I had to laugh when the officer started talking.

[SeaninNH]

It as about 11:30 pm and I was at a tot lot the other night when a cop came by and called me over.

He said the the park had a 9pm curfew and I couldn't stay.

He then asked me what I did with the stuff I found. My reply.. "I put it in my pocket".

He then said "That is theft of property". You are supposed to turn any valuables you find into the police department.

I laughed at him and he got beat red. I said.. It's not theft it's called FOUND.

He said "If you find someones property and don't turn it in that is theft. It's not finders keepers like when you were young".

I said... "Actually it is. If I find something, it's found, not stolen so I'm keeping it".

He says "If you find a ring and pawn it and they find it in the pawn store they can press charges and you will get in trouble for theft of property".

I laughed again and said" That's not a problem. Everything that I find goes to get melted down not pawned".

He didn't have a reply to that and let me leave.

I don't care who says what... If I find it I keep it. PERIOD!

If It's possible to return something I'm sure that I would return it, but for the most part, we all know that our finds are not identifyable.

 

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[LM]

If you were in a park around my neighborhood at 11:30 PM with a metal detector, you would certainly be robbed, quite possibly murdered. A bored cop would be the least of your worries.

 

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[Tom_in_CA]

True story

I too hold fast to "finders keepers", unless it's painfully obvious who lost it (class rings, or when you're commissioned to do a posse-hunt, etc...). But to add fuel to the fire, consider the following true story:

There's a 1930s elementary school, in a city not far from me. One day, in the late 1980s or early '90s, a fellow was hunting the sandbox for loose change. Imagine his surprise when he pulled up a choice seated half! He couldn't figure out what a seated half was doing in a sandbox of a school which only dated to the 1930s, but ..... he wasn't complaining Moving along, a little while later, in the sand, he pulls up a choice silver dollar from the 1870s! Now he's thinking "this is more than a fluke ! Something's going on here". He figures that perhaps the sand was brought in from the ocean to put into this sandbox (as they add new clean sand from time to time), and since we're not far from the beach here, these coins must've come in with the incoming sand. Wow!

He tells a buddy of his about his two choice coins. So a few days later, both of them go back to this sandbox, to try some more. And AGAIN choice silver coins: a bust half, and a seated quarter. They are just amazed. One of them wanders off into the grass, and finds another choice coin from the 1800s, that didn't even seem that deep. So now their minds are racing, dreaming up conjectures of how these coins might have gotten there. They reason that perhaps there was an old camp site, or stage stop or something on the site of where this modern school exists now. Afterall they reason, the old main road goes right past this site. And so on and so forth they dreamed up reasons for their good fortune. The two guys returned several more times in the coming months, and ........ all told ...... by the time they were done, had something like 12 choice bust and seated coins.

One day, one of the two men was out there again plying his luck, when an after school janitor saw him. The janitor came out to talk to the old man with the detector, and tells him: "hey, do me a favor: if you find any old coins ...... and I mean REAL old, let me know". The md'r fellow, w/o revealing any info, says to the janitor: "really? Why's that?". The janitor then tells him the story that a 3rd grade kid, who was a loner, had brought his father's coin collection to school, without his dad's permission, for show & tell day. Then during recess, the kid proceeded to pass out the coins to all his class-mates, to "make friends". Well the other kids in the class just treated them as play money, and thought they were toys (because they'd simply never seen anything like bust coins, silver dollars, etc...) Thus the kids, during the course of several recesses, apparently had just gone out, played with them, lost them, etc.....

A few days later, when the dad got wind of what had happened, he marched his son down to the principal's office. The principle, in turn, marched the father and son into that specific teacher's classroom, and called the entire classroom to order: The students were to return all the coins that had been passed out to them, in the previous couple of days. Well you can guess what happened: very few of the coins got returned. Most of the kids had simply lost track of them, claimed not to have theirs anymore, etc. The father got back some of his collection, but many coins went missing.

Now imagine this: You are the md'r listening to the janitor tell you this. All of the sudden, it dawns on you, these choice seateds and busts you're finding, are all recent drops. I don't know, in this case, if the md'r fessed up to the janitor, what they'd been finding or not, as I only heard this story 3rd hand.

