
Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car - pseudolus
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/11/21/police-hid-tracking-device-suspects-car-then-charged-him-with-theft-removing-it/
======
WalterBright
If someone drops something in my car, and I unwittingly drive off with it, it
is still not mine. But I did not steal it. If the person asks for it back, and
I refuse, then I am stealing it.

All the police had to do was knock on his door and ask for it back. If he
refused, that's grounds for theft. If he denied knowledge of it (like if it
had just fallen off somewhere) that doesn't sound like sufficient grounds for
a search warrant, and if the search warrant did turn up evidence of some
unrelated crime, that evidence shouldn't be admissible.

I'm no lawyer, but that's what sounds right to me.

(I don't agree that Finders Keepers is a legal basis for ownership, or that
leaving your door open means it's ok to steal, or that a bank error in your
favor means you get to keep it.)

~~~
lazyguy2
If you hide something on my car to spy on me then it's not reasonable to
expect it back if I find it. Charging somebody with theft for something like
this is effectively rewarding the police for being incompetent.

One of the worst mistakes in modern government is pretending that the people
'serving' have more rights and privileges then everybody else.

They should have less.

~~~
freeopinion
I'd settle for experimenting with "same".

If a regular citizen can't plant a bug, neither can police. If police can
conduct a stakeout, so can regular citizens. They just have to follow the same
process. That might include going in front of a judge and getting a warrant.

If a regular citizen could break up a bar fight, the police should be able to
take the same actions. If police can set up a sting operation, so should
citizens be allowed.

Obviously, we don't want everybody running around conducting sting operations
or traffic stops. So we set some bar for regular citizens that makes it less
likely. But police should have to face the exact same bar. The difference is
that we pay for their time, training, equipment, etc. If a certain level of
training is required before anybody can make a traffic stop, that training
should be open for anybody. We just pay the admission and the salary for
police to take the training. Regular citizens foot their own bill.

Edit: poor proofreading

~~~
DagAgren
So which do you think makes more sense: Police are not allowed to arrest
people, or everyone is allowed to arrest?

~~~
Frondo
Former private security guard here: in our training, we were told that we, as
private citizens, could "arrest" someone, if you're willing to sign your name
to an arrest warrant. You'd want to have the cops on the way, and be willing
to face a false arrest lawsuit for detaining them, so you'd better be really
100% sure you caught them in the act of doing something illegal.

We were also taught it's almost never worth doing this; basically, if
someone's shooting people and you're doing an armed job, yes, use your gun to
try and stop them or detain them, but if it's just property damage or theft,
call the cops and let them do their thing. The risk to you isn't worth it, nor
is the risk of a false arrest lawsuit.

~~~
vonmoltke
I think that hints towards freeopinion's point. You, as a private citizen,
should have exactly the same legal liability with respect to false arrest as a
police officer.

Then the question is, is such a good idea?

------
cm2187
That part doesn’t sound right:

> _trackers placed by the government under a warrant are distinct from those
> placed by private citizens. Removing a device from a car where it has a
> legal basis to be “deprives the police of its use,” he claimed, and
> constitutes a crime._

You have no way to tell a police tracker from a stawker’s one. How can
removing it possibly constitute a crime?

~~~
huffmsa
Had he been made aware of the tracking device, like one is with an ankle
monitoring bracelet, then sure, removal is cause for an arrest on theft,
destruction of property, etc.

However, since he was not made aware of the device, he has no obligation to be
compliant.

If the police were tapping someone's phone and they threw away the phone, for
whatever reason, would they be in a similar situation?

If they avoided a human surveillance detail, would they be in a similar
situation?

Likely no and no.

So while the police did things correctly, getting warrants, etc, the suspect
was still entirely unaware of any need to comply.

The guy should walk.

Edit: addendum

If the device had been labeled "Property of {X} Police, do not remove", then
they'd have a better case.

Same way the police are supposed to (but don't) announce themselves before
kicking down your door.

You're not more important than the citizenry you serve.

~~~
chrismcb
They claim that a police tracker is obviously different than a civilian one.
Didn't say how. But if it becomes illegal to remove a police tracker, how soon
before the civilian ones resemble the police ones?

~~~
huffmsa
That assumes civilians are aware of what "civilian" trackers look like.

Not a reasonable assumption.

------
rosybox
However you may feel about the theft charge, if you find a tracker on your
car, don't take it off. It's an occasion to call the police. Someone is either
committing a crime by tracking you illegally or you're letting the police know
you found their tracker. Maybe they'll remove it, as once the tracker is known
to exist it's useless.

