I've retrieved stolen bikes, one because of an airtag. Showed up with a couple friends standing by but not trying to be intimidating. It's mostly about staying calm and telling the person this is mine, I'm taking it. They always say "no it's my friend's, you're gonna piss him off" or "I just bought this" or something. Maybe you offer some fraction of a "reward" to smooth it along and cut your losses. Don't try to start a fight and it generally goes OK. Also, try not to accuse them of stealing, they'll just get defensive. "It's someone else who is screwing us both, but this is mine sorry."
If it’s left anywhere in the open at anytime, you can repossess it legally as well. This happens with auto repossessions all the time. You don’t owe anyone an explanation as it’s yours - just take it if you can do so safely.
Just be careful! In SOME jurisdictions, you can get in trouble for 'stealing' if you take back something that was stolen. Possession vs Ownership are 2 different things. For instance, the thief may have stolen something, sold it to someone who bought it in good-faith, and you take it back from that person, it's technically theft!
File a police report, go through the right channels. If you know its yours, call the police department non-emergency and explain the situation
In my jurisdiction in the US it doesn’t matter if someone purchased the stolen goods or not, the goods still belong to the owner. This is sometimes called the "nemo dat" rule:
The person buying the stolen goods would need to file a claim against the thief to recover their money, but the goods still belong to the original owner. And this is how it should be, since it’s added reason not to buy goods you suspect are stolen.
And yes, you should always try and work with the police first and foremost.
That is probably mostly a common law thing, and as the article notes
> however, in many cases, more than one innocent party is involved, making judgment difficult for courts and leading to numerous exceptions to the general rule that aim to give a degree of protection to bona fide purchasers and original owners
> The person buying the stolen goods would need to file a claim against the thief to recover their money
Generally as long as the purchase is made in good faith, you are wrong. It is the original owner that needs to file a claim against the thief.
Obviously, what constitutes a sale in "good faith" is a rather imprecise science, although one steady element is the sales price: it needs to have been appropriate for the item. So for example a mint bicycle or antique coin should sell near sticker price.
> in many cases, more than one innocent party is involved, making judgment difficult for courts and leading to numerous exceptions to the general rule that aim to give a degree of protection to bona fide purchasers and original owners
The next sentence is:
> The possession of the good of title will be with the original owner.
So you seem to be wrong there. The innocent buyer needs to file a claim against the thief, the original owner retails their title. It is explained in more detail later on.
No, I know our legal system quite well. You are wrong.
The reason for this is so that if you buy a bicycle at, say, a bicycle fair and for a reasonable price, you shouldn’t have to worry about it being yoinked from under you later on.
Lawmakers have clarified this is choosing between two evils, there is no winning proposition here.
So, in conclusion: the original owner needs to file the claim, not the third party.
To the degree lawmakers have weighed in, as you say, can you point me to a citation protecting the subsequent purchaser? I don't practice in this area, but that is definitely not my understanding of the law.
This guy is wrong, which is why he isn't citing any legal authority.
As anyone who has gone to law school will tell you, you can only acquire the title that the seller has. If seller stole the goods, he doesn't have any title, so he can't transfer title to a subsequent buyer. See, e.g. UCC § 2-403
There are exceptions when it comes to those who have voidable title (thieves do not have voidable title).
There are also cases where courts have more or less created exceptions close to those OP has described. For example, if Best Buy receives some stolen merchandise and sells it to good faith purchasers, courts have held that the victim needs to pursue the thief/Best Buy, not the end purchaser.
But generally, OP is wrong: if you buy a stolen bike at a flea market, you don't get title and the owner can get the bike back. Think of the policy implications if the rule was as OP claims. All thieves would have to do is immediately sell stolen goods and the owners could never get them back. That would be absurd.
OP is just claiming that there exists juristrictions where his claim holds. IANALE (I am not a lawyer EVERYWHERE), so I can't really say that he's wrong. But you seem quite certain. Why?
The key element for a bona fide sale at common law is the buyer’s absence of knowledge of the defective title of the seller.
