ErikO
Member
Man, I should check into this here in MO. Granted, most guns I'd assume to find would be 'damaged goods' and not legal to possess but you never know.
New employye has interesing 2nd job.Legal?
- Thread starter tuckerdog1
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zxcvbob
Member
You can't sue the DA, he has sovereign immunity, just like the judge.
The Blind Gun Enthusiast
Member
Sounds like he needs a good lawyer, although it sounds like a good deal for him. speaking of, I need a job too ... hmm
CapnMac
Member
Well, in my case, I found out about the auction sale of my house then the two realtors (one for rentals; one for non-rentals) Fannie retains, started leaving me hangtag notices.
If a renter is in place when Fannie buys, whatever rental contract exists is executed until its completion--rent just goes to the local RE agent.
Now, it took two weeks of phone and email tag to get the RE people to actually believe i was the property owner and not a tenant. Which was also about the time the official attorney sent me registered mail telling me I had 90 days from the auction sale date to vacate.
So, that's what I did. Really, i was headed that way anyway, for not boing to be able to pay utility bills
Texas is one of twenty "non judicial" foreclosure states, so things are a bit different than in the other thirty. Which I had to explain to people trying to get me HAMP for a foreclosed mortgage. There was a bit of dispute about which months were considered in arrears, so, I could have brought suit and made the foreclosure "judicial"--but, if I had money for a lawyer, I'd not been behind on mortgage payments.
Which is one of the worst things about "illegal takings." Generally they are only illegal if you can afford legal representation to make the case. And, if you have that sort of ability you are less likely to need it.
If a renter is in place when Fannie buys, whatever rental contract exists is executed until its completion--rent just goes to the local RE agent.
Now, it took two weeks of phone and email tag to get the RE people to actually believe i was the property owner and not a tenant. Which was also about the time the official attorney sent me registered mail telling me I had 90 days from the auction sale date to vacate.
So, that's what I did. Really, i was headed that way anyway, for not boing to be able to pay utility bills
Texas is one of twenty "non judicial" foreclosure states, so things are a bit different than in the other thirty. Which I had to explain to people trying to get me HAMP for a foreclosed mortgage. There was a bit of dispute about which months were considered in arrears, so, I could have brought suit and made the foreclosure "judicial"--but, if I had money for a lawyer, I'd not been behind on mortgage payments.
Which is one of the worst things about "illegal takings." Generally they are only illegal if you can afford legal representation to make the case. And, if you have that sort of ability you are less likely to need it.
bikerdoc
Moderator In Memoriam
It was cut to 14 inch. I wanted nothing to do with it.
Brother of mine bought a bar some months ago. The previous owner was 1yr behind on payments etc. Previous owner lost the bar & was given 30 day vacant notice after my brother purchased it. 30 days comes & goes. Previous owner didn't remove ANYTHING. He didn't even tell his employees. They showed up the next day to work & my brother was there checking the bar out. Told them the bar was sold. Anyways, down in the basement was a huge gun safe. Brother called a "Cracker" & got into the safe. It was full of guns! AR's, shotguns, pistols, rifles etc. Next day previous owner shows up drunk demanding his guns. Brother doesn't think he can keep the previous owner from the guns but calls the Sheriff anyways to cover himself. Sheriff shows up & asks if there was a 30day vacate notice. Brother produces copy of the notice for the Sheriff & the sheriff says the previous owner is SOL. Anything that wasn't removed prior to the 30 days, my brother now owns. Sheriff told my brother its up to him. By this time, the previous owner starts getting lippy with everyone so my brother tells him to walk. Because of the state, the pistols had to be run to make sure they weren't stolen but the rifles & shotguns didn't. Pistols all came back clean.
The law is not substitute for morals.
Playing the theft under the law game is only likely to work for so long before some broke desperate person that feels they have nothing to lose takes you out.
Now if I was the purchaser I would have to clean out the prior people if they were still in there. But I certainly wouldn't do it to multiple people/families on a regular basis for personal gain of their belongings, irregardless of it being legal.
