NY police train citizens to be bad samaritans
AV says:
Despite anyone finding a lost wallet having 10 days by law to return it, NYPD is using entrapment techniques to immediately arrest anyone who picks up planted wallets and bags which are now seeded with credit cards to make it a felony (instead of just cash which was a misdomeaner). Over half the people arrested had no previous criminal record whatsoever.NY Times excerpt:The cops were ordered to stop "Operation Lucky Bag" by the court but apparently it continues with officers now instructed to writeup "suspicious behavior."
In February, Aquarius Cheers, a 31-year-old Manhattan man who said he was on a shopping expedition with his wife, spotted a Verizon shopping bag with a cellphone and iPod inside at the 59th Street station of the No. 1 train.In my life, I've found and returned three or four lost wallets and purses. But the next time I see a lost wallet, I'm going to assume it's a decoy and walk by without doing anything about it. It's just too risky. Link | MoreAs he was looking in the bag, a train arrived. Mr. Cheers said he and his wife boarded, rushed past a uniformed officer, bringing along the bag with the intention of looking for a receipt. Undercover officers then grabbed him. After his case was reported by NY1, the prosecutors vacated the charges.
the latest
latest episodes
makes brain hurt
did they plant these next to a post office so the person could immediately mail the items back?
so fucking stupid. theres no way to tell the difference between returners and keepers in the first few minutes.
That is what you get for giving officers 'quotas' on the number of citations they must give out.....
One option would be to stand near it and phone the police (not 911) and ask for direction on what to do. "I'm standing next to a wallet lying on the ground and would like to return it, can you send an officer to pick it up......"
Aquarius Cheers? Could that be real name?
(from the NYTimes article)
If so, that is an awesome name.
Is it even illegal to pick a wallet up off the ground? Oh no, thinking about this too much is causing me to suffer Tim's (#1) symptoms. Brain hurt.
This is outrageous! Don't the cops have better things to do? I seem to recall that NYC has things like murders and robberies and such. Y'know, real crime.
Also, I'm no lawyer, but...if the cops place these decoy purses to get felony collars, isn't that entrapment?
america gets dumber everyday. i need to move to new zealand. think new zealand could use another photographer?
um .. and why would anyone respect such a 'law'? the day they try to serve me any such court order of that kind is the day they get a crumpled piece of paper thrown back in their face... I will respectfully and civilly disobey, thanks.
a shame because due process and innocent till proven guilty were pretty high benchmarks, so its a shame when the 'laws' become so ridiculous that no one in good conscience will obey them. I am not waiting for or counting on a 'judge' to declare me innocent of picking up a misplaced wallet off the street.
i hold these truths to be self-evident
So if I leave a coffee cup with my DNA on it, that's "abandoned" and cops are allowed to pick it up and scan it.
And if there is something identifying/incriminating in my garbage that I have put in bags behind my house, it's also "abandoned" and the cops can rifle though it.
but if the cops leave a purse on the street, just picking it up is a crime? feh.
Walking home one night in philly, pre bush administration, i saw a purse lying smackdab in the middle of the road. i picked it up, and within ten seconds a non uniformed cop (i assume) with a gigantic wolf-dog walked up from out of the shadows and escorted me 5 blocks to a major road to hand the purse over to a police car. i asked him if he could do it, and he said he could not. i am lucky that i am pasty white and that this was prebush, otherwise, id have a record now.
anyway, i assume this means that versions of this entrapment have been around for years... take this anecdotal evidence at your own risk.
First off, this is the most summarily f*cked up thing I've ever heard of. I have returned found wallets and purses and had mine returned. (From New Orleans Jazz Fest no less) Secondly, it is a prime example of the inner working of the mind of a police officer. They tend to look at everyone as a criminal who's crimes have yet to be discovered.
@ deliciouscheeseburger, Delicious Cheeseburger is an awesome name but if you want to hear a hippie name, I used to work with a goth girl who's Deadhead mother named her Sunny Smile.
I have also found wallets and bags, as well as ipods and other valuables, and returned them to their rightful owners. This sting smacks of "presumed guilty" and entrapment. It's not the same as extracting a wallet from a pocket or purse, and they shouldn't be able to prosecute it in the same way.
