So I heard this story last night and it really pissed me off.
A 15 year old found an envelope filled with $2000 in cash. Despite living in a cramped apartment with her large family, she turned the money in so that the authorities could find the rightful owner. I won’t lie, $2000 is a chunk of change most people would miss severely. Its also something one should be more careful with.
The owner couldn’t be found, so its only natural that the young woman should be able to pocket the cash….she earned it, don’t you think? Nope!
The Police have declared that THE CITY OF DALLAS get to keep the cash! Obviously the two grand would do a lot better in their pension or overtime fund than it would to a girl who likely doesn’t even have her own bedroom.
Seriously, ANGRY! This is nothing short of Theft. From what I’ve heard Ashley has received an anonymous check for $4,000 from somebody in Texas, goodness knows how many other Samaritans have stepped forward to reward her.
Seems also the press has caused the cops to sweat. Good!
I had a much less grandiose story. I was walking around town and just outside of a bank I saw a pair of $20 bills laying in the doorway. I of course picked them up, and thought about what to do. Its cash, so there’s no way to determine ownership, and by nature of exchange the person holding it is the owner. Furthermore there was nobody around to have dropped it. I remember thinking “You’re being an idiot” as I walked into the bank and told them the story. The teller said “There’s nothing we can do, keep it!”
I did feel better about that money in my pocket thanks to the 3rd party, still I was stupid to have attempted to turn it in. Even if somebody had said “Oh yeah that’s my $40!” how can you prove it?
I hope this story becomes a long line of good fortune for Ashley!
For clarification: The Dallas PD isn’t keeping the money….it’s the City of Dallas (City Hall) that says any cash turned in gets kept and spent by city gov’t.
http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/Dallas-decides-to-keep-cash-found-by-honest-teen-121609364.html
http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/Dallas-mayor-sympathizes-with-teen-who-found-2000-121662639.html
Guess how many people will be turning in lost money to the police now?…..
answer, a whole lot less people. Its a no-win situation now. The city will want to keep any money turned in, and people doing the nice thing will always lose.
I updated the post to better reflect the facts of the case, thanks for the correction.
It looks like the second article you linked has been updated and the PD is now saying ashley will get to keep the 2 large if no one comes forward to claim after 90 days and a public hearing. Despite the issues I have with some media sources, they seemed to have caused enough heartburn for the City of Dallas that they changed their minds.
Missing the bigger picture here Weerd.
Why does the City of Dallas think it should have claim to money which was found?
Because all money belongs to the state!
This is part and parcel of the far-left nanny state socialist agenda.
Seriously, what better way to start conditioning people that the government gets to decide who gets to keep money and how much.
We see it in the taxes — cutting taxes is a “spending cut”.
When I was a child, I found a $20 bill lying in the road. No one was around that could have dropped it, so I picked it up. Being the highly fiscally responsible 10 year old that I was, I immediately rode my bike to the local K-Mart and bought a toy. My parents saw the toy a few days later and asked where I got the money. When I told them, they told me that because I didn’t try to find the owner of that money, what I had done was stealing, and took the toy away.
It’s basic morality: You know that it’s not yours, so you have a duty to at least make an honest attempt to find the owner before claiming it for yourself.
I think that, for a child that age, what my parents did was an appropriate way to handle the lesson. On the other hand, I had pretty much made the same determination that I would today: A single $20 found lying in the road with no one around would be impossible to trace to its rightful owner, and trying to do so would be a waste of effort more likely to result in someone who was not the real owner claiming it. Where would you even start?
On the gripping hand, $2000 is a whole different matter. Someone would most definitely be missing it, and there are some details they might know to allow identification (denominations, what type of envelope, etc.).
It’s depressing, but Doing the Right Thing is more often punished than rewarded these days.
Hard to say if what your parents did was what they thought was right, or just plain old punitive. If they didn’t get that there was NO way to even find somebody who might know where the money went missing, I can see this as an appropriate action. I mean if somebody pulls their keys out of their pocket and a few bills or coins hit the pavement at your feet, that is NOT your money in any sense, and if you grab it and run that’s theft. Not sure if its actionable theft, but if I saw a kid of mine do such a thing they’d get smacked and told to take the money back to the owner and give a sincere apology.
The way you, and I, and Ashley found this money, its not the same. That being said, losing $20 sucks, but let’s face it, if I hadn’t JUST been to the bank the other day I might not know exactly how many Jacksons are in my billfold, so I certainly wouldn’t have to change my lifestyle being light 20-40 bucks. $2000 is a BUNCH more, and I wonder who might be packing 2K in an envelope and drop it and not notice. I mean that’s a wad bigger than most wallets in size and weight. You’d notice that if you dropped it. Could this be something ditched by say a drug dealer who was afraid he might have his person searched?
Long story short, if you’re in a public area and find money and nobody else is around and its not a very large sum, that’s your cash, spend it in good health!
While it may not have been correct for the situation, I think it was right for the underlying lesson (basically, that “finders, keepers” is theft). Had I brought them the money and made some showing of wanting to find the owner, they probably would have let me keep it, maybe after making me wait a few days to see if anyone came looking for it.
They might have even let me keep it if I had held it for a few days before spending it, and indicated that I was waiting to see if anyone asked about it. Instead, I went straight to the store and spent it.
Sounds like a lesson well taught. Your folks must really love you!
And they are right, “Finder’s Keepers” and “Possession is 9/10s of the law” are 100% bullshit.
The water is VERY murky when it comes to naked cash which is a commodity meant to be exchanged liberally. A wallet with an ID, to take cash from that is theft, or say a personal item like a phone, or an item of clothing, it is never really yours, and you may only take custody of it barring a reasonable search for the owner.
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But the officer said they were going to put it to good use, that they weren’t going to waste it.
And don’t we all believe that! The .gov is SO good with taking good care of other people’s money! 😛
Weerd,
there are 1,600,000,000,000.00 examples of their great stewardship over our money 🙂
LOL….and I say LOL, because if I wasn’t laughing I’d be crying.
Indeed it is the laugh of the damned.