Not sure how US courts have interpreted this requirement but that’s the onus and I believe it rests on the third party buyer (to show absence of knowledge through evidence).
How would they even prove that if it's in the open? "Stolen? No idea, I've always had that bike, I just forgot where I left it last time. Went and got it back. By the way, here's the receipt."
This happened to me. I bought a pair of headphones (Nuraphones) on ebay, only to have them bricked by the company remotely.
IIRC, they had a security hole on their payment page: they forgot to implement SCA (strong customer authentification, aka 2FA for payments). Had they done this, the liability would have shifted onto the bank/card issuer. For some reason they decided to go after the customers in vain resentment, were acquired and their product was discontinued.
Another jurisdiction example would be Romania. Even if the thief themselves are in possession of the property you own, you can be charged with theft if you steal it back. The law clearly delimits possession from ownership.
i hope that isn't true. A buyer of stolen goods needs to accept that a consequence of it is that they could lose possession of said good. This is why for expensive goods, you should ensure you're not buying stolen goods.
IDK where you live but where I am, unless it's an actively life threatening emergency, the Police will say they're busy. I watched a drunk driver try to drive away after smashing into a parked car, ripping a wheel off the parked car. The drunk driver kept trying to start his car to get away. People called the police but they said they're busy. Fortunately his car was totaled and wouldn't start either. Over an hour later someone picked him up. If they can't even bother to deal with an active drunk driver, they aren't gonna help retrieve a bike.
Not saying confronting thieves is for everyone. But it's not necessarily as physical as you think.
> IDK where you live but where I am, unless it's an actively life threatening emergency, the Police will say they're busy.
Where I live the basic law/constitution establishes a protection duty of its citizens by the state (this includes their property). The police is one of the ways the state takes care of this duty. If the state is grossly negligent in this or even does nothing at all, the state may very well be on the hook to make the injured party whole. This responsibility is passed down and carried by individual police officers, and there have been cases of police officers being personally convicted of causing bodily harm for not dispatching a unit after a request for aid (despite them not personally swinging any punches)[1].
Generally you'll have police show up for near anything if they can.
In the US, it’s been established by the Supreme Court that the police have no duty to protect anyone. They can it they want to, and individual departments can make it a policy and fire officers who fail at it, but it’s not a fundamental requirement.
I live in Arlington, VA where I once saw a purse snatcher being chased by 5 cops. Only to have 3 more show up after the guy was on the ground. They all had their own cars too.
During COVID, I called the non emergency line police for a break in on my car parked on the street and the police showed up in minutes then searched the area frantically to see if the guy was still around.
I don’t know if they are over funded or just bored.
Didn’t happen in the small North Carolina town that my parents live in, with a very similar situation as the parent. So truly, YMMV. Not all places can be generalized.
Someone I know's phone was stolen. He tracked it using the track my phone feature to a house, and contacted the police asking the police to help get it back. The police said no, it's too dangerous, not worth it.
No. The police will offer you the option to come to the police station and fill out a report so you can get a police report number for your insurance claim. Nothing else will happen.
I’m also imagining the police telling you that you can do something that is actually illegal, and then you get prosecuted for it. “The cops said it was ok” may not be an adequate defense.
So all Jessie Pinkman's got to do is ask the under cover police if it's okay to sell them meth and then they can't be arrested for it?
Entrapment is reserved for the police going above and beyond, eg "sell me meth or I'll kill your dog" where it can be argued that the entrapped normally would not do the crime.
Apparently there is “entrapment by estoppel” in which a government official tells you an act is legal when it isn’t. They have to be acting as a representative of the government, though; undercover cops wouldn’t count.
I still wouldn’t be very excited to try this defense in court.
Don't you know the other rule of drug dealing? If you ask an undercover cop if they're an undercover cop, they have to tell you the truth? it's against the rules for them to lie about it.
That's a reasonable suspicion (though I think a lot of the contrarian comments are just people who want to complain about the police).
Working with that suspicion, especially given that this is HN, police saying "don't go steal it back" might still be very good advice, regardless of legal right.