I'm with #2- call 911 and report "suspicious packages" and wallets. Demand that an officer come check them out. They may be terrorist devices, after all. Be sure and remind the authorities that it may be a felony to pick the item up, depending on its contents.
There are a lot of cops in the subway these days. If you see an abandoned bag or wallet, tell the nearest cop. Don't force them to decide whether you're really a "samaritan" who just likes dashing onto trains after picking up wallets. If it's late and you don't see a cop and you really must try to help out, STAY THERE and get out your cell phone and call whoever's wallet it is. If a cop pops out of a nearby doorway, you can say exactly what you're doing.
By the way, there are a fair number of cons that start with a dropped bag - you REALLY might want to just walk on, and leave bloggers to their outrage.
Please don't stop returning found wallets just because of this! Most people are honest.. it stands to reason that most people who pick up a found wallet are probably honest enough to return it, regardless of what the cops think.
That means every arrest reduces the possibility of some honest person getting their property returned by another honest person.
Resist the power. If you stop returning found bags, the terrorists will win. And you know who I mean.
Only slightly related, but I like to relate it every chance I get.
When I was a cab driver, the standard unofficial rule among the drivers for lost/forgotten articles in the cab was this: Ask yourself if you tipped the cabbie, the answer to that question is the same answer to the question "Did you find x in the cab?"
A potential yes answer of course assumes you actually did leave/lose whatever it was in the cab in the first place, but certainly if the answer to the first question is no, the answer to the second question is no as well.
Here's a twist:
Last year, a neighbor happened to find a wallet laying on the ground at my townhome complex. He left the wallet on the ground, came and told my wife and I about it. When asked why he didn't pick it up and try to find the owner he responded that he didn't want to move it in case the owner came looking for it.
Having had my wallet stolen before, I didn't want the same to happen to the owner of this wallet. Due to the wallet being stuffed with receipts, business cards, etc I had to go through it to find something to ID the owner. I finally found his permit to carry concealed weapons.
I called the local police and asked if they could call the gentleman and let him know we had his wallet. Turned out the wallet owner was a local police officer. He was very appreciative of my having taken the time to track him down. He told me that losing his wallet was one of the things a police officer fears most (aside from being shot).
If you run across one of these "sting" operations, you might want to ask the officer how they would feel if it was their wallet sitting on the ground and no one tried to get it back to them.
No nice anecdotes from me or decrying of the vileness of some schemes. However, I don't give a crap what the law is, if I see a dropped wallet or purse or some other valuable, I'm going to pick it up and try to return it to its rightful owners or at least some kinda lost and found.
Because it is the right thing to do.
Comic books taught me something.
Don't force them to decide whether you're really a "samaritan"
. . . you really must try to help out, STAY THERE and get out your cell phone and call whoever's wallet it is.
. . . you REALLY might want to just walk on, and leave bloggers to their outrage.
. . . just walk on, and leave bloggers to their outrage.
Yeah, how dare anyone confuse the authorities, not to mention reasonable people, with unselfconscious altruism!!! Bust the bastards!!
It's definitely a problem with the quota system, but I'm not exactly sure how to formulate a replacement, we certainly need one. Cops are generally not the type of honest people who will do their job because it is the right thing to do, albeit some will, most wont. You can also put a system up that tries to prevent these sort of abuses, but I bet there is, and it is just corrupted. I'm sure sooner or later this will 'officially' stop happening.
Not only that, but the cops are INVENTING a crime here. Before they started doing this there was no such thing as a falsely lost wallet!
Awesome timing. Just the other day I was at a stoplight and saw a pedestrian drop his cell accidentally into the street. A car hit it but I thought I'd check it out, parked quickly, ran over and found that just the battery had come out.
I had to wind up running three blocks screaming at this guy "Hey! You dropped your cell phone!" Apparently he had headphones on. That's probably the fourth cell I've returned along with a whole slew of pets; for some reason I find them all the time wandering.
I'll be damned if a cop gets in my way of helping someone out.
What is wrong with "the powers that be" these days? It seems like some kind of ridiculous desperation combined with overwhelming stupidity. This is exactly the same thing as the story (true or not) that US Forces were planting caches of bomb-making materials in public places, and having snipers fire at whoever stopped to pick them up. The assumption is that whoever picks up the bomb-making materials is a terrorist, but of course some are just curious, and some are concerned about their neighborhood and don't want those bomb-materials falling into the hands of terrorists, or even local children.