If you want to go the route of civil disobedience and take it off on moral
grounds, you can do that too, but you'll probably go to jail. This isn't the
first time I've heard of this, the FBI has charged people for tampering with
the trackers they've put on people's cars.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2011/05/09/heres-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2011/05/09/heres-
what-the-gps-devices-used-by-the-fbi-to-track-your-car-look-
like/#539161ee523d)

~~~
ralfd
> However you may feel about the theft charge, if you find a tracker on your
> car, don't take it off.

Yes, but ...

> It's an occasion to call the police.

If you are a drug dealer it is an occasion to hide your supply extra hard. And
use a second car/taxi for your drug dealing while using the compromised car
for perfectly legal things like an upstanding citizen.

~~~
really3452
> If you are a drug dealer it is an occasion to hide your supply extra hard.

I suspect he did. Most likely the police planted the glass pipe that was found
when searching for the tracking device so that they could obtain permission
from the judge for the second search.

~~~
logfromblammo
I upvoted this specifically so the people who still believe in the essential
lawfulness of police would have a better chance of seeing it. The slang term
is "testilying".

There is low conditional probability that a drug dealer smart enough to locate
and remove a GPS tracker would put it in the same physical locker compartment
as a crack pipe after taking it off.

Were I the judge, I would be especially wary of "automatic probable cause"
objects that were coincidentally found with the search warrant target, namely
"drug paraphernalia", "the distinctive odor of marijuana", and "the K-9 unit
alerted".

Ask to see the glass pipe they found. Ask to see the photograph of it _in
situ_ next to the tracking device. Compare it very closely to evidence taken
from previous drug cases. When the cops are unable to back up their bullshit
story, throw their whole case out and cite someone for perjury.

~~~
MFLoon
> Were I the judge...

Your mental model of a typical American judges values is, unfortunately,
unrepresentative in the extreme.

~~~
logfromblammo
My mental model of the typical American judge involves a lot of corner-
cutting, and disdain for actually _doing the job_ of applying reason and wise
judgment to real-world situations, instead of just following a checklist of
established procedures and conforming to precedent.

Judges tend to rule in favor of lawyers that do most of their work for them.
It's a lot easier to get an order if the lawyer submits a draft order, and the
judge can just sign it.

I get it. I also like to slack off and get paid. To be perfectly honest, I'd
probably only double-check the evidence if a random number generator said to
do it, based on the pre-established sampling rate setting in my judge-
automation program.

~~~
MFLoon
I suppose I misspoke, your mental model sounds accurate XD. I wish there were
a mandated evidence double check sampling rate! The point I was making is that
I suspect in most courtrooms the rate is effectively 0.

------
gamedori5
Legally, what is happening when the police put a tracker on a car? It isn't a
gift, or a transfer of ownership - otherwise the police retieving it would be
theft. On the other hand, the vehicle owner should not be held responsible for
damage to a device they don't know about. Does it become lost property?

If the disappearance of public property attached to a vehicle can be used to
justify a search warrant, this seems like it would be ripe for abuse. The
police could apply for a tracking warrant, wait a week, claim their tracker
was lost, and then perform whatever searches they want on the private
property.

~~~
nordsieck
IANAL

My understanding is that it's the Police's property. If you find it, you can
probably legally remove it from the car, but you can't keep it or prevent the
Police from recovering it.

This might be interesting to you:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_by_finding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_by_finding)

~~~
zik
Since you don't know whose tracker it is maybe the best thing to do is "lose"
it again. Drop it down the nearest drain so you can plausibly say you never
saw it and it must have fallen off.

~~~
nordsieck
> Since you don't know whose tracker it is maybe the best thing to do is
> "lose" it again.

Often, knowledge of surveillance almost completely diminishes its
effectiveness. If you know your car has a tracker on it, the police won't get
anything useful out of it, because you won't drive to any place you don't want
the cops to know about.

Leaving it in place also has the advantage that you don't alert the police
that you know about the surveillance.

~~~
dmurray
You might need to go to those places, though, and not have alternative
transport.

------
BLKNSLVR
"They sought warrants to search Heuring’s home and the barn, alleging that
there was probable cause that a crime had been committed — that Heuring had
committed theft by taking off the GPS tracker. While searching the barn, they
found the tracker in a bathroom locker. They also found evidence of drug use:
a glass pipe.

A subsequent search, granted by a judge based on the paraphernalia, uncovered
bags of methamphetamine, pills, digital scales and a gun. Heuring was charged
with drug dealing and with theft."