The odds may very well catch up with you, and perhaps they should.
Playing the theft under the law game is only likely to work for so long before some broke desperate person that feels they have nothing to lose takes you out.
Now if I was the purchaser I would have to clean out the prior people if they were still in there. But I certainly wouldn't do it to multiple people/families on a regular basis for personal gain of their belongings, irregardless of it being legal.
The odds may very well catch up with you, and perhaps they should.
RevDerb
Member
Those are my thoughts as well.
henschman
Member
Zoogster said:
Under your code of ethics it is immoral to enforce a contract against someone who breaches it? And it is moral to use force to take property back from someone after you lost it to them due to your failure to abide by contractual terms that you agreed to be bound by?
I agree with you that the law is not co-extensive with morals, but abiding by one's contracts is pretty basic morality. If you sign an agreement that says you will pay someone rent and that if you do not they can take back the property including anything that is left in it after a certain amount of time, why should you not be held to those terms?
And for the OP -- yes, it would seem that your co-worker's second job is legal, but the police's actions are not.
hermannr
Member
True you cannot sue the DA as a person, but you can sue the governmental entity under federal civil rights law. False arrest, malicious procecution, 4th and 5th ammendment etc.
Strykervet
member
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- 1,610
Well, if you have the right to throw the mess away as it is yours, you can do whatever you like with it. And if you find something in the trash, finders keepers is the law. Cops don't even need a warrant to search the trash (and you have no responsibility to bear if they stick their hands in a bear trap either). The trashcan is an interesting legal boundary as I understand it.
If he is paid to clean it out and throw it away, then he found it in the trash for lack of a better explanation.
I actually did this work long enough to clean out one apt. to realize I didn't want to do it anymore. My wife was boss though, so you can all understand that. She manages properties, and we took that on as a side job, but I couldn't get 'em clean enough (I actually did better than the previous cleaners, but she couldn't hassle them the same). Anyway, I could keep whatever I found. She gets stuff all the time from empty apartments too. Folks will sometimes leave some very nice stuff behind, we got a several thousand dollar leather couch from one, they were "downsizing"! My wife double checked to make sure they left it on purpose, sure enough they did. That is the nicest thing we got that way so far.
When she kicks someone out, they post an eviction notice. They give them time to remove items, then they evict them. The cops come in and supervise the removal of property. This is stuff you CANNOT take. HOWEVER, stuff comes up missing all the time, they just dump the stuff on the street. Once the job is done, and the owners didn't show up to pick it up, you can cherrypick it. It is usually considered very poor taste to cherrypick evicted property though, and I'd expect a broken nose at the least if the owner shows up.
Now the cleaners can pocket it, but sometimes the cops do. During the foreclosure mess, when it started, this was a common problem (probably has been and still is, it was just highlighted). Usually when firearms are found, they, the cleaners, do call the police as they don't want to be connected to it in any way. What the police have to do with it, I assume they have to sit on it for so long and then do whatever. Not sure about firearms, but other stuff they auction. Here locally, they just auctioned off a car they found abandoned. Then they went and arrested the new owner the next day for possession of stolen property, the car was actually reported stolen and they had been sitting on it for the whole time before they sold it. Charges have not been dropped as of yet and they still have the cash. Proof that if you deal with poo, you will get it on you.
That dude can keep what he finds as long as it is garbage. If the state of the property is in any kind of question, then what he is doing is wrong. Also, say for instance the bank makes a boo boo. You do know that they lost a lot of paperwork, right? And without producing the actual loan, the homeowner can contest the foreclosure, right? Then if that happens and the big faceless bank pulls your number (because that is all you are to them) and they don't have that paperwork and the homeowner asks for it, then the guy sent to clean it up has "technically" broken in and ransacked the house. Vandalized it. But the cleaner can often get off the hook, and the bank will have to pay for any damages he did, provided the homeowner asked for papers the bank lost. But if the cleaner removed property, well, that can get a little hairy. That too, has already been in the news.