SO. The problem here is that the authorities assume they know someone's intentions once they pick up an apparently lost handbag or wallet. They DON'T. I would speculate that you are just as likely to arrest a good samaritan as a thief.
In the case of "Aquarius Cheers" they apparently dropped the charges when there was publicity, but I imagine that charges would be dropped anyway once it got to court-- no judge is going to prosecute someone with no prior record who was obviously trying to help. Besides-- it's obvious entrapment.
If I leave my wallet on a park bench and a cop picks it up, can I press charges?
The other thing that bothers me is: at what point does picking up a handbag or wallet become a crime? It seems there isn't a crime until someone falsely uses the credit cards-- there was not theft, the wallet or handbag was either lost or abandoned (see court case Finders vs. Keepers.) Indeed, at what point does picking up ANYTHING become a crime? If I find a watch in the trash should I just leave it or face possible prosecution?
It boggles my mind that the police could even think this is appropriate or rational.
"Yeah, how dare anyone confuse the authorities, not to mention reasonable people, with unselfconscious altruism!!! Bust the bastards!!"
Bear in mind that the horror stories associated with this anticrime program (and I have heard a couple besides this one) tend to involve a "samaritan" who finds a wallet, purse, bag etc, picks it up and LEAVES post haste. Not someone who stands there, whips out their cell phone and calls some number they find in the bag - even though that might let the dropper backtrack 50 feet and get what they just dropped; not someone who hails the nearest cop or token booth clerk, says "Hey someone dropped this wallet" and gets on with their life; no, these mysterious "samaritans" are the ones who feel that what you do with a dropped wallet is pick it up and RUSH FOR THE D TRAIN. Then, when the cops emerge and stop them from acting *exactly like a thief would act*, they suddenly turn into wounded civil libertarians with blog pens poised. Well, color me unimpressed.
Like the OP, I have found three or four wallets, purses, and bags over the years in the city, usually in cabs. (My favorite was when I found someone's vial of antidepressants; I called the patient up and she said "Oh I reported them lost and reordered - you can have them." Heyyyyyy wowwwwww thanksssss!) Everthing else was returned except for one little vinyl purse with eighty bucks in it but no ID, which I tried to drop at the precinct and was politely told they were not a Lost & Found department. :)
As a NYer I will reiterate: If you see an unattended purse, wallet or bag in a park or an MTA or PATH facility, *leave it* unless you have specifically alerted the driver, clerk or cop as a witness. If you feel you must take action, get a witness for what you're doing, and DON'T LEAVE. Otherwise you're taking a foolish risk.
PS On preview: The police have no program I'm aware of where plainclothes officers pretend to drop their cell phones in crosswalks so the batteries come out. Knock yourself out on that bit of heroism.
Tom, no matter how you torture your neurons into churning out some kind of weak story picking up an item found on the ground is not a crime -- even if you run after you pick it up! It just doesn't exist. Sorry.
Remember the bullies in your school?
Did they play a game where they dropped a dollar bill on the floor, hung around casually within visual range of the money (pretending they didn't see it), waited for some passer-by to stop and bend over for it, rushed in, and then beat the crap out of the person who tried to pick up the money?
Looks like those bullies are employed now.
Many years ago, a friend and I found a purse in the parking lot of a convenience store. Took it home, found the woman's driver's license, called her and she picked up the purse.
Since the purse contained a baggie with a considerable amount of marijuana in it, I got the feeling she was *very* happy that we had contacted her privately rather than taking the purse to the nearest police officer.
@24 wrote:
"Looks like those bullies are employed now."
Yeah. Those folks who picked up the wallets to return them should just be thankful they weren't tasered.
The whole scheme is indeed ridiculous.
However, an important point is that the person who found the bag had to walk past a uniformed police officer without reporting itin order to get arrested.
Personally, I would think a good samaritan would hand it to the first police officer they saw - why hold on to it?
I dont think that 'I wanted to look for the receipt' was an especially good reason.