Now put yourself in the shoes of the father who lost his collection. If that were you, and you got wind of the fact that some yahoos with detectors had retrieved the rest of your collection from the schoolyard, what would you say?? Finders keepers, or give it back? Of COURSE you'd demand your coins back, if you could track down who these guys were, with detectors. And what if the finders claimed they were under no obligation to turn them in to police, because afterall, the face values were only .50c or $1.00, etc....? (below the $100 threshold). Do you think a judge would say "no, it goes by the numismatic value, thus the finders were under obligation to turn them in"?

And while it might be easy to think "yeah, but those showed signs of having recently been lost". In retrospect, yes, the story shows that. But in their own minds at the time they were finding them, they actually had legitimate theories as to how else they could be there, eh? Or how about beach storm hunting: We all know that during erosion, the clad can be right next to old coins, with no rhyme or reason to depth. I've found gold coins, for instance, after beach storms, that were right there with the recent clad (ie.: an inch deep, or whatever). Although it's unlikely, how am I to know if the coin didn't fall out of a bezzle the day before?

Thus the reason why the law makes no distinction even, of collectible valuable coins. And the reason why the law doesn't make a distinction on when YOU think it was lost.

Because if it was truly "finders keepers", then every thief out there, when caught red-handed with merchandise, can/would merely say "I found it". Thus the reasons for these laws.

 

[TheRandyMan]

Watch law enforcement TV shows much?

 

[Sandman]

I too like to think it is "Finders Keepers," but I know different. Ivan reminded me of a buddy of mine that found a class ring at a local freshwater beach few years ago. He tracked down the boy and got an address and phone number. He made arrangments to return the ring, free mind you. On arriving at the home he was met by the police and accused of stealing the ring and extortion. Seems the kid skipped school on Senior day and went to the beach with classmates which is where he lost the ring so he told his dad that someone stole it our of his gym locker. The kid came clean and from that day on my friend never returned anything.......Period.

I can understand his feelings for finding it so it is HIS. Our hobby is geared toward FINDING stuff. What we do with it afterward is another thing, hopefully the right thing. We find a dollar bill blowing across a parking lot, nobody is going to fault us for sticking it in our pocket. But picking up lost ring is another story.

LOST PROPERTY
Property is generally deemed to have been lost if it is found in a place where the true owner likely did not intend to set it down, and where it is not likely to be found by the true owner. At common law, the finder of a lost item could claim the right to possess the item against any person except the true owner or any previous possessors.[3][4]

The underlying policy goals to these distinctions are to (hopefully) see that the property is returned to its true original owner, or "title owner." Most jurisdictions have now enacted statutes requiring that the finder of lost property turn it in to the proper authorities; if the true owner does not arrive to claim the property within a certain period of time, the property is returned to the finder as his own, or is disposed of.[5] In Britain, many public businesses have a lost property desk, which in the United States would be called a lost and found.

Cut & Pasted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost,_mislaid,_and_abandoned_property
What we do with it after we find it is our business and nobody elses except John Law.

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

I'm waiting to see the day that someone posts in the Todays Finds section "Found a GOLD and Diamond ring and turned it in to the police".

How much you want to be we NEVER see one of those posts, EVER.

You would lose that bet real fast, just check the Honorable Mention forum here, they are posted there. I have returned rings I have found at the beach when someone was able to identify them by engraving or identifiable marks.

Point is why argue with him over it and create a problem for you and other detectorists in your area, just say if and when I find something valuable I turn it in, you can always smile to yourself later when he isn't looking.....What your doing when you argue with them about the law and telling them your not turning your finds in is you give them ammo to pass more laws against metal detecting. Do you really want to see a new city or county law passed that says "no metal detecting in the parks" you hunt...?

Not turning in everything you find to the authorities isn't the issue, we do not need to give authorities more ammunition for new laws against detecting by telling them your not turning in your finds....Keep that to yourself....

 

[Lowbatts]

Thanks Tom and Sandman, excellent posts!

Had a kid tell me he took his grandpa's old can of coins to the top of one of the playground pieces and sat there tossing them off in every direction. Apparently he was mad at gramps for a lousy Christmas or birthday or some such. Never found any of them and don't know if anyone did but had I found any of them, I'd have returned them with the story of how I came to know about them for sure.

Not that I'm a pillar of morality, but it would have been a nice thing to do and I'd have loved to tell the parents/grandparents of the kid. With the kid present if at all possible.