I've also heard of at least one person the bank foreclosed on, stole everything on the property, and then paid the evicted owners to come clean up the place. It was the only way they said they could be sure they wouldn't get property raped by the bank and that they needed the money.
Personally, I have lines. I won't take another person's individual property unless they say it is okay or unless they abandoned it and it is quite obvious. One time I did this, I was younger, and some friends and I rented a house from one of the friends family. The previous owner abandoned it several months ago and it was falling apart and getting rank. Animals moved in. So we cleaned it out, most was trash. But that '68 Dodge Dart, all slicked out for drag racing, that wasn't trash. We tried to have it towed, but they wouldn't accept it, and the cops said it had to be towed for them to do anything. So it sat in limbo. Then, a 17yo me wired it up and got it running and used it for errands and such, and the 18yo me was pretty lucky the owner had a sense of humor and was actually happy a Dodge nut took care of it for him until he got out of jail, where he had been locked up for the last year. He could have had me charged with grand theft auto.
Bottom line, is make sure of the legal status of the property. The banks, they aren't a good source, so just be careful. You could be cleaning out a house when in fact you are burglarizing it, and whether or not you took property can be the determining factor as to whether you get let off the hook or not.
If he is paid to clean it out and throw it away, then he found it in the trash for lack of a better explanation.
I actually did this work long enough to clean out one apt. to realize I didn't want to do it anymore. My wife was boss though, so you can all understand that. She manages properties, and we took that on as a side job, but I couldn't get 'em clean enough (I actually did better than the previous cleaners, but she couldn't hassle them the same). Anyway, I could keep whatever I found. She gets stuff all the time from empty apartments too. Folks will sometimes leave some very nice stuff behind, we got a several thousand dollar leather couch from one, they were "downsizing"! My wife double checked to make sure they left it on purpose, sure enough they did. That is the nicest thing we got that way so far.
When she kicks someone out, they post an eviction notice. They give them time to remove items, then they evict them. The cops come in and supervise the removal of property. This is stuff you CANNOT take. HOWEVER, stuff comes up missing all the time, they just dump the stuff on the street. Once the job is done, and the owners didn't show up to pick it up, you can cherrypick it. It is usually considered very poor taste to cherrypick evicted property though, and I'd expect a broken nose at the least if the owner shows up.
Now the cleaners can pocket it, but sometimes the cops do. During the foreclosure mess, when it started, this was a common problem (probably has been and still is, it was just highlighted). Usually when firearms are found, they, the cleaners, do call the police as they don't want to be connected to it in any way. What the police have to do with it, I assume they have to sit on it for so long and then do whatever. Not sure about firearms, but other stuff they auction. Here locally, they just auctioned off a car they found abandoned. Then they went and arrested the new owner the next day for possession of stolen property, the car was actually reported stolen and they had been sitting on it for the whole time before they sold it. Charges have not been dropped as of yet and they still have the cash. Proof that if you deal with poo, you will get it on you.
That dude can keep what he finds as long as it is garbage. If the state of the property is in any kind of question, then what he is doing is wrong. Also, say for instance the bank makes a boo boo. You do know that they lost a lot of paperwork, right? And without producing the actual loan, the homeowner can contest the foreclosure, right? Then if that happens and the big faceless bank pulls your number (because that is all you are to them) and they don't have that paperwork and the homeowner asks for it, then the guy sent to clean it up has "technically" broken in and ransacked the house. Vandalized it. But the cleaner can often get off the hook, and the bank will have to pay for any damages he did, provided the homeowner asked for papers the bank lost. But if the cleaner removed property, well, that can get a little hairy. That too, has already been in the news.
I've also heard of at least one person the bank foreclosed on, stole everything on the property, and then paid the evicted owners to come clean up the place. It was the only way they said they could be sure they wouldn't get property raped by the bank and that they needed the money.