Still, no reason to tempt people into keeping found goods, thats just a serious waste of resources.
Chuck:
One of the reasons I have a profound dislike and mistrust for the police is that I know which people from my high school class went on to be cops.
A couple of years ago, I dropped my wallet while on vacation in Miami. At the time, I didn't have a cell phone. A kid found the wallet, took it home, and gave it to his mother. She called my workplace in another state, using a phone number in the wallet. Co-workers gave her my hotel phone number, and I was reunited with my wallet, including the all-important photo ID without which I wouldn't have been able to fly home.
I really doubt that a cop would have taken the time and effort to track me down, so I'm glad she didn't turn the wallet in to the police.
"However, an important point is that the person who found the bag had to walk past a uniformed police officer without reporting itin order to get arrested.
Personally, I would think a good samaritan would hand it to the first police officer they saw - why hold on to it? "
Police in large cities are not going to bother with every purse or wallet turned in. In fact, if they do that would seem to be a considerable misallocation of resources.
And as the story pointed out, there is absolutely no obligation to turn the wallet/purse in to police, even if one is standing next to you. The only legit busts they made appeared to be where they could tell someone had taken money out of the purse/wallet and then basically disposed of the bag/wallet. *That* makes sense.
The rest was complete bullshit.
Yikes!
In January of this year, my wife and I happened to be strolling through the East Village on a visit to New York. We came across a large wallet/cellphone pouch in the middle of the sidewalk. As luck would have it, the owner had “Home” stored in his cellphone, so I dialled the number and – long story short – we met up with the owner and his partner later that night in a Village bar.
Turned out the poor guy was an artist who had just had his best ever day selling his artwork on the streets of Soho. I hadn’t even looked in the wallet, but he reckoned he had over $600 in cash inside it, along with pretty much his entire life (credit cards, driving license – all the usual stuff).
I’m very glad I hadn’t heard about Operation Lucky Bag prior to finding this bloke’s wallet. But then, if I had – I STILL would have picked it up and made efforts to return it.
Nice police state they’re building down there in NY.
Tom@22: The police in any large city are, if you're lucky, just going to take that waller or purse and toss it in the lost-property bin at the station and wait for the owner to call looking for it. More likely if you try to give it to a foot-patrol officer they're going to tell you to take it to the station yourself. Not really unreasonable, they've probably got several hours to go before they go back to the station and they've nowhere to carry it between now and then. If I'm heading to work or somewhere and see a wallet or purse, my most likely course would be to pick it up and take it with me. Once I get to work or home where I've plenty of time and a phone handy, then I can sort through the IDs to find some contact information. And if I pass a police officer on the way to where I'm going, I'm going to not give him the wallet/purse because of the above.
What the cops have done here is gotten dinged by a judge for ignoring the law, so they've dug in their heels and tried to finagle a way to ticket people for exactly what the judge said they couldn't. If I were that judge, I'd loooove to get one of those tickets in front of me.
Call 911.
Tell them you have found a suspicious unattended package that may be a bomb.
Let them evacuate the whole area.
I'll bet it would only take one incident for this sting to be stopped forever.
no tasers? no stress positions? not even mace?
I will try to hide my disappointment
It's anecdote time!
Last week, at about 4 am, I woke up starving, since I'd skipped dinner the night before. I had no food in the house, so I decided to walk out to the closest fast food joint that was open at that hour in order to get something to eat.
On the way there, I pass an ID card, and an ATM card, lying discarded on the pathway. I was still pretty much half asleep at this point, so I stuck them in my pocket and continued on my walk to Hungry Jack's.
About an hour later, _after_ eating, I walked to the closest police station and handed them in. The fact that I didn't promptly drop everything to deliver some dipshit's lost property to the cops doesn't make me a thief. It just means that I was hungry.
Bear in mind that the horror stories associated with this anticrime program (and I have heard a couple besides this one) tend to involve a "samaritan" who finds a wallet, purse, bag etc, picks it up and LEAVES post haste.
Sure, there is judgment involved on behalf of the cop trying to catch real criminals.
Please also bear in mind that a judge vacated the example we are discussing. Judges in my experience generally side heavily on behalf of the officer's professional observations.