Smart enough to take the tracker off the car. Dumb enough to keep it on-
location with conviction-worthy drug paraphernalia.

Attach it to a hire car. Keep it moving, but as far away from your
illegalities as possible, my goodness.

~~~
ALittleLight
I don't know. Investigators who are willing to stoop to "He stole our tracker"
are surely not above exaggerating the evidence they've found.

Why do we even bother with warrants if the police can get around them by
tricking you into "stealing" something?

~~~
x220
It's so we can have the appearance of rights. Same reason why China has
kangaroo courts.

------
throwaway_tech
Whats really troubling here is in the future, the police could get a warrant
to track a vehicle, take the tracker off themselves, then go back to the
courts claiming there is probable cause the suspect stole the tracker and get
the warrant to search for their tracker in the suspects home and parents
home...of course searching for whatever it is they really wanted but had no
right to search for.

~~~
bagacrap
It has always been possible to fabricate evidence. What's troubling to me
isn't the behavior of the police (who have done much worse) but the judge, who
approved the warrant on ridiculous grounds, even though the judiciary is meant
to be a check on the power of the executive.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
> even though the judiciary is meant to be a check on the power of the
> executive.

Yeah, that hasn't really been working out for us.

------
masswerk
This may be a bit of an exaggeration, but there are some implications to IT.
May running malware removal tools (or antivirus software in general) be theft?
Was the malware planted by a government agency? By your government? Under a
warrant? Better don't touch at all?

(The entire matter is highly absurd.)

------
brobdingnagians
This is the interesting statement to me:

> “But something is left on your car — even if you know it’s the police that
> are tracking you, you have an obligation to leave it there and let them
> track you?”

If you can compel someone to leave surveillance on private property, where
does this precedent make a distinction. Could they leave surveillance cameras
in your home and compel you to leave them there?

~~~
JustSomeNobody
At this point how does the 5th not play into this?

------
chrismcb
At least one Justice gets it. The original judge shouldn't have issued the
second warrant. First of all, what law was broken by remove the legally placed
device? (The fact that it is different than a consumer device sounds be
immaterial) second, isn't possession 9/10s the law? It is on his car, he
should have a right to remove it. I would also be concerned with the police
planning an active device on the car. This will definitely set a dangerous
precedent.

------
JoeAltmaier
Lots of hypotheticals, fun reading here.

My thought: Isn't there something about bearing witness against yourself? In
America you're not required to do so. Isn't removing a tracking device
something like pleading the 5th?

Others suggest you should return it to the police, but it seems to me there
are way better approaches to that than handing it over.

Its a tracking device, right? They're going to find it, wherever you put it
(except in a locked metal cabinet of course).

So leave it by the side of the road - they'll see it quit moving, find it,
assume it fell off. Maybe try again, put it back on your car.

Next time, maybe leave it outside town in a muddy drainage ditch? Imagine the
sap who has to go in there to get it.

All sorts of fun could be had. Leave it in a bank lobby. In Victoria's Secret
under the discount table. In a trash can at the zoo. Behind the Police station
where they keep the idle tracking devices. In an abandoned building. Under a
parked police car.

So many better ways to deal with this problem, it could hardly be called a
problem at all. Its a challenge!

~~~
lmkg
Installing the tracking device requires a warrant, meaning it's classified as
a "search," not as testimony. It's 4th Amendment territory, not 5th Amendment.

If removing the tracking device is pleading the 5th, then putting the tracking
device on at all would be a violation of the 5th Amendment. You can
philosophize a testimonial aspect into almost anything, but the courts take a
more narrow view of what gets protected by the 5th.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
To continue hypotheticals, once you know its there it becomes a voluntary act
to continue. You have to continue to (allow) reporting of your location. That
sounds more like 5th territory.

Anyway I see its not speech, so not testimony.

------
FussyZeus
Disgusting abuse of power manages to catch a criminal. Is that our only metric
for success now? Putting people in prison? Might as well shred the
constitution, apparently we're ready to burn everything it stood for to
prevent people from getting high.

I know I sound dramatic but it is honestly impossible to overstate how
damaging to privacy rights and how much horrific police militarization can be
directly and indirectly laid at the feet of the war on drugs.

~~~
panny
>Is that our only metric for success now? Putting people in prison? Might as
well shred the constitution

You just threw that straw man straight down a slippery slope.

>apparently we're ready to burn everything it stood for to prevent people from
getting high

This falls under "punching Nazis". Do you want some guy going around punching
people? No, of course not. But if he's punching Nazis, then hey, let him do
his thing, man. Same logic here, except it's "tracking meth dealers".

