The Annoyed Man wrote:puma guy wrote:The Annoyed Man wrote:Before copper tubing et al were specifically covered in a specific law, wasn't theft of this stuff already a felony?
Yes
So basically, this is merely a matter of the legislature "doing something," because the judicial system has refused to. What makes them think that the judicial system will treat the accused any differently, just because the legislature has thrown another law at the problem?
TAM Well the Ranger game is delayed so I can look at the forum
I don't really know what the issue was with the legislation. The guy I caught was prosecuted under the pld statute I guess. When we caught him and turned him over to the patrolmen we told them he had a copper water line in his hand and dropped it. He had a load of aluminum from an awning and carport we had demolished. The patrolmen wanted to know the value of the stuff and I told him I had no idea. I didn't think it was enough fro a felony so I showed them the No Trespassing sign and he was arrested for felony tresspass. The next dat a detective called for more details, I met him and showed him the copper tubing he'd dropped and showed him where he'd twisted it off the connections. He told me any theft of copper was a felony. There may be some fancy lawyers that argue stealing a condensing unit with aluminum fin wrapped copper tubing doesn't meet the 50% criteria. I was pretty disgusted that the guy only got 90 days especailly with the circumstances. Of course that probably didn't come up in court. We need more judges to be victims of A/C theft and they'd realize it ain't the value of the raw material but the repairs/replacement costs.