999 Call about Stolen Snowman

[pipTheGeek]

yeah I think this is almost certainly a wind up

I have wondered that as well. Are the police allowed to release the recording of a 9's call without permission of the caller?

I do know that the police get some crazy emergency calls so I wouldn't rule this out completely.

We had the same discussion about is it theft if the snowman was left on common ground at work when the story was told. We didn't come to any conclusion. My friend was slightly miffed though, him and his son had put alot of effort into building it and was then deprived of being able to look at it.

[tumbledragon]

Dunno if i'd be so quick to call it a wind up, I know a guy who phoned the fire brigade because there was a spider in his flat

[Saracen]

But this is a stickly pickle you see! Is a snowman taken from a playing field theft? If you leave something in a public place then you should expect it to be picked up! Not necessarily stolen!

Now, a snowman in your garden could be classed as theft I suppose... However, can you lay claim to snow in your garden? It's only snow, regardless of it's form, whether it's in a ball or otherwise

See tis a big can of worms that should be left unopened

We need Saracen! Where is he???

Right here.

My first thought on reading the article in the OPs post was, well, unprintable, frankly. Moving swiftly on .... it doesn't really matter if something is left on common ground or not in determining if taking it is theft or not. You can't take someone's car just because they left it parked on the road.

There are a series of elements that must be met from taking something to be theft, including "appropriating" someone else's property, dishonestly, and with "intent to permanently deprive".

So .... if you know or reasonably ought to know that something in the street belongs to someone else, then you can't just take it. Finding a wallet, complete with cash and credit cards, for instance .... it's not realistic to think that someone would just decide they didn't want it any more and throw it away. Therefore, you ought to know that it's just been lost, and if it is, it is still someone else's property.

If, however, you find something and make all reasonable attempts to locate the owner and fail, then there's no dishonesty involved in keeping it. A good way to ensure that is to hand valuable or expensive items you find to the police. They'll log them and, after a suitable time period elapses without them finding the owner or the owner coming forward, you'll get the item. A friend of mine did this with a £400 record turntable a few years ago. The police said it was almost certainly stolen and dumped, but nobody claimed it and they couldn't find the owner, so my friend got it after 30 (or whatever) days.

But does a snowman constitute "property" that you can appropriate, dishonestly or otherwise. I think that might be pushing it. Perhaps the carrot used for a nose or the old hat plonked on it could be, but they might reasonably be believed to be abandoned (and thus the owner had willingly relinquished ownership).

In short, I'd doubt it could be classed as theft to nick a transitory item like a snowman, but I'd certainly believe it could be wasting police time by ringing 999 about it. Where the bleep is the bleeping emergency in a missing bleeping snowman. Maybe it bleeping melted? What the bleep.

Assuming this is not just a wind-up, perhaps it's about time the police started prosecuting such blatant abuses of an emergency service.