13 ms·

Are the police officer's legal claims true? Surely, if the records are themselves stolen, the original owners would be entitled to have them back. If they wer

Are the police officer's legal claims true? Surely, if the records are themselves stolen, the original owners would be entitled to have them back. If they weren't stolen, does the thief forfeit ownership of them through the mere act of putting them in a car they stole?

baby 4y ago
Wild guess: there's just too much stuff that they get back that they don't have the time nor the storage to handle them while original owners might never show up to get them back.
elihu 4y ago
Presumably they could ask the car thief where the records came from if they caught him, but it seems likely that the police found the car but have no idea who stole it. In which case, the records are just random objects with no identifiable owner.
- mkaic 4y ago
  (author) They actually arrested the record-dealer out of the car, so they do know who was selling them. Still possible that the seller got them from a middleman or a chain of middlemen though.
  - valleyer 4y ago
    Have you considered posting on Craigslist (or Facebook or similar) to see if anyone in the area just had a bunch of records stolen -- and could name some of the ones not obviously pictured in your blog post? Sure, they might objectively be junk, but they also might be somebody's junk, and returning it to them may make them very happy.
- Turing_Machine 4y ago
  > Presumably they could ask the car thief where the records came from if they caught him Well, they could, but I don't think his lawyer would advise him to answer that question.
dhosek 4y ago
Yeah, that seems legally and morally dubious. But the police have demonstrated on many many many occasions that they generally cannot be bothered to return stolen items to their owners or even, given the location of a stolen item to reclaim it from the thief.
- mkaic 4y ago
  (author) Agreed. I wonder if it was motivated by them not wanting to deal with the paperwork and the (potentially impossible) investigation to try to find the original owner and return them. If I ever do find out who the original owner is (and they can prove it) I'd be more than happy to hand them back over.
- sharkweek 4y ago
  I’m gonna try to condense a very long and very funny story down to a few paragraphs here. A friend of mine is a realtor. He once was selling a house that was empty. A random package showed up at the address (correct on the package). He asked the owners if it was theirs they said no so he threw it in the back of the trunk and forgot about it for months. Randomly while grabbing something in his trunk, he found it and was like “I should try and mail this back to the sender.” It didn’t have any return info on it so he opened it to see if there was any info inside. There was another box inside full of loose coffee beans and inside that was a metal tin. Now curious he opened the tin and found it packed full of little vials with powder in them. He called the non-emergency police line in a bit of a panic thinking he should report what he found but they blew him off saying he should file a police report online. Not wanting to be in possession of drugs he drove it to a police station where the cop at the front desk was SO confused about what was going on and basically told him to get lost. Finally he just decided to call it a day and threw it away in a dumpster.
  - jkestner 4y ago
    The police will find crime when it’s convenient for them.
  - M3L0NM4N 4y ago
    If it's not a distribution-level amount of drugs I think police just don't give a fuck, especially in larger cities.
alchemist1e9 4y ago
Exactly it doesn’t make sense. They are someone’s property and in my experience police follow a defined process and which would not include giving the car owner the records. Perhaps the author is omitting a crucial detail to make the story more mysterious?
- giarc 4y ago
  I suspect the cop either had to keep them (and catalogue each individual record as evidence) or just let them walk and shrug his shoulders if someone can to claim them.
- mkaic 4y ago
  (author) This was my thought as well — honestly it's still kind of my thought. The best explanation I can come up with is that the records are stolen and can't be traced back to their owner, so they can't be returned? I'm not sure. If I found out who the original owner was I'd be happy to give them up.
  - kzrdude 4y ago
    I don't know what standard of proof they use. Maybe it's too high and indeed impossible to be certain about the owner. But otherwise it just looks like they don't even want to try. In a normal small community police or you would try to find out who it belongs to, not just give up. :)
  - lightedman 4y ago
    It's Los Angeles police; they're lazy, and anything that involves them not doing paperwork (as they'd have to catalogue every individual record there) is right up their alley. Homeless people defecating on the Metrolink right in front of an officer? Not an eyelash batted. I see this daily.
    - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
      Which is why I'm baffled when people make laws to make it harder to defend oneself, because you can "just call the police." But there's a solid chance they won't get there in time or at all, due to a variety of reasons including the above. LA is one of these places.
mkaic 4y ago
(author) I'm also curious about this, which is part of why I was hesitant to accept them at first. Many of them have price tags on them and look like they have changed hands several times, which makes me believe they are indeed stolen. My best guess is that the reason they gave them to me is because they don't know who the original owner is, and being in LA there are many, many potential candidates.
- knorker 4y ago
  The cops gave you a problem. They gave you something that was not theirs to give. If it had been me then I would have said "great, now I have to go and get legal advice". I would have refused them. But at the same time what am I supposed to do? Unload them in the impound lot and drive away? That'd piss off the cops, who could possibly fine me for flytipping. It's a shitty position for the cops to put you in.
- joemi 4y ago
  Based on the age and condition, I highly doubt they're stolen -- they're probably just trash. Maybe they were stolen from someone else who was trying to sell trash records, but I doubt they were stolen from anywhere legit unless it was from the dollar bins that a record store uses to make a little bit of money off of essentially trash. You may find some that are nice to have/listen to, but you probably won't find anything valuable (to a record store). I've picked up crates of much better condition records as trash before, with many great records that could have been sold for OK prices, if the person throwing them away knew where to sell them and wanted to bother with it. But a lot of people/places just don't want to even both with it. Best prices come from selling them one by one on a site like like discogs, but that takes a lot of time and effort. If you bring them into a record store that buys used records, they'll either take a few they think they can sell (paying you a fraction of what they intend to sell it for) and tell you to keep all the rest, or they'll take the whole thing (again paying just a fraction for the few they want) and treat the others as bargain/dollar bin stuff or just throw them away. (Some of my favorite things I've found in crates of thrown-away records: some Sergio Mendes records (some were bland, but some were awesome), various new wave 80s records by people I'd never heard of but were fun to listen to, LOTS of good classical recordings.)
wa2flq 4y ago
Legal specifics or requirements aside for the moment, I for one would not feel obligated to contact anyone who stole my car to deal with these records. There are risks here that I would not be comfortable with in this scenario. I would not initiate or consent to any meeting with this person or their representatives.
- mlyle 4y ago
  Presumably the person who owned the car was not the lawful owner of these records, either.
legohead 4y ago
At least call around to a few local stores and see if they are missing records. Can't be too many vinyl stores around...
TylerE 4y ago
Never ever ever take legal advice from Cops. Unless you like bad advice from someone whose interests are at best orthogonal and typically actually against your own.