 

[LM]

Re: True story

Now put yourself in the shoes of the father who lost his collection.

It's entirely possible that actually happened, but it really comes off as an illustrative, hypothetical scenario. If we had a magical God Cam to replay the unbiased truth, I would bet heavily against that having actually occurred, but presuming it did, I don't think things like that are a reasonable basis for much.

There's always going to be the furthest outlying situation that departs from an ideological heartland and tests the boundaries of ethics or logic. The problem arises when we start basing comprehensive laws that impact everyone to accommodate the furthest-flung, most remote possibility that maybe, possibly, might potentially occur....

There are entire political philosophies built around accommodating the least likely scenario and predictably, they fail most of the time... but the people who support them are quick to point out the 0.01% of the time when it worked, as if that negates the 99.9% of the time when their laws/ideas/principles were irrelevant, or even harmful.

Finders-keepers is a pretty reasonable position to take for excavated items. It makes sense that there may be times when things should be turned in, but it makes as much sense that there's a world of difference between excavating something or locating it with a MD after many years in situ versus finding something laying on the sidewalk.

 

[Smudge]

I once read somewhere that every American breaks enough local, state and federal laws in the normal course of a day that if they were all enforced equally we'd earn at least 10 years in jail before we even make it to bed.

If I find something that can be returned, I'll return it.

If I find something that is clearly evidence of a crime, I'll turn it in.

If the police need help at a crime scene and ask for detectorists to help search, I'm there.

If there are posted signs against detecting, I won't go in.

Otherwise, I'll just keep swinging my coil and let the chips fall where they may.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

LS-Morgan, very well written. Thanx for the philosphical input. You're right: the laws must be written to close loopholes. Like theives who might try to use the easy out of "I found this sitting on the sidewalk" when walking along with stolen merchandise. Or persons who walks up to a moped parked in front of Starbucks, loads it in their truck, and says "well I found it". Or the cow that wanders off through a hole in the fence, and the next lucky fellow corrals it, takes it to the butcher, and has free hamburger and steak for the entire year now (and made no effort to track down the farmer who made the accidental loss).

And so on, and so forth, we can all see logical applications of the law.

But you're right: it would get ridiculous to apply to all the remotest possibilities of "what if's". However, we do need to give lip-service, if caught in a situation like Sean ran into. Because "technically", they are right.

Hey, I got an idea: let's suggest to the various manufacturers, and W&E Treasure mag, that whenever they print the md'rs "code of ethics", that the one where it says "I will know and obey all local laws", that there be an addendum asterick on this one. Let it say: "...... except lost & found laws, because we all know the spirit of the law is a bit different than the literal letter". Think that'll fly?

 

[thrillathahunt]

All I find is miserable trash and worthless junk!

 

[Smudge]

All I find is miserable trash and worthless junk!

Exactly

 

[Gold_Striker]

Please watch this site and learn that we should never answer questions by police under any circumstance BUT we should also treat them with the utmost respect and pass THE ATTITUDE test every time.

http://flexyourrights.org/


Seriously guys these cops are regular joes like you and me and they though they may be giving us a hard time one minute but the next they find themselves putting their life between us and death.

 

[lookindown]

Technically the cop was right. Just say yes sir and do your thing.

 

[wildman4910]

Technically the cop was right. Just say yes sir and do your thing.

And don't forget to hand over the ziploc of pull tabs and nails you just dug. He did say turn every thing in.

 

[dirty digger dude]

cop on a power trip...happens all the time

 

[stagger]

Unless it's CLEARLY identifiable, I'm not turning in anything. PERIOD!

 

[Ray S ECenFL]

Interesting post.

I fall into the catagory with the Finders Keepers group. I have only found 3 class rings during my detecting career and have returned all three of them. Everything else is MINE MINE MINE.....

Thank you for your time....

Ray S ECenFL

 

[dogpound]

well i've never found anything with anyones name and address on it....so in my pocket it goes

 

[lostcauses]

Again a thread, easily found on the internet that says more so the 'finders keepers" and ignore the law. Great stuff for them that would destroy the hobby, or lock down public areas now open to Md'ing..

Just saying.

 

[diggummup]

Maybe i'm reading it wrong but... With the attitude you displayed, your lucky he didn't slap the cuffs on you and take you in for trespassing. Get smart with a cop down here and see what happens. Sad but true.