I suppose that in nearly every other country in the world, the police would not come, but a staff of the school would simply tell the car owner to just unplug his car and not do it again.
But maybe people like that should be sent in front of a court to give judges some work because the don't have enough work yet. This would be great, steal 5 cents of power, go in front of a court, active the police and the judiciary system, create 1000's $ of invoices, increase the GDP of the country!
Absolutely agree that if there were no prior encounters with man who charged his car, then the cop acted in bad faith wasting tens of thousands of dollars of public money in judicial costs for a "crime" than could have been prevented with a simple community policing effort, basically telling the guy to unplug the car.
But of course considering that crappy newspapers like USAToday often omit information to make the stories sound bigger (technically not a lie), there may have been some background that caused the cop to arrest the car owner.
Also I wonder if using outlet would be considered a fair use of the facilities. The car owner son was playing tennis at the school which means he was given a permission to use the facility. If this is the case then using the parking lot, drinking fountain, light or electric outlet at the school should be considered a fair use.
There's likely more story here than what the article provides. Most likely he had been told before not to plug in, has an unrelated dispute with someone at the school, etc.
Not every story needs to be an excuse to rant against the system.
Hmmm. A couple of thoughts. One, it sounds like it's outside of school hours. (after school practise). So not sure how many school employees are left. And while I hear you on the strong response for a minor offense in general it's becoming clearer that the worst thing police can do is look the other way at minor infractions. The "one broken window" approach to policing.
Agreed. It was a Saturday. And it doesn't say anywhere that the police were called by a school employee. There very well may not have been any school employees on site at the time. Perhaps a neighbor called it in. Perhaps the cop just happened by. The full article that this one links to says he was not arrested on the spot. But days later after it was determined that the school had not given him permission. There is also not even any mention if his kid even went to that school. I know my kids have various sports practices/games at other schools that they do not attend.
Stop the silliness. There are a lot of electric outlets and costs add up quickly. If you turn a blind eye to energy theft, you can easily lose thousands of dollars a year. (Asumming casual thieves. Serious thieves running heating and cooling can burn through tens of thousands of dollars a year.) The police are right to nip the problem in the bud.
But maybe people like that should be sent in front of a court to give judges some work because the don't have enough work yet. This would be great, steal 5 cents of power, go in front of a court, active the police and the judiciary system, create 1000's $ of invoices, increase the GDP of the country!