Art Vs Science
Banned
- Sep 1, 2010
- 6,419
Keep it to pay for 4 days of my electricity bill. Thieving bastards
Let's be honest, as an officer of the law that's the ONLY answer you could give on a public forum !
Undoubtedly. But I like to think I'm a decent person regardless of that.
It's not my money. I don't know how it came to be there or who it belongs to. Therefore it's not mine to keep.
Turn this around...say it was one of you who lost £500.00 in the street, maybe you'd been saving it up for a while to buy something, or it was the proceeds of a charity collection, or your kids' birthday money that you'd been en route to pay into the bank.
How would you feel if some thief (because that's what it is) trousered it? I would be gutted.
Besides, to keep it would potentially constitute a criminal offence of theft by finding. The law states you have to take reasonable steps to find the lawful owner of any property you find.
I would hand it in TBH, but is theft by finding a new law(or maybe an ancient one)? Never heard of that before
Part of the Theft Act. Always has been as far as I know.
Essentially, if you find something you have to take reasonable steps to find the owner. What is reasonable depends on the circumstances and the item. If it's a quid, or a fiver, say, or a teddy bear or a box of chocolates, it's going to be hard to do that because nobody's going to report it missing and the item isn't itself identifiable. At best you might ask people around you if it's theirs.
If it was fifty quid, or pretty much anything above that, or something identifiable as belonging to someone (a wallet, a phone etc) then you'd expect the owner to have reported its loss, and thus reporting your find to the police, or the premises manager if you're at a gig, football match for example, would be a reasonable step. Or calling the owner, or going to their address perhaps.
People get charged with it more often than you'd think.
My missus found about £2k on the train a couple of years ago, she handed it in. (it would have been a different story had I found it, or indeed had I been on the train with her )
Someone I know foumd a large amount of dough about £800 very early one morning at Preston Park Station (05:16 Train I think.) Just sitting in an envelope on the old Permit to Travel machine .
Did i see you today wearing a plain blue Albion top?
I found a hundred quid in crispy folded tenners in a packet down Preston Drove once. Handed it in to the police on the assumption that it might be some old dear's pension or somebody's pay packet. Made sure I got a copy of the form from the police at the time. A month or three months later, forget which, I called up to see if anybody had claimed it. They hadn't so I got given the money anyways.
MacKenzie - did your missus ever get a form? Did she ever follow it up? I know that even if somebody claims the money, they are strongly suggested by the police to give the finder a reward.
Portslade
I think she got a receipt, I don't think she ever followed it up though. I'll ask her when she gets back in.