In the Netherlands buying stolen goods is a crime. If you knew or could reasonably have known it was stolen (e.g. a bike with a broken lock, no keys and a low price) you risk a serious fine. If you didn't know it was stolen you just loose the goods. Technically you then have a claim on the seller, but of course you're not going to get anything.
So stealing your own thing back without the police involved may technically be illegal, but practically if the airtag tells you where your stolen bike is and you have the keys, skip the police and take it. Nothing will happen. The thief or their client is not going to call the police since that gets them arrested or fined.
Of course you can't go into the thief's house to retrieve your things. Then you do need to call the police first. But the one case I know about someone doing that for a stolen iPhone based on Find My app location, the police showed up quickly and arrested the thief + found lots of other stolen things in their possession.
I don't know somewhere else but, in Italy, buying / getting stolen stuff from somebody else is a specific kind of crime as well. You need to give a solid explanation why you have a stolen good.
It makes sense to me... mostly. The person currently in possession might have purchased it from the thief so taking it from them leaves them in a hole, not the thief.
More broadly I think it does make a certain sort of sense that a theft should be resolved by the police. Find your item and want it back? Get the police involved. It's just that these days we're all so used the police being completely ineffectual that taking matters into your own hands is the only "sensible" solution.
The logic is that the current possessor might have acquired the product bona fide and is not necessarily the thief. In order to assess this, you cannot repurpose the product yourself, but need the cops and court involved. It's the oppossite of anarcho-tyranny, it's a law favoring orderly and non-violent solutions of real world capitalist conundrums. Private repossession of stolen property in a 'bear arms' society... are accidents waiting to happen.
In reality things are not so stiff. My dads bag was stolen from the train. The thief was apprehended on the station. He got his bag back from the cops because it had identifiable information in it. Perhaps a bit light on evidence that the thief was not the owner, but it's not always overly complicated. I think the thief got the right nudge.
> the current possessor might have acquired the product bona fide and is not necessarily the thief. In order to assess this, you cannot repurpose the product yourself, but need the cops and court involved.
A fun thought experiment is that in the time you might have left your car parked in the street, it might be stolen, sold bona fide, then (by happenstance) parked in the same area, so one day you just go back to it and drive it away.
I guess in a more practical sense, you could claim that's (more or less) what happened after recovering your possessions after having them stolen... what would happen in that edge case?
Wait until you hear about Canada. The crown will ruin your life by dragging you through the courts for years for something like that, then drop the charges when it’s obvious they’re going to lose as to not set any precedent to be used against them in the future.
