This story caught my eye, in part because I have a basketball hoop I want to get rid of. I should post an ad on Craigslist, like Sherry Huwitt did:

Free basket ball goal and tether ball pole. At dead end of roadway beside my home…(address) dont knock its placed out there for you to come get. will delete when gone. thanks.

Except Huwitt didn’t post the ad. Her neighbor, who didn’t want her to keep the hoop and tetherball in her yard, did. And he succeeded: By the end of the day, the hoop and tetherball were gone. Oh, and the neighbor who placed the fraudulent ad… is a cop.

Details: Mansfield woman says Arlington officer offered her possessions on Craigslist without her consent.

I like the quote from the district attorney’s office:

We don’t really know what the offense is yet. There are several different offenses that might fit. That’s why the district attorney is reviewing it, to find out if there is a criminal offense and, if so, to find out which offense fits the best.

Or the county prosecutor:

“I’m having to look up a lot of the law,” she said, “to determine one, if the law was broken, and what that law is.”

Nice of the DA and prosecutor to give the perpetrator the benefit of the doubt like that. But do you suppose the wheels of justice would be grinding in that particular way if he wasn’t a police officer? What if he had given away, say, Huwitt’s car?

Not the biggest outrage in the world, obviously. But interesting.

This entry was posted by jbc on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 5:32 am and is filed under net.kooks, the_law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.