baby 4y ago

Wild guess: there's just too much stuff that they get back that they don't have the time nor the storage to handle them while original owners might never show up to get them back.

elihu 4y ago

Presumably they could ask the car thief where the records came from if they caught him, but it seems likely that the police found the car but have no idea who stole it. In which case, the records are just random objects with no identifiable owner.

mkaic 4y ago
(author) They actually arrested the record-dealer out of the car, so they do know who was selling them. Still possible that the seller got them from a middleman or a chain of middlemen though.
- valleyer 4y ago
  Have you considered posting on Craigslist (or Facebook or similar) to see if anyone in the area just had a bunch of records stolen -- and could name some of the ones not obviously pictured in your blog post? Sure, they might objectively be junk, but they also might be somebody's junk, and returning it to them may make them very happy.
Turing_Machine 4y ago
> Presumably they could ask the car thief where the records came from if they caught him Well, they could, but I don't think his lawyer would advise him to answer that question.

dhosek 4y ago

Yeah, that seems legally and morally dubious. But the police have demonstrated on many many many occasions that they generally cannot be bothered to return stolen items to their owners or even, given the location of a stolen item to reclaim it from the thief.

mkaic 4y ago
(author) Agreed. I wonder if it was motivated by them not wanting to deal with the paperwork and the (potentially impossible) investigation to try to find the original owner and return them. If I ever do find out who the original owner is (and they can prove it) I'd be more than happy to hand them back over.
sharkweek 4y ago
I’m gonna try to condense a very long and very funny story down to a few paragraphs here. A friend of mine is a realtor. He once was selling a house that was empty. A random package showed up at the address (correct on the package). He asked the owners if it was theirs they said no so he threw it in the back of the trunk and forgot about it for months. Randomly while grabbing something in his trunk, he found it and was like “I should try and mail this back to the sender.” It didn’t have any return info on it so he opened it to see if there was any info inside. There was another box inside full of loose coffee beans and inside that was a metal tin. Now curious he opened the tin and found it packed full of little vials with powder in them. He called the non-emergency police line in a bit of a panic thinking he should report what he found but they blew him off saying he should file a police report online. Not wanting to be in possession of drugs he drove it to a police station where the cop at the front desk was SO confused about what was going on and basically told him to get lost. Finally he just decided to call it a day and threw it away in a dumpster.
- jkestner 4y ago
  The police will find crime when it’s convenient for them.
- M3L0NM4N 4y ago
  If it's not a distribution-level amount of drugs I think police just don't give a fuck, especially in larger cities.

