Concrete fencing!!!! It's secure, safe, no maintenance.

CD

Fair enough.

The first thing we must address is that "foreign land" problem, aka the myth of specialization, or as Barbie says, "Math is hard". Believe yourself a competent man, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competent_man a renaissance man, a polymath - because it is true. You have a day job and yet you do railway preservation. There is no limit, you can do anything to which you set your mind.
The myth of specialization started with a truth: you can't build an iPod for $199. It went too far when people started giving up trying to do anything but their specialty, to the point where perfectly mechanically inclined people don't even know if their car has a distributor. Buck this trend here. What you bring to the table in a legal situation is personal drive and an understanding of the subtleties that no attorney will ever have, and God is in the details. That is double important when your case is largely about side-effects. (e.g. discovery/subpoena.) OK enough with the "You can do it!" speech.

There are two major systems of law in the U.S. The first is criminal law: PEOPLE vs. O.J. Simpson. Only the government (District Attorney) can bring charges on behalf of the citizens at large. The victim is not a party to the legal action and has no standing in the courtroom. Proof must be 99% - beyond a reasonable doubt - because consequences include prison or execution.

The second is civil law: GOLDMAN FAMILY vs. O.J. Simpson. Anyone can sue anyone including corporations. The victim is the plaintiff. Proof is 51% - more likely than not - because consequences are limited to money, or doing or abstaining from certain things. You may recall O.J. was acquitted of murder but found responsible for wrongful death. The burden of proof is even lower in discovery. Civil law is where you work, because you can be a plaintiff in civil law.

You may notice that for almost every crime, there's a corresponding tort (a cause for action in civil law). There's a place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tort

The underlying law comes from 4 places.
1. Common law. These are longstanding practices going back to the Magna Carta.
2. Statute. These are laws which your Federal, state or town have passed into law.
3. Case law. In the past, an appeals court decided a case similar to yours.
4. New law. No existing law applies, you go to appeals court and they make new case law.
Might want a lawyer for the last one LOL, though, making new case law "pro-se" would be epic.

Oh by the way there are a handful of words you'll run into. Just google them.

Next step: Nolo Press. Their purpose is to allow people to handle their own legal matters. They publish numerous self-help law books. Most libraries have them and their website is also quite good. http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/ ... g-yourself
There are lots of books published in this area but the Nolo books are top notch.

Next I'd say look at case law to get a general feel for how appeals cases are decided. Get Google Scholar, push the buttons for "Legal opinions and journals" and type in relevant keywords.

If I have done my job so far, then the next time you hear a case that seems odd, like the McDonalds coffee case, your first reflex will be "Hold on, I want to read the actual decision." You have Trainlawyer to thank for that wisdom by the way; both the "go read the case" and "the McDonalds case as example".

That's a start for you anyway.

I know from experience how demoralizing a theft from a museum can be. In no way do I want to do any Monday morning quarterbacking here as that does no one any good. What I would like to do is share lessons learned from going through it twice during my time running a museum. This is combined with experience as a police officer investigation break-ins and thefts.

I have seen comments about tightening security, dogs, fences and other normal reactions to the feeling of being violated from a break-in or theft. Our museum was in a high traffic area in the city, well lite, fenced with 6ft. chain link fence topped with barbed wire and alarmed. One theft of a display happened during business hours and one of the 2 break-ins occurred while I was working late and in my office. Both times the alarm was set off and police were just blocks away. Even though we had a good idea who perpetrated these thefts no apprehensions were ever made.

The lessons learned from this were that even with all the security measures we had made ourselves venerable. What we figured out is that the ones suspected of the thefts had inside information. Prior board members had implemented a program using "Community Service" labor for work that volunteers did not "want to do". The guidelines of this program called for these workers to be treated the same as any other volunteer. This is where the venerability started, during tours volunteer guides were pointing out "special items of value" in the museum. Along with this these workers were able to become aware of our motion detention security system and learn where the dead spots were in it.

Just as I had learned as a police officer it was someone who we knew and who knew how to get what we had. Changes that were made were to stop pointing out items of value on tours. Second was to end the Community service program. (That free labor program became very expensive.) We learned to watch for things that made it easy for someone to get to what we had. We made sure we were not pointing out the nice brass hooks or opening electrical cabinets to "show how it works." Those things stopped our theft problems but still was like closing the barn door after the horse got out.

Moral of the story is that it did not take extraordinary measures to improve our security just some common sense. About 90% of all thefts it is someone you know who did it.

Mark

Amtrak's the latest victim, but this time the perp was caught:

http://readingeagle.com/Article.aspx?id=367331

I'm surprised the bail was only $75,000, considering what the consequences could have been. 'Held without bail' would have been more appropriate, I think.

Ok so that one was the 10% that they didn't know. LOL There are some that are just cut out for a life of crime.

One thing that we've been running into, at least in my area, is the fact that the law enforcement people seem to be only interested in the value of the stolen copper or other metal, and not the labor to replace the material. They don't want to consider that if a traction motor lead is sawn off where it goes into the motor, the locomotive has to be jacked up, the truck pulled, the combo broken down, the motor sent out for new leads, and then the whole process reversed. They also have no interest in the hours needed to rewire an electrical cabinet; they just ask about the value of the wire actually taken, for when they make their report.

A friend of mine had some stored passenger equipmant vandalized; copper pipe and electrical conduits full of wiring, taken out with bolt cutters and hacksaw. The police made an arrest, and the material was returned. A comment was made by one of the officers, something to the effect of, "Well, you got your parts back''. Mangled and butchered beyond any further use, but all the metal was returned-

Law enforcement, and the judicial system, (in my case, we haven't gotten that far yet-) have to take repair and restoration costs into consideration when making arrests and filing charges, and also in sentencing. I don't believe I saw this point made in any of the previous posts, although I may have missed it.

Someone found on a locomotive, with tools in hand, isn't simply tresspassing!

E. D. Moxley
Amsterdam Leasing

Do they squeeze you hard to report only the copper value of the items? Or do you volunteer it?

The only cost you should ever talk about is your loss. They should have no place to challenge that number. Stick to it.

If somebody breaks the hinge on my cell phone, I don't go guessing that there's 3 cents of plastic. The phone is a total loss. There's no cop on earth that would write that down as a 3 cent loss.

If they had destroyed the items and there was no mineral value to take (e.g. breaking windows), cops would accept the "damage value" as the cost of replacement.

In any other situation, the value of a theft is not rated by its value to the thief.

So I would talk to the police chief or D.A. about that. This is the downside of criminal prosecution, it's hard to get your side represented since you're not a party to the court case.

I don't know about everyone else, but I have always been told, when reporting theft and damage, the report should have the replacement value including the cost of a professional repair (or at least the average of 3 professionals). Same basic idea behind accident or theft repairs on your car.

Rich C.

Please-

Of course, I stressed to the investigating officers the total value of the loss, including materials, labor, potential loss of use of the units involved, etc., but they were only interested in the value of the copper itself. I even asked one of the officers (detectives, actually, with good clothes-) to take a look at one of the traction motors, so he could see for himself just how much work would be involved in making repairs. But they still wanted to report only the value of the cable and wire.

As far as the guy with tools in his hands when caught, the county had him in their lockup, but then the DA reduced the charges and sent him back to the local court. He has since missed several local court appearences. Gets picked up, posts bail, doesn't show, gets picked up again, posts an even larger bail, skips- This has been going on since September. And I AM a party to the court case, as a victim. I'm also getting tired of burning up vacation time going to court when the Sierra Bravo doesn't show.

As