"Homeless man jailed after charging cellphone at public park"
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Submitted by lambert on Wed, 11/14/2012 - 3:24pm
An arrest report says that a Sarasota police sergeant spotted 28-year-old Darren Kersey charging his phone Sunday evening in a public picnic shelter at Gillespie Park. The sergeant told Kersey that the "theft of city utilities will not be tolerated during this bad economy" and then arrested him on a misdemeanor charge of theft of utilities.
Unable to pay the $500 bond, Kersey spent the night in jail. But the Sarasota Herald-Tribune ( http://bit.ly/W4frm0) reports that Kersey was released Monday morning after a judge threw the case out, saying the sergeant lacked the legal justification to make the arrest.
Assholes.
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Comments
At Ten Cents A KWH...
That guy and a thousand of his "friends and family" could have charged his phone at the city's expense for the rest of his life and it would have cost the city less than what that clown of a police officer cost them.
Yes
Compliance is the important thing, not cost, let alone public service.
Indeed.
Elimination of "the commons".
And, after the laudatory articles in national papers
regarding NY/NJ/CT neighbors putting extension cords out of home windows, so passersby could charge their phones and computers? Class-based hypocrisy...
... just as when any advertiser (in any major city, nowadays), wanting to stimulate PR, allows for people to wait, sit and camp on their sidewalks for a huge sale, in the middle of an era where anyone really needing the space gets fined and tossed in jail.
This story just blew my mind
I mean, all we scream about homeless, is that they need to get a job, any job, but god forbid we provide a way for people to actually GET a job, like having a phone to recieve calls from employers.