Arrest for theft of 5 cents of electricity

We have a choice between two futures:

Everyone hates the EV owners as they are stealing scum who feel free to make off with power others pay for.

EV owner are polite users who cause a tiny drain, but ask nicely and are thankful you are helping them be green.

Choose wisely.

 

This guy went to jail over this. What a jackass cop...
We all use outlets everywhere we go, malls, schools, restaurants etc...

Nissan Leaf owner arrested for taking 5 cents of energy without asking | Motoramic - Yahoo Autos

 

The officer was not the first jack nice person. It is not clear he was ever a jack nice person. You may want to read this:

Arrest for theft of 5 cents of electricity | PriusChat

Sadly for the driver's lies, the officer had the dash cam running.

- Jimbo Palmer

 

Another thread was started about this yesterday: Arrest for theft of 5 cents of electricity

 

I feel like I'm talking martian here...
I saw the picture you posted, I know you're talking about electronic charging stations in airports.
I brought up the airport argument even before you posted about airport charging stations for mobile devices, I already mentioned there are such things at airports.

So let me state my point again, if this leaf guy is wrong, then all of us who plug into an airport wall outlet to charge their mobile devices are guilty as charge as well. So who are we to judge this guy? And to me it's very hypocritical.

What is your point about the electronic charging stations in airports?

 

oh ok, my bad.. please remove this admin

I scrolled thru the threads but failed to see that post

 

I plug my phone and laptop in at places I go to all the time without asking anyone for permission. I would look silly asking anyway. Is it wrong to put water from a bathroom sink into my own personal drinking container? If the coolant is low in my car, should I ask to use the restroom sink water to fill it up?
So the outlet was outside... Do the people outside need to ask permission to plug their boombox in so the team can practice with music playing? (we did this all the time) If I ran a cord into a building, is it legit then? There is no law against using property resources in these ways. The man is innocent.

 

Some one claimed you could not find an airport policy stating they wanted you to plug in in the terminal. I showed about 5 examples of airports stating exactly that, so they shifted their claim to it being about EVs.

Someone just does not like having to ask to use random electricity in their plug in. My guess is that they never learned about the concept of courtesy. If the driver in the news article had used ANY courtesy, this would not be news.

 

This is the law you don't think exists
Theft of services - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here are various versions in each state (I suspect in some states he is technically innocent and in others clearly guilty)
http://xf.ararental.org/SLP/Docs/TheftSvcs.pdf

 

That law is too broad to be applied to something that happens about a thousand times a second across the country. Otherwise we all need to go to jail. Im just saying, that guy is gonna be able to successfully argue his innocence in court.

 

1) Did the school have to pay for the electricity?
2) Did the man remove the electricity from the school for his personal gain, without authorization?

If both of those are met, how is is not theft of service?

 

that someone was me who brought up about power outlet policy at airports. And that's why I posted earlier about colleges having EV charging stations. You are saying Airports that have free electronic charging stations, their wall outlets are also free for use. Using that analogy, I can go into any college campus and start plugging in my car into a wall outlet as most college campuses have EV charging stations.

Just because some airports have free charging stations for mobile devices, doesn't mean the power outlets are free for use as well.

 

Which is what the Yo yo in the article is accused of.

 

In most of these places, the plugging in of individual handheld devices can be dismissed as 'de minimis'.

But plug-in cars consume 1 to 3 orders of magnitude more energy from the unwitting 'donor', and require a dedicated circuit per car (not shared with the donor's planned loads), so cannot be assumed to be dismissible under the same concept. When more than a handful of drivers start plugging in, the energy and facility costs cannot be dismissed as negligible.

 

You're stating the obvious! I'm not here to argue right or wrong. I'm simply saying we should not judge him as we're just as guilty as him.

 

I think there would be less contention if you could limit this rhetorical "we" to yourself and others like you who treat others' resources the same way.

Your current usage makes me want to jump into the fray here to say "no, I sure as hell AM going to judge him because I actually understand property rights, respect them, and behave accordingly."*

* - Or at least understand when I'm in the wrong. That's another issue and another story completely unrelated to the issue at hand.

 

The man should have used some common sense!! If it is a charging station, it's OK !! But a regular outlet at a school; or someone's home??; without permission. He did STEAL !! Maybe the school did go overboard; I think the school was making an example out of him, maybe him and/or other people were caught in the past doing the same thing......stealing electricity.

 

It seems pretty obvious that the arrest was made because the Leaf driver was a complete jerk to the cop.

Is arresting the jerk over such a small issue a bit of overkill, sure. But that's what happens when you break the law and are a jerk when called out about it.

Hopefully this will be a warning to EV drivers that they need to be considerate. It not like I could go around my neighborhood siphoning 5-cents of gas out of every car and get away with it.

 

Monday morning's faculty announcement should have included the warning that when a personal electronic device is found to be plugged in the owner will be arrested. Are "no plug" signs for the doors on order?

I don't know how much of the story to believe. If this is such a clear case of theft why wasn't the driver arrested on the spot? My impression is that the responding officer didn't think much of this call but felt he had to do something so he passed it along to the office.

I'm sure the prosecutor is just itching to try this case. Maybe we can get a jury trial.

 

Life's too short

Discussion of said subject over a beer is always a better way.