First off, he didn’t break into someones house and steal it and the CP is getting the thing back, so at worst he ‘impounded’ the xbox. Second, as I said, no one REALLY knows why. The cop may have violated policy, he may have gone against SOP/SOG or he may have had a good reason that we’ll never know for taking the xbox that would have outraged the public all the more. Say he had a joint in his pocket, or a minor amount of some illegal drug, just as a for instance. Rather than take him down, book him put him into the system, set all the nonsense in motion for what will eventually be a minor fine and/or community service, the cop took the xbox away and decided what to do with it later. I’m not saying the exchange is per se “right” I’m saying it happens. Cops just don’t walk around willy-nilly taking the property of innocent people. The ones that do get harsher sentences than the average theif in many jurisdictions because you not only add the count of theft, aggravated by the position of trust but then add official misconduct and the fact that the cops have to go spend time in the jail they helped put people in. It’s a much more untenable position with that in mind to be a garden variety thief.
The way police do things has changed. For the most part there is now more accountability, which is a good thing. There are also times, however, when it’d be nice if a cop could still administer a little attitude correction with his nightstick and then send a lowlife on his way.
I think this is not an unlikely scenario; I’ve had it happen to me before and I have never smoked it and the people I was with had been with me certainly didn’t have any. He tried to use it to search my car and, after denying him that and he got frustrated enough to physically threaten me infront of 2 other witnesses, I got out of the speeding ticket too.
Either way, based on the available evidence, you can’t say whether the cop lied and used it as an excuse to search his car and rob him, or if there was some sort of backdoor bribe or extra-legal punishment that went on that involved the Xbox. Either way, there’s no justifiable reason for confiscating the confiscating the Xbox, even if he was trying to help the kid avoid a misdemeanor and still learn his lesson, he was acting outside the law. That cop should, at minimum, be suspended if he was doing some sort of extra-legal discipline, and if he did steal it he should absolutely be prosecuted.
We already know that the police took his Xbox - both sides admit that. That puts the burden of proof on the police to show they had a good reason to do so.
Your friends in the police department deliberately subvert firearms laws?
I have no friends who are cops any more. They are all retired or dead (from age, not gunfire)now. Yes, some of them did subvert firearms laws. Some of them also let folks go or drove them home when they should have, by the law, written them tickets for speeding or DUI. Sometimes they hauled a kid home by his ear to momma instead of charging him with retail theft. They used to do lots of things.
Police work, as I noted upthread, has changed. There is far more accountability, which is generally_but not always_a good thing. Those old timey cops I knew as a kid, and was later privileged to work with a bit, were good men, IMO. They knew the people in their jurisdiction and were largely well liked by those people. They didn’t enforce the letter of the law on all occasions, it’s true. Some of those very people they informally punished will tell you, quite honestly, that Officer So-and-So did him a great favor by giving him a knot on the head, a ride home, and a chance to straighten out instead of demolishing his future by making him a convict.
I don’t think it’s legally kosher for the cops to make a 16-year-old clean toilets before letting him go. Probably also wasn’t in the book that they should casually remind me that people sometimes get ass-raped in jail (which I had no immediate chance of going to anyway).
But it was good policing, and I appreciate it now.
Oh, I’ve met some dickish cops. And I’ve been a real dick to other cops who were just doing their jobs–which meant they ended up restraining me as a precaution. (I was an obnoxious youth.) But I’ve been treated decently by some police as well. I don’t want to encourage the kind of knee-jerk anti-police attitudes I had as a teenager.
I don’t know why this is bugging but, he’s not a “kid”. The man graduated from highschool in 1993. So he’s like 34 or so.
Otherwise, yeah, on criminal law blogs they are saying it’s pretty much a clear-cut case of illegal seizure. You can’t just take a citizen’s property and have them prove a negative, “Yeah? Well, prove you didn’t steal it.” And given the lack of proper and prompt documentation that would be the best case scenario.
The stop was good (speeding), the search was sort of okay (probable cause due to the alleged smell of pot), the seizure was not.
You wonder why they didn’t charge him for the speeding if they could have legitimately. According to the persons reaction they can get charged for a crime or sent on their way with a warning. If he was giving lip for example - then why not charge for the crime you stopped him for?
buttonjockey308, to expand on Der Trihs’s answer: you should check out RICO statutes. AIUI, property seized in a RICO bust has to be proven to be 100% the results of legitimate work, and monies, or the gov’t keeps it. Even if everyone involved in the original bust is found to be innocent of all criminal charges, that’s a standard of proof few people can support.