Also remember that the mindset of avoiding the possible consequences of helping others has been a big, ongoing issue, frequently highlighted in N.Y.C. for decades. Included have been instances of reluctant witnesses to murder and rape and problems with enforcing the law due to lack of citizen participation.
The issue has been directly highlighted in movies dating as far back as "The Out of Towners," with Jack Lemon, and in a number of popular songs, novels and essays.
Also, the recent face lift of N.Y.C. encouraged citizen participation in creating a friendlier, more crime-free environment.
How much protocol is it necessary to practice in defense of having to do something on behalf of decency? What do you do when confronted with a situation you haven't practiced for, be indecent to your fellow man?
I can't believe anybody is actually defending the actions of police on this one.
If you find a bag of items, a wallet, a pack of gum, whatever, the ethically correct thing to do would be to return the item to it's proper owner.
IANAL, is it truly against the law to pick up a lost item? That can't even be enforced fairly(as is obvious) Why would we create a law that is simply there to protect people from being careless. If I loose my wallet, I would very much appreciate whoever finds it bringing it back to me, however, I would never expect them to be arrested for picking it up.
What if someone drops a bag of food? Are we then obligated to get that to a police station?
My experience is on the side of "try contacting the owner directly." I was out riding my bicycle north of Memphis one day, and found a fanny pack that had been dumped by the side of the road--probably by someone who had stolen it from the owner, as it was open and had been rifled through--which had a foreign passport in it. I took it to the nearest police station, and made it clear to them that the owner would probably like that back as soon as possible; they, in turn, made it clear to me that they were going to stick it in the big lost-and-found bin and wait for her to call, kind of ignoring the question of whether her English skills would be up to that. I wish that I'd just kept it and tried calling that country's nearest consulate instead.
The only real reason that I can see for the NYPD to be pulling this stunt is to make people paranoid and anxious; the cops are everywhere, trust no one.
It's not necessary to GIVE the wallet or bag to the police - as I said, they don't run a Lost & Found department.
What you do is NOTIFY the police, booth clerk, driver or someone else in uniform. Hey look, someone dropped their wallet. Mind if I see who it is and try to call them? The average NYC cop will be happy to let you do it. Then you can have your success story to tell your friends, with zero percent chance that you'll be hassled for acting like a thief, of which there are plenty out there by the way.
What the cops are concerned with is the guy who, when you finish your shopping trip at Macy's or Circuit City and you're sitting on the bench waiting for the IRT and you turn to talk to your friend, you turn back and your bag is gone. Those guys exist and they operate every day but especially in the holiday season. That's who the cops want to get, they honestly have no interest in hassling ordinary law abiding citizens. But when you take a bag from a bench and head for the exit, yeah, they're going to stop you. Anyone who feels primordial outrage that such a thing could happen in Paradise should just get over it.
It's also important to understand that this "omg did you hear what the NYC cops are doing?" buzz is PART of the operation. The cops definitely want the average straphanger to know that there are decoy bags out there. Because they know that the average (honest) straphanger can afford to walk on by the bag, or at most be a "smart Samaritan" - notifying a witness, staying put and calling, etc - whereas the bad guys cannot. They need the money, it's how they make a living.
So let me get this straight, I see a bag on a bench with no-one around..and it's illegal to pick up that bag...?
Don
"A siren tears the night in half
'cuz someone lost his wallet
yeah it's surveillance of assailance
if that's watchawannacallit
And Small Change got rained on
with his own .38"
(The workings of the NYPD according to Tom Waits)
Yes, Don, that's basically what Tom's (yet again) painfully weak argument amounts to. They're trying to bust a sting, see? So they'll criminalize the most innocent activity to get at the bad guys. A strategy which sounds familiar.
My guess is Tom is the arresting police officer.
Either that, or he's having a diabetic attack at the keyboard or something.
Spiderman, Batman, Superman, Tick ... you're all in trouble now.
"So let me get this straight, I see a bag on a bench with no-one around..and it's illegal to pick up that bag...?"
No, just moderately stupid given the likelihood that it's a plant - and I don't mean by the cops, although you can obviously now add that to the list of reasons.
