Being Poor's the Real Crime as Cops Nab Trash Thieves

[nosmokes]

we have billions for iraq but we hafta criminalse poverty in our own country for the poorest of the poor. ain't that swell? compassionate, too. - nosmokes
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original
Published on Saturday, February 25, 2006 by the Madison Capital Times (Wisconsin)

Being Poor's the Real Crime as Cops Nab Trash Thieves

by Joel McNally

 
Now we judge the success of a government program by how few people it helps. By that definition, President Bush was right. Brownie really was doing a heckuva job at FEMA.Forget about homicides, rapes and armed robberies. The police have far more important priorities. Someone is stealing our garbage.

The great thing for the police is that solving these crimes doesn't take a lot of crack detective work. These heinous crimes are being carried out in broad daylight, and the perpetrators very seldom have getaway cars.

They are urban poor people walking boldly down the street with enormous plastic bags full of cans slung over their shoulders or pushing shopping carts piled high with multiple bags of this valuable loot.

The shopping carts are stolen property, too, not to mention those large refrigerator boxes that some of these people turn into plush condos for sleeping during these cool Wisconsin nights.

These poor people think they can waltz up and down our alleys, eat food out of our trash containers and then make off with our most valuable garbage, aluminum cans that have a street value of 75 cents a pound.

Well, the police are out to put a stop to crime in the streets (and alleys).

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complete articlehere

[Mythsaje]

1. Ah, cripes...

Good to know we have our priorities straight.

[Solon]

2. Damn assholes

While I agree that these people need help, they do not need jail. Plus, many pick up litter, specifically cans like mentioned in the article, for recycling of all things, that a damned public service, they should be paid enough for a roof over their heads just for that.

[Quakerfriend]

4. Really! God knows *co cut all state/local funds for this type of

clean up.

[Bobbieo]

6. Trash Thieves

In the vernacular of the streets it's called "Dumpster Diving". Quite the popular night-time activity in my hometown amongst the
street people and lesser well-to-dos.

[Solon]

8. Shit, I used to dumpster dive behind office buildings...

and also worked as a trash man in rich neighborhoods, damn, you wouldn't believe the stuff they would throw away at either place. I used to, when I could, take video monitors for computers, printers, and all this other shit, rip off the internal serial number for the company, and then pawn it off. Better that some of those things are still used for something other than a tax write off, and prevent them from being put in a landfill. That stuff is particularly toxic to the enviroment. Hell, I even GAVE a full fledged Pentium 3 computer(this was a LONG time ago) that was thrown away and gave it to the Boys and Girls club around here. Not even a tax writeoff, didn't cost a thing to get. Hell, my portable CD player, and my old VCR were free and legal, my CD player was a throw away when, during my roommate's shift at day labor, working as a trashman, he came home with it, spotless. It had one problem, it only played track one of any CD, so I took it apart and found a hair on the screw that moves the laser reader, so with a pair of tweezers, and 5 minutes of time, I had a BRAND NEW portable CD player that was worth at least 100 bucks, even had skip protection.

ON EDIT: Put a comma in a missing place, I didn't mean to damn you, honest. :)

[Cleita]

15. I half furnished my first apartment by cruising the alleys and

picking up things like lamps, tables, bookcases and other things like that I could refurbish that other people had thrown out. There were no dumpsters then, only trash cans, and usually the bigger things were just set out to be picked up.

[ret5hd]

3. you should really read this:

Empire of Scrounge: Inside the Urban Underground of Dumpster Diving, Trash Picking, And Street Scavenging
by Jeff Ferrell

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0814727387/ref=sr_11_1/103-6147372-7541436?%5Fencoding=UTF8
Empire of Scrounge: Inside the Urban Underground of Dumpster Diving, Trash Picking, And Street Scavenging

Jeff Ferrell is professor in the department of sociology, criminal justice, and anthropology at Texas Christian University and is the author of Tearing Down the Streets: Adventures in Urban Anarchy. He is the editor of NYU's Alternative Criminology Series.

In December of 2001 Jeff Ferrell quit his job as tenured professor, moved back to his hometown of Fort Worth, Texas, and, with a place to live but no real income, began an eight-month odyssey of essentially living off of the street. Empire of Scrounge tells the story of this unusual journey into the often illicit worlds of scrounging, recycling, and second-hand living. Existing as a dumpster diver and trash picker, Ferrell adopted a way of life that was both field research and free-form survival. Riding around on his scrounged BMX bicycle, Ferrell investigated the million-dollar mansions, working-class neighborhoods, middle class suburbs, industrial and commercial strips, and the large downtown area, where he found countless discarded treasures, from unopened presents and new clothes to scrap metal and even food.

Richly illustrated throughout, Empire of Scrounge is both a personal journey and a larger tale about the changing values of American society. Perhaps nowhere else do the fault lines of inequality get reflected so clearly than at the curbside trash can, where one person's garbage often becomes another's bounty. Throughout this engaging narrative, full of a colorful cast of characters, from the mansion living suburbanites to the junk haulers themselves, Ferrell makes a persuasive argument about the dangers of over-consumption. With landfills overflowing, today's higly disposable culture produces more trash than ever beforeâ€"and yet the urge to consume seems limitless.

In the end, while picking through the city's trash was often dirty and unpleasant work, unearthing other people's discards proved to be unquestionably illuminating. After all, what we throw away says more about us than what we keep.


(he lives around the corner from me)

[LynzM]

10. Sounds like a fascinating book...

I'll have to put that on my list of books to check out.

[DS1]

5. The Cops on the street could choose to 'not see' this, but no

pig-fuckers gotta get their oppression in or they'll have to take it out on their wives

[Bobbieo]

7. Trash Picking and Dunpster Diving

I wish to hell the cops would have picked up my son's live-in-girlfriend before she stashed my living room with two pick-up loads of junk in plastic bags. God what a mess!!!That was her nighttime past time and helped support her "habit".

