Charged with theft, man arrested for plugging car into school’s outlet

[silicon_toad2000]

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/charged-with-theft-man-arrested-for-plugging-car-into-schools-outlet/

A man in an Atlanta suburb was confronted by a police officer for plugging his electric car into an outside outlet at a school. Ten days later, he was arrested at home and charged with theft for taking about 5 cents worth of electricity "without consent."

Kaveh Kamooneh plugged an extension cable from his Nissan Leaf into a 110-volt external outlet at Chamblee Middle School while his son was practicing tennis. A short time later, he noticed someone in his car and went to investigate—and found that the man was a Chamblee police officer. "He informed me he was about to arrest me, or at least charge me, for electrical theft," Kamooneh told Atlanta's Channel 11 News.

Kamooneh said that the car, when plugged into a 110-volt outlet, draws a kilowatt an hour. "Over an hour, that's maybe eight or nine cents" worth of electricity, he said, depending on the rates. He was plugged in for less than 20 minutes, so he estimated the amount of power he drew from the school at less than 5 cents.

Sgt. Ernesto Ford of the Chamblee Police Department told 11 News that "a theft is a theft," and that he would arrest anyone for charging their car from an outlet without permission.

Kamooneh plans to fight the criminal charges, which he sees as selective prosecution. "There's no record of anyone being arrested for drinking water out of a tap," he told 11 News. "People charge laptops or cell phones at public outlets all the time, and no one's ever been arrested for that."

[Trestor]

Having been in this line of work I will say that this is a good example of what I hate in some police. Police are supposed to be officers of the city ("polis"), ie, protect the citizens from harm and uphold their rights, not to engage in pettifoggery and waste everybody's time. Usually situations like this are treated with basic sense, but this officer clearly doesn't have a sense of perspective. How he got to be a sergeant I do not know; he appears to be the sort of person who can't handle power in a sensible manner.

I hope the judge throws the case out and reprimands the officer for wasting court time and tells him to grow some sense of proportion. The citizen should not even have to fight for this; the sergeant's senior officer should apologize about it and kick the sergeant's bum for being an officious fool.

[GhostShip]

I happen to disagree, we all know as adults things have to be paid for and so he is technically guilty but that being said he could have perhaps shown some contrition and maybe offered to recompense the school etc

This does sound a bit of an overreaction in wasting public money to bring an expensive prosecution but we all know if we take something that belongs to others what its called and the officer is in theory simply upholding the law and not using any discretion.

[silicon_toad2000]

i think perspective in this case went with the cost of a full tank of fuel, officer probably didn't know how much or how little the car was pulling from the mains.

[White Stripes]

if this was at a public school this mans taxes have already more than paid the 5cents his car sucked from the wall socket

[GhostShip]

The monetary value is meaningless in most cases of theft, its the act and the mindset behind the act that creates criminality "mens rea"  and  "actus reas".  As long as both conditions are met the crime has been committed regardless of value.