alchemist1e9 4y ago

Exactly it doesn’t make sense. They are someone’s property and in my experience police follow a defined process and which would not include giving the car owner the records. Perhaps the author is omitting a crucial detail to make the story more mysterious?

giarc 4y ago
I suspect the cop either had to keep them (and catalogue each individual record as evidence) or just let them walk and shrug his shoulders if someone can to claim them.
mkaic 4y ago
(author) This was my thought as well — honestly it's still kind of my thought. The best explanation I can come up with is that the records are stolen and can't be traced back to their owner, so they can't be returned? I'm not sure. If I found out who the original owner was I'd be happy to give them up.
- kzrdude 4y ago
  I don't know what standard of proof they use. Maybe it's too high and indeed impossible to be certain about the owner. But otherwise it just looks like they don't even want to try. In a normal small community police or you would try to find out who it belongs to, not just give up. :)
- lightedman 4y ago
  It's Los Angeles police; they're lazy, and anything that involves them not doing paperwork (as they'd have to catalogue every individual record there) is right up their alley. Homeless people defecating on the Metrolink right in front of an officer? Not an eyelash batted. I see this daily.
  - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
    Which is why I'm baffled when people make laws to make it harder to defend oneself, because you can "just call the police." But there's a solid chance they won't get there in time or at all, due to a variety of reasons including the above. LA is one of these places.

mkaic 4y ago

(author) I'm also curious about this, which is part of why I was hesitant to accept them at first. Many of them have price tags on them and look like they have changed hands several times, which makes me believe they are indeed stolen. My best guess is that the reason they gave them to me is because they don't know who the original owner is, and being in LA there are many, many potential candidates.

knorker 4y ago
The cops gave you a problem. They gave you something that was not theirs to give. If it had been me then I would have said "great, now I have to go and get legal advice". I would have refused them. But at the same time what am I supposed to do? Unload them in the impound lot and drive away? That'd piss off the cops, who could possibly fine me for flytipping. It's a shitty position for the cops to put you in.
joemi 4y ago
Based on the age and condition, I highly doubt they're stolen -- they're probably just trash. Maybe they were stolen from someone else who was trying to sell trash records, but I doubt they were stolen from anywhere legit unless it was from the dollar bins that a record store uses to make a little bit of money off of essentially trash. You may find some that are nice to have/listen to, but you probably won't find anything valuable (to a record store). I've picked up crates of much better condition records as trash before, with many great records that could have been sold for OK prices, if the person throwing them away knew where to sell them and wanted to bother with it. But a lot of people/places just don't want to even both with it. Best prices come from selling them one by one on a site like like discogs, but that takes a lot of time and effort. If you bring them into a record store that buys used records, they'll either take a few they think they can sell (paying you a fraction of what they intend to sell it for) and tell you to keep all the rest, or they'll take the whole thing (again paying just a fraction for the few they want) and treat the others as bargain/dollar bin stuff or just throw them away. (Some of my favorite things I've found in crates of thrown-away records: some Sergio Mendes records (some were bland, but some were awesome), various new wave 80s records by people I'd never heard of but were fun to listen to, LOTS of good classical recordings.)

wa2flq 4y ago

Legal specifics or requirements aside for the moment, I for one would not feel obligated to contact anyone who stole my car to deal with these records. There are risks here that I would not be comfortable with in this scenario. I would not initiate or consent to any meeting with this person or their representatives.

mlyle 4y ago
Presumably the person who owned the car was not the lawful owner of these records, either.

legohead 4y ago

At least call around to a few local stores and see if they are missing records. Can't be too many vinyl stores around...

TylerE 4y ago

Never ever ever take legal advice from Cops. Unless you like bad advice from someone whose interests are at best orthogonal and typically actually against your own.