policy by scolding you, and could have been reprimanded or even fired.
People do get charged for calling 911 maliciously. Maliciously. Not because what they thought was an emergency turned out to not be an emergency. Not because they saw an accident and couldn’t detail the particulars.
:smack: What an absurd conclusion. By your own actions,already* before calling *you did not feel there was an imminent emergency situation. Just a routine non-injury car wreck of the sort that does NOT get reported to 911.
This has been answered already, and I thank you and everyone else who answered the factual question.
I was responding to one post that offered a moral opinion, solely to say, “That’s an opinion.” Opinions are not factual answers and do not belong in GQ threads.
However, it “may” have been an emergency situation. No way to know for sure unless I went over there myself. As I’m not qualified and it’s quicker to get home anyway, I did and was going to let the professionals deal with it. Won’t ever do that again.
No, he was threatened with criminal prosecution for trying to do an honest civic service.
Sounds pretty reasonable precaution to me to avoid calling dickish 911 centers from then on.
Another point for the OP - once you are arrested for petty theft, whether they follow through on the charges or not, your family will be taken into Child Care services and their foster care will feed them just fine. Once the charges are dealt with and then you prove to Child and Family Services you can provide for your children, you *might *get them back.
After all, it’s not the police officer’s call to let you go or not - it’s teh prosecutor’s. So if the store owner complains, the police will take you away and process the charge. Presumably at very least you’ll spend the night in jail.
Cite? This is GQ after all. You talk about what would be an extreme case as if it was standard procedure.
Do you live in Les Mis, Arkansas? Around here a petty theft would be a summons and a boot out the door. Even with serious charges, no one wants to put children in protective care unless its a last result. Even for child services its a last resort, they will most likely find a relative to take custody. Javert is dead.
Your kids will go into foster care only if you are not released, and there is no one else available to take care of them. If, say, your spouse is at home to care for the kids then why would the kids go into foster care? If you are released after a few hours, then why would the kids go into foster care? If grandma can take the kids, why would they go into foster care?
Kids go into foster care if no other care can be found for them. Even if a judge decides you’re an unfit parent, your kids don’t go into foster care if some other person can take custody of them–the other parent, the grandparents, aunts, cousins, and so on. Unless the family services in your state has a huge budget surplus they can’t figure out what to do with, in most states they don’t like to put kids into foster care until all other options are exhausted because foster care costs money.
