And this happen so long as “good” cops go on protecting the bad ones no matter what they do. Does she really now have an arrest record? Can it be expunged? Can she not now answer “no” to “have you ever been arrested”. If so, there is something very very wrong with the whole police state that leads to this.
Just a couple of things to keep in mind. This is an initial filing of a lawsuit. Obviously you have one biased side of the story. In the initial filing the plaintiffs lawyer throws in the kitchen sink often including things that they know they can’t prove or even know they aren’t going to try to prove. It could have all went down exactly as it said in the article. Or maybe not.
Look at this part:
“Keach said McRedmond filed a complaint against the bank on Feb. 13. Police arrested Davis on Feb. 26 on a felony fourth-degree grand larceny charge.”
McRedmond is the owner of the card. That’s not clear but it reads like the citizen signed a complaint and not the officers. The officers may not have found probable cause to charge but it’s a citizen’s right to sign a complaint. Now where I work even if the citizen complaint is for a low level felony rather than a misdemeanor there is no arrest until found guilty rather than when the complaint is signed. Pennsylvania may do it different. I’m not sure this might be procedure.
As explained by the lawyer of the person who wants money it sounds outrageous and stupid. If that is the entire story she deserves to win. It’s possible that it’s a citizen exercising their right to sign a complaint and the police following the procedures set by their court.
I think there’s a little more to it than that. As soon as the citizen complained one of the officers went into the bank raising hell and demanding to see procedural documents that allowed them to destroy the card. The fact that a bank will destroy cards that are eaten by its ATM machines in off hours as a security measure is fairly common knowledge.
Where I’m not clear is the arrest. You would think that there would be some sort of a gatekeeper involved at some part of the process especially for the arrest of a bank manager. The whole situation is so crazy unless there’s some huge chunk of intermediate information we’re not getting. But none of that is reflected in either news article. Assuming the police involved did not have brains the size of oranges my greatest curiosity is how they thought this thing was going to turn out if they actually arrested this woman for the vile crime of destroying a bank card after they’ve been told that it’s the procedure of the bank to do so.
Sent from my SM-T320 using Tapatalk
Yes, that’s what the lawyer of the person who wants money said. I don’t bring this up because this is about police. The news always reports lawsuits this way and people believe the initial filing as fact.
I agree about the gatekeeper. Here the procedure would be that there would be a probable cause hearing in front of a judge. Before that the defendant would get nothing more than a subpoena if it was a citizen complaint. I don’t know the procedure in PA.
The Johnstown where the arrest occurred is in New York, not Pennsylvania.
I have cite that disputes that. Back in the day when I was with a prior employer, I was told that the bank owned credit & debit cards… and that the use of them was expressly limited by the contract the customer signed with the bank to be allowed to use them.
Phew I was starting to think that I’d been out of that world so long that things had changed.
You never own the card. Two of my three debit cards say the bank owns it on the back, as do both my Master Charges and both my store credit cards.
Are you a time traveler from the 70s?
I was waiting for some flood puns.
I’m wondering why the manager didn’t just stick it in her desk until such time as the owner showed up looking for it.
Because banks don’t do that with cards left in the ATM. Those cards are always destroyed. It has happened to me too. Bank employees also aren’t allowed to exercise discretion on the issue.
Bank procedure. It would have looked suspicious if she were to keep it, as if she intended to use it herself. And the card issuer may even have a requirement in their agreement with the bank that the bank shall destroy any abandoned cards.
For good reason as well. It would not be all that difficult to socially engineer bank people into giving you a card left in the ATM last night.
You may not even need to show ID, just walk in and say “I think I left my card in the Machine last night, do you have it?” and there is a reasonable chance that a well meaning bank teller just gives it over, without a second thought other than that she was doing something good. It probably wouldn’t work all that much of the time, but scammers like the phishing process as much as the payoff.
So, the card issuers tell the banks to just destroy them, rather than deal with that avenue of potential fraud.
And that is not even starting to get into the possibility of actual corrupt bank employees, using or selling the bank cards they find left in the machine.
I do have a nice collection of bell bottoms, And polyester shirts with huge collars and patterns that resemble gift wrap.
At least I didn’t call them a charge-a-plate.
I don’t know about elsewhere, but in Britain the teller, or rather the person she referred you to and whom you saw 3 quarters of an hour later, would request some proof of your matching bank account even if she knew you.
It would be funny if the bank accidentally erased/lost any records that any of those involved had at that bank. They’d get their money and accounts back, eventually; Call it the Green Wall.