>I know I sound dramatic

I was thinking "moral grandstanding"

I'm okay with the police catching a meth dealer and putting him away. Good
job. Keep up the good work.

~~~
jakelazaroff
What straw man? What slippery slope? That's literally what's happening here,
and it's the argument you're making: "this man is a meth dealer, so the ends
justify the means".

------
al_chemist
Soon:

"Indiana man charged with theft for removing drugs planted by police"

------
Sargos
"Deputy Attorney General Jesse Drum argued that the deputies had not acted in
bad faith"

Is it typical for DAs to have lacking judgement? I know we hear about the bad
ones but whenever any kind of insane police stunt appears in the media the DA
is always on the police's side. I thought the judicial branch was supposed to
be separate and neutral from the executive branch.

~~~
tedunangst
The DA is in the judicial branch?

~~~
Sargos
Is it not? It's the lawyer appointed by the public.

~~~
jeffdavis
Not an expert, but I'm pretty sure the DA is part of the executive branch.

------
deogeo
By this logic, with a simple warrant, the police could place a big, obvious
microphone in the middle of your living room, label it "Police surveillance
mic", and you would be forbidden from removing it.

I find _that_ much more troubling than any technicalities around 'did he know
it belonged to the cops'. Just how much obedience can a simple warrant coerce
out of supposedly free citizens?

~~~
caseysoftware
Just stick an Amazon or Google logo on it and people will buy it and place it
themselves..

~~~
baroffoos
But that also lets me order more Doritos hands free!

~~~
m463
I wonder if you could eat doritos hands free too? Could you have a dorito
launcher that would hit your mouth every time?

On the other hand, it might be risky to combine voice command with dorito's
launch since they both use the same orifice for I/O.

~~~
logfromblammo
I eat Doritos and Cheetos with chopsticks. It keeps the flavoring detritus off
the fingers.

------
zenexer
> [Deputy Attorney General Jesse Drum] said trackers placed by the government
> under a warrant are distinct from those placed by private citizens. Removing
> a device from a car where it has a legal basis to be “deprives the police of
> its use,” he claimed, and constitutes a crime.

That argument doesn't make sense if the suspect doesn't know that it belongs
to police. Presumably, the suspect wouldn't have known in this scenario, and
chances are a meth dealer has non-law-enforcement entities after them in
addition to the police. It could've just as easily been a disgruntled
"customer" or competing dealer who placed the device.

If I see a tracking device on my car, it's getting removed. For me, that'd
mean contacting the police and asking them to look into it, but I'm sure
plenty of people would simply remove it themselves. Why would that be a crime?

------
sigmaprimus
Im a bit confused, at the point the police attached the unmarked tracking
device on the suspects vehicle, did the suspect not obtain possession rights
to the tracker? If not can the police just attach a device to you vehicle then
charge you with theft immediately? How did the removal and subsequent storage
result in theft if the device was already in the suspects possession?

------
IAmGraydon
All debates aside, who finds a police tracking device on their car and
continues to maintain a large stash of meth and paraphernalia?

~~~
gwbas1c
Someone who's very addicted. Addiction clouds judgement on ways that are very
hard to emphasize with.

------
lsh123
Let’s check some scenarios: 1) Police puts a mic inside your house, you step
on it, and destroy it. Is it ok or not?

2) Police puts a mic on a guy who comes to your house, you find it, and
destroy it. Is it ok or not?

3) Police puts a nano-mic (nano-gps) on you, you find it, and destroy it. Is
it ok or not?

My answer to all of the above is that anything put on your property without
you knowledge is up for grabs and destruction without further notice. Hour,
car, or body is irrelevant.