For example (referring back to a scenario earlier in thread), I'm imagining a techbro crew, all jumping into one of their Teslas, and rolling up on misguided urban youth turf.
There's already a lot of misunderstanding and animosity, both ways, between stereotypes. And someone's attempt at "show of force" just escalated it. So, who will escalate the stupid further, and stab or draw a gun first.
> How do you think the police will give bad advice
the police will give you any advice, good or bad. They're not legally responsible for anything they said to you, as long as they're not telling you to commit a crime (in which case, if they did they will deny it).
You can still call 'em up of course - but don't 100% just trust their words blindly.
It's probably a bad sign if you need permission from a desk clerk to get your property back.
It's great that you think _someone will handle that for you_ but it is probably a fantasy. Unfortunately you will probably need to self resolve. If you think it is going to escalate to violence, bring overwhelming force.
we can't all live in Bedford Falls, and the police aren't there for the benefit of the every-person no matter where you live.
it's a nice bit of propaganda that they're there for us, but I urge anyone with that idea to seek out and research the history and origins of the modern police.
hint : in the US they first emerged as 'slave patrols', and then later modernized into 'industrial labor controls', and things weren't all that much better across the ocean in London with Sir Robert Peel and his version of the 'police service'.
> Sir Robert Peel and his version of the 'police service'
I assume that prior to the "modern" police, policing was still necessary, since there were lawbreakers and troublemakers since time immemorial. What do you regard as the substantive difference between the pre-modern police force and the modern? Did the former somehow serve "all of us" better than the latter?
Typically law enforcement was DIY, done by a mob, or done at the behest/in the interest of a local strongman (king or lord).
That led to extremely selective enforcement at the best of times.
The idea of a professional, independent force that served the public and preferred formal laws was the innovation.
Previously you’d need to either deal with it yourself, or track down a local patron and hope they cared enough to assign some muscle to deal with it on your behalf - and didn’t favor the perp more. Think ‘Godfather’. In those cases, written law was rarely a priority either.
Different local politicians won’t change the legal fact that the police have no obligation whatsoever to investigate or prevent crime. It’s simply not in the job description.
Err… what is their job, then, if not investigating and preventing crime? That pet theory with the slave patrols of yours, by the way, isn’t it; that’s a hoax. The modern police in the USA and other countries stems from the British police, which did exactly what they are supposed to do, since ages.
The police are the enforcement arm of the ownership class.
They apply the law as required to enforce the the socioeconomic order. This is why when people who aren’t custodians of land or cash flows ask them to investigate or solve crimes they rarely do.
The selective application of the law is how the current prerogatives of the ownership class are implemented in society.
This is why it’s illegal to do cocaine at work if you’re a poor person flipping burgers, but not if you’re an investment banker.
They will at best waste your time, and at worst they will cause you and your family harm for involving them. In Toronto even a stolen car is not enough to get their attention if you are not a high-profile business owner.
I know it’s false in the UK and I’d imagine it is false in any country where the law is based on UK law.
Failing to retrieve it at the time is going to mean losing it forever. If you find a crackhead with your phone and wait for someone else to retrieve it, that phone is long gone.
its not bait. for my demographics the number 1 way I die by stranger is cops. not random gangbanger, not bar fight, not mistaken identity.
never ever call the police, avoid them whenever possible. the probability of death by stranger is low compared to most other causes but cops managed to beat out the competition and it just ain't worth it.
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.
This is my experience as well. Most people don't want confrontation. I found my stolen bike when somebody was out riding it. I told them it was stolen from me, they said "OK" and handed it over. It was either them who stole it or they bought it suspiciously cheap and knew it was stolen.
Yeah no, that's not how any of this works. Just because someone else is holding your bike in their hands does not make it theirs. You're within your rights to take back what's yours.
No, it does not get complicated fast, in fact it's very simple. Selling stolen goods does not take ownership away from the original owner. There's a good write up about this on the Law Stack Exchange site [0].
I hope the second researcher to look at these writings looked sternly at the first, gesturing at the pieces of torn papyrus and questioned: Euripides?!?