[madrchsod]

9. taking cans and other recyclables from bins

in my town is illegal and anything outside those bins is not illegal. trash is common property-thus anyone can look thru it-cops,pi`s,or just nosy people. you`d think they would want people to clean up after the home owners or garbage men who are to dam lazy to do what they are supposed to do...

[fknobbit]

11. At last a plan emerges

It could be that trash picker upers will prove our main line of defense against terror. In fact it appears our only hope.

http://www.ledgeofliberty.com/images/goat_book1_web6.htmlhttp://www.ledgeofliberty.com/images/goat_book1_web6.htmlPart One: The Pet Goat

A girl got a pet goat. She liked to go running with her pet goat. She played with her goat in her house. She played with her goat in her yard.
But the goat did some things that made the girl's dad mad. The goat ate things. He ate cans and he ate canes. He ate pans and he ate panes. He even ate capes and caps.
One day her dad said, "that goat must go. He ate too many things." The girl said, "dad if you let the goat stay with us, I will see that he stops eating all those things."
Her dad said he will try it.
So the goat stayed and the girl made him stop eating cans and canes and caps and capes.
But one day a car robber came to the girls house. He saw a big red car near the house and said, "I will steal that car."
He ran to the car and started to open the door. The girl and the goat were playing in the back yard. They did not see the car robber.
More to come.

Part Two: The Goat Stops the Robber

http://www.ledgeofliberty.com/images/goat_book2_web5.htmlhttp://www.ledgeofliberty.com/images/goat_book2_web5.html

A girl had a pet goat. Her dad had a red car.
A car robber was going to steal her dad’s car. The girl and her goat were playing in the back yard.
Just then the goat stopped playing. He saw the robber. He bent his head down and started to run for the robber. The robber was bending over the seat of the car. The goat hit him with sharp horns. The car robber went flying.
The girl’s Dad ran out of the house. He grabbed the robber. “you were trying to steal my car,” he yelled.

The girl said, “but my goat stopped him.”
“Yes,” her dad said, “that goat saved my car.”

http://www.ledgeofliberty.com/images/Goat_book3_web5.htmlhttp://www.ledgeofliberty.com/images/Goat_book3_web5.html

The car robber said “something hit me when I was trying to steal that car.”
The girl said, my goat hit you” The girl hugged the goat. Her Dad said, “that goat can stay with us. And he can eat all the cans and canes and caps and capes he wants.”
The girl smiled. Her goat smiled. Her Dad smiled. But the car robber did not smile. He said, “I am sore.”
The End.

[ninkasi]

12. How truly strange

This is about poor people scavenging in trash bins, and apparently it can be illegal. Many people who are into crafts do "dumpster diving", salvaging discarded items to refurbish for their own homes, or to sell at flea markets.

Say somebody throws out a wicker chair with the seat worn out...I've seen articles about taking the chair, which was put out as trash, and making a garden ornament out of it by stapling chicken wire underneath, adding potting soil, then putting in plants. It's supposed to be trendy and chic to salvage discarded things and make them into something else.

This can keep things out of landfills, and give new life to discarded items. It's insane to make criminals out of people who go through trash...things people have thrown away...and try to make a buck out of selling or redoing it. Is our country now so hate filled that the poor must be savaged by picking through trash to keep themselves alive?

God, what a country. The poor are apparently fair game, and there is no season, like deer season, or bird season...it seems that it's alway the season to demonize the poor. Apparently, if I'm Ms. Suzie Suburb, picking through the trash to recreate an episode of Junk Chic from HGTV, it's ok. If I'm living on the streets and depend on picking through trash to survive, I'm a criminal.

[Eric J in MN]

13. The police should be catching murderers and rapists.

Not harrassing the poor for carrying old cans.

[Cleita]

14. Somebody ought to inform those bozos that taking trash isn't

stealing. This same thing came up in my neighborhood years ago when I lived in a city. The homeless were raiding the trash and the police were called. They figured out after a few calls to the city attorney's office that once you discard something, it's no longer yours and belongs to the next person to take possession. Something about possession being nine-tenths of the law or something like that.

One of my neighbors, who looked homeless, although he actually had a former laundry room that he paid rent for and lived in, used to go around the neighborhood picking up trash like cans and bottles he could cash in to pay his rent. People often gave him money and thanked him for keeping the neighborhood cleaner looking.

[SoCalDem]

16. In towns with recycling programs,they plan on a certain amount

of recyclables, and if the trucks are going around dumping nearly empty bins, they are losing ground..(aluminum is what they are after too)..

and

there are still people who toss out stuff that can "identify" them, so there's that angle too..

and

not all people who look through trash are "neat and tidy"..it sucks to go outside on trash morning and see stuff strewn on the sidewalk..(our trash guys won't pick it up)



the flipside....

people who pick up stuff from the curbs are noy a real problem..

We got most of our first lawn furniture from curbs (rewebbing's easy)..we have also rescued bicycles, cribs, strollers, chairs etc..

actually rooting through trash is another story..


and arrest is not what should happen..

[Cleita]

17. You said:

In towns with recycling programs,they plan on a certain amount
of recyclables, and if the trucks are going around dumping nearly empty bins, they are losing ground..(aluminum is what they are after too)..

So in this case, I'm wondering why I pay for trash pickup.

[SoCalDem]

18. In our town, they have three trash cans for us..

recyclables, green waste and regular trash..

When they started the plan we were told that the recyclables would help defray the costs of new equipment and might cut down on costs to us.. WE pay $45 every 3 months

They run the green waste through a gigantic chipper and use it for mulch in city-owned landscaping..