Personally, I have lines. I won't take another person's individual property unless they say it is okay or unless they abandoned it and it is quite obvious. One time I did this, I was younger, and some friends and I rented a house from one of the friends family. The previous owner abandoned it several months ago and it was falling apart and getting rank. Animals moved in. So we cleaned it out, most was trash. But that '68 Dodge Dart, all slicked out for drag racing, that wasn't trash. We tried to have it towed, but they wouldn't accept it, and the cops said it had to be towed for them to do anything. So it sat in limbo. Then, a 17yo me wired it up and got it running and used it for errands and such, and the 18yo me was pretty lucky the owner had a sense of humor and was actually happy a Dodge nut took care of it for him until he got out of jail, where he had been locked up for the last year. He could have had me charged with grand theft auto.
Bottom line, is make sure of the legal status of the property. The banks, they aren't a good source, so just be careful. You could be cleaning out a house when in fact you are burglarizing it, and whether or not you took property can be the determining factor as to whether you get let off the hook or not.
I'm sure you'll get lots of opinions from.....
The uninformed:
The police biggot:
The legal expert:
And you might actually get a logical individual to respond.....
Bingo, we have a winner. The law varies in regard to these matters and it is best to get legal advice from a reliable source, not a keyboard attourney [sic].
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jaysouth
Member
Here in Nashville, TN, firearms discovered in such circumstances are turned over to the police for 'safekeeping'.
If you lose a firearm in an eviction, leave it in a public bathroom or get it seized as proceeds of crime, you have to convice the property officer that the firearm is yours. If you can convince them that it is rightfully yours, they will give it back unless needed as evidence.
Here, the police do not have a 'right' to seize such firearms, they are doing it in the interest of protecting the public. they have been following this policy for many many decades and it has withstood judicial scruitny.
If you lose a firearm in an eviction, leave it in a public bathroom or get it seized as proceeds of crime, you have to convice the property officer that the firearm is yours. If you can convince them that it is rightfully yours, they will give it back unless needed as evidence.
Here, the police do not have a 'right' to seize such firearms, they are doing it in the interest of protecting the public. they have been following this policy for many many decades and it has withstood judicial scruitny.
No. However signing up to benefit from the housing collapse so you can take people's belongings for personal gain, and considering it a great way to gain firearms seems less than upstanding.
Force against such an individual 'enforcing a contract' is certainly wrong, but if they do it enough I am sure some of the desperate people having not only their home taken but their property legally stolen will lash out at those doing the taking.
So playing the numbers someone doing it enough may suffer for choosing to take employment that benefits from others misery.
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OP
OP
tuckerdog1
Member
From conversations I've had with the fellow that has this job, the house that is being forclosed on is all the bank is interested in taking. The former mortage holders have plenty of time to pack up and take their personal belongings. They have just chosen not to do so. The bank wants that stuff removed. It's usually trash. But he does sometimes get some good stuff. Apparently, he gets quite a bit of furniture and household items. Keeps it in storage units. He donates a lot of it to folks that suddenly have need. Recent wildfires in Bastrop are an example. Gave a bunch to people that lost everything.
Tuckerdog1
Schutzen
Member
It has been 20+ years since I was involved in cleaning out repo's, but in the three states I worked in the finiancial intitutions would not begin rehabing properties until the defaulting owner had no more claim on anything. Anthing meant real property and all personal property abandoned in or on the real property.
If his contract with the financial institution grants him salvage rights to abandoned personal property, you are good to go. I would have my local police department check the Serial Numbers to insure they have not been stolen. I would also have him prepare a bill of sale listing the firearm, serial number, the location it was salvaged from, and the financial institution that contracted him.
If his contract with the financial institution grants him salvage rights to abandoned personal property, you are good to go. I would have my local police department check the Serial Numbers to insure they have not been stolen. I would also have him prepare a bill of sale listing the firearm, serial number, the location it was salvaged from, and the financial institution that contracted him.
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