~~~
clarry
If someone puts a car or a body on your property, do you destroy it?

~~~
Xelbair
If someone dumps a trash on your property do you take it out?

------
mikorym
There is a law in South Africa called "Die Mandament van Spolie" or otherwise
"spoliasie". It is _not_ the same as spoliation in English; spoliation is the
spoiling of evidence.

 _Spoliasie_ , however, means that you can't take away an existing right, an
existing usage by someone, without somehow proving through the process of the
law that that person is not entitled to that right.

A good example of this is an access gate used by multiple people. If you
change the lock or remote, and someone else uses the gate—rightfully or
not—then you are at risk of transgressing this feature of the law.
Interestingly enough, there has been a case where the gate was electronic and
a case where the gate was manual and in the two different cases the judges
actually ruled differently in the two cases. One case of changing access
credentials without giving access to other users was "spoliasie" and one
wasn't—obviously also complicating subsequent interpretation of the law.

In fact, since you cannot take the law into your own hands, a thief could
theoretically after having stolen your car and if you take back the car
somehow, sue you for spoliasie. The key here is that the _police_ is supposed
to go and apprehend the suspect and bring back your car.

Of course, practically, such a case would never go to court. But before you
think the "theory" of this is crazy, consider this: How do you know who has a
right to usage of which items and personal properties? In fact, maybe you lent
the "thief" your car (and maybe the "thief" is even your friend) and suddenly
you decided you didn't like this friend anymore and called the police and told
them this person stole your car. Maybe it's a silly example, but the point is
that it's tricky to just impede existing usage without proper consideration.

The principle is that an existing right should be respected until shown to be
an unlawful usage and hence not a valid right. By the way, IANAL.

------
fingerlocks
Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21568362](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21568362)

------
thrownaway954
The real problem here is that the police and courts can charge people with
frivolous crimes like this and there are no consequences on their part. This
poor guy now has to hire a lawyer, waste his time and money, go through the
court system and hopefully get this thrown out. If the judges, prosecutors and
police were held accountable maybe things like this wouldn't happen, but it
won't be in my lifetime.

------
AcerbicZero
_I agree with the vast number of comments about how unjust this is and I
strongly suspect the police messed up by applying for the house search warrant
using such a flimsy charge, instead of, I dunno, maybe just applying for a
warrant to search his home using the same CI who got you the car warrant?
Still wrong, but at least less dumb.

That said, if you find a GPS tracker on your car, which you take off and keep
in your house full of drugs, it might be a bit late for you. I'm not
suggesting the police used the GPS tracker to locate him, but who would keep a
device like that, even if you were _fairly* sure it was off? Park next to a
city/police/firefighter/EMS vehicle and stick it over there. Or just chuck the
thing on the side of the road and be done with it.

This is a fairly rural area, but I suspect in a larger city the police
wouldn't even need a GPS tracker to maintain a rough idea of your comings and
goings. They'll just scan the license plates ~20+ times a day as various
police vehicles drive by, and use that data to build a map of your travels.

------
ben509
If you find something like that, you put it in a box and mail it back to the
police.

Be sure to include an invoice with a hefty charge for shipping and handling.

~~~
Hamuko
> _Besides, Keating said, there was no indication that it belonged to law
> enforcement._

How do you know where to mail it?

~~~
ben509
Local police. If they send it back, you keep any paperwork and throw it away,
since now you have proof that you tried.

------
bagacrap
Can the police now run up and strap a camera to my forehead, compelling me to
leave it there, allowing them to observe my movements, and charging me with a
crime for removing it?

I guess when this happens I have to drop it off at a police station. TIL

~~~
m-p-3
They can with an ankle monitor, the camera implies a more invasive privacy
situation though.

------
AnimalMuppet
A _long_ time ago, there was this thing where businesses would mail you
something that you had in no way asked to receive. They would assert that you
bought it if you didn't mail it back. (The mailing came with paperwork
asserting this.) I forget whether it was due to court cases or legislation,
but that doesn't fly anymore.

I wonder if that provides any kind of precedent for this case?

------
tyingq
So I guess just bake it in an oven then put it back?

Or if it's magnet mounted, clip it on the catalytic converter for a couple of
trips.

------
CodeWriter23
A label reading “Property of XYZ Law Enforcement Agency. If found, please
return” on the device, plus a failure to return it IMO is the bar to make a
theft charge in this situation.

------
throwawaylalala
I'd make the argument that it was a gift; it was freely given and on my
property. They knowingly transferred it to him.

------
JulianMorrison
Obvious solution, return it - stick it on a patrol car. They can chase their
own tails.

------
a3n
Law enforcement considers the Constitution as damage to be routed around.

------
45678fjhkh4
UK Security Intelligence Services, will use school reports, NHS records for
surveillance purposes on everyone and have been known to carry out operations
on primary school age kids, which the kids wont know about until later on in
life.

------
bartwe
Wonder if an argument is to be made that this is entrapment

------
throwawaylalala
I would make the argument that it was a gift.

------
rolph
sounds like a good time to trade out your vehicle for something else, a rental
maybe.

------
ptah
all the evidence should be inadmissible

------
basicplus2
Put a faraday cage around the tracker instead

~~~
L0stRegulator
To ‘protect it from rain and road debris’ of course /s