> Algorithmically, it is possible to control how much it costs to mine crypto at any point by modulating network fees (PoS)/block difficultly (PoW). This would in turn have an effect of the supply of the currency because if it becomes cheaper (in USD) to mine than more people will mine it (as it becomes more profitable to do so).
If it's cheaper to mine, it won't be more profitable. See dogecoin. It'll create more token and at a decreased value.
I can't believe people are still falling for this ponzi scheme
I clicked, hoping that "human extinction" was just the worst thing they were against. But that's the only thing. That leaves open a whole lot of bad stuff that they're OK with AI doing (as long as it doesn't kill literally everyone).
One guy says it works. The rest of the article is about a small experiment that showed otherwise. Then it quotes experts who explain why it doesn't work and called it an urban legend.
Deep fryers are usually 175 to 190C so trans fats shouldn't be much of a concern. I'm more concerned about everything else about deep fried foods -- being high calorie, low nutrient, zero fiber. The choice of oil is irrelevant
Yeah that's absurd. Go to a fast food place and they are reusing the oil over and over again for as long as possible. Believing that the vegetable oil is in a non degraded state by the time they switch it out is naive.
That is going to create a lot of oxidative stress and inflammation.
If it's complicated you should probably explain. Your link doesn't disprove the parent -- it compares different water and land use of various cattle raising methods.
Over 60% of cropland in the US goes towards raising beef, a food which makes up a very low percent of the calories in an average person's diet.
>
>Beef cattle use nearly 60% of the world’s agricultural land but account for less than 2% of global calories and 5% of global protein consumed
I provide a study from the National Library of Medicine.
This study provides a nuanced view of the topic here,
and provides a lot of data.
If you did read the scientific study I linked to, then you would now know
that land that "food animals" occupy is often not at all suited for other forms
of agriculture.
You would also know that various food animals can be fed and raised on
waste from other agricultural processes that humans could not consume.
That is why I stated "It is more complicated than what the original soundbite
line portrayed it as.
> If you did read the scientific study I linked to, then you would now know that land that "food animals" occupy is often not at all suited for other forms of agriculture.
How much of a cow's diet do you believe comes from resources that would not be otherwise useful to humans?
Your image of cattle grazing out on the range is out of touch with reality. Nearly all beef consumed in America starts with diverting water that could go towards directly feeding humans
Most of the feed that cattle get on feedlots is waste from ethanol and biofuel production, aka distillers grains. We feed cattle very little fresh grain so all of the statistics about cropland use are extremely misleading. Several industries use that grain one after the other.
That feed along with the fresh hay is fed to cows at the end of their life to fatten them up for human consumption. Notice how the article you linked says 200 million acres of cropland used for beef and 325 million overall versus 900 million acres of total farmland? Most of the difference is marginal pasture that can’t grow anything for human consumption. We don’t fertilize or water it, it’s just grassland that grow by itself where we raise cows before sending them to feedlots. Without that cropland going to distillers and cows, over 60% of our farmland would be completely useless. Not only that but most of our cropland isn’t very useful either - 95% of the corn we grow is inedible dent corn. It’s one of the cheapest commodities on the planet that’s only worth growing as a last resort.
We make this tradeoff because those 600 million acres of otherwise unusable farmland are far more resilient than our cropland so we have a huge backup of calories incase of massive crop failure.
That's a good point, I know in Australia, NZ, the Uk/Wales etc, sheep and cattle graze in farmland that would not be easy to reshape (e.g. terraced) for agriculture. So that otherwise "useless" farmland ends up being useful.
Source: rock climbing one day and finding sheep grazing on plush grass in an otherwise inaccessible location. Apparently it's well known, and locals will climb up to look for said lost sheep.
Their feed and hay occupy land and use water that could be used more efficiently to directly feed humans.
My uncle was a cattle rancher in Arizona, on "marginal" land that didn't grow food for humans. It didn't grow enough for his cows either. We would leave out bales of alfalfa to keep the cows healthy. Alfalfa is grown in those big irrigated circles you've surely seen while flying.
Most beef consumed in the US comes from feedlots. Over 70% of "grass-fed" beef sold in the US is imported.