If you really do see a bag on a bench with no-one around, here's a suggestion: wait until someone IS around before you do anything. There's clearly no further risk to you or the bag in the meantime. If your train happens to come during that wait, you can either skip a train - or leave the bag to its fate, which might include the owner coming back to get it rather than finding it vanished into some "Samaritan's" clutches.
As for what's "illegal," that's a matter for the courts and the legislature to decide. As a civilian commuter, your more immediate concern is trying not to behave like the kind of character the cops are looking for. Regardless of how it all finally settles out with the prosecutor and your lawyer and so forth, if you see that bag on the bench with no other witnesses around, and you grab it and run for your train, you are asking for a police stop.
Sorry if you don't like it; sorry if reading this makes you conclude I must be an "arresting officer" or something; sorry if you see it as an "argument" that must be "weak" without further explanation why. Nor is it inconceivable, knowing the Finest, that a few guys on the beat are overzealous - it sure happens in most other areas of enforcement. And they may have to dial back on this operation due to the publicity. But the basic common-sense rule of what you as a commuter should do with a lost bag remains the same. Stay there; get witnesses; ask a cop or other uniformed agent if they mind you taking a look. I know if I left my bag or wallet, I'd rather a "smart Samaritan" found it.
Tom: Did you miss the part about "Over half the people arrested had no previous criminal record whatsoever"? Abandoned is abandoned. The law is that if you find a purse or wallet, you have 10 days to return it.
It makes me sad to see apologism for what the D.A. clearly considered misconduct, but only after NY1 reported the story.
"As a civilian commuter, your more immediate concern is trying not to behave like the kind of character the cops are looking for."
Really, Tom? I mean, REALLY? It's no longer good enough to simply not break the law--we are now required to act in some specific way that ostentatiously reassures authority that we could not possibly be breaking the law? I don't buy it and there's no reason that that should have to be anyone's chief concern, whether they're commuting or not.
I have a question, in case anyone has sufficient legal knowledge to answer: The closest things I can think of to this "sting" operation are the stings I've seen on COPS where they put an unlocked bike out on the street and wait for someone to walk off with it. This, from what I can tell, is completely legitimate and legal--but what's the actual legal principle that differs? What keeps someone who takes an unsecured bike from a public place from claiming that it was abandoned property? Anyone know?
The New York State lost and found property law simply requires you to turn in found property within ten days, and prescribes penalties if you fail to do so. It does not grant you a blanket license to run around scooping everything up, regardless of the prevalence of theft and thieves in a particular area, and hold it for ten days despite a cop standing right there. I am fairly sure that this point has specifically been tested.
The bottom line is that if you find a laptop in the seatback of a Greyhound bus in Syracuse, the ten day NYS law applies and you should get to work finding the owner or turning it in. If you see a Macy's bag sitting on a bench in Grand Central, you should save the theoretical fancies and show a little city street sense. Involve a witness before you touch or open it; stay with the bag; notify someone immediately. Remember, there could be bad stuff that has nothing to do with the NYPD.
So you think the judge was wrong Tom? They were ordered by the courts to stop doing this, but are now breaking the law in a manner much more frightening than anything to do with dropped wallets....why are you more concerned with folks picking up abandoned shopping bags and wallets than a group of police willfully disobeying the direct orders of a judge?
The entire idea of any Law at all breaks down when that starts happening. Picking up an object on the ground is NOT against the law.......disobeying the direct order of a judge IS.
This reminds me of why I decided years ago to never live in New York and only go there if I absolutely have to.
Sheesh, the US is turning really weird. Try not to act suspicious. What if you look suspicious? Do all kinds of people get the same treatment if they pick up a wallet in new York city? What if you have brown skin? Or a turban? Or just look suspicious?
Can we have the guideline for non-suspicious behavior? I wouldn't want to accidentally look suspicious. I'm suspicious of people in suits and shiny shoes and excessively cheerful kids but I guess I was wrong.
Anyone seen the new Harold and Kumar trailer?
www.haroldandkumar.com
A couple of weeks ago we heard about a flight with an American and some Kuwaitis going to Vienna from Madrid, and the American got scared (he was suspicious) and the plane had to turn back. No one else reported any disturbances. The thought here was sorry, paranoid Americans. Weird people. Sheesh.
Living in a dictatorship is not all that it's cracked up to be, so stop this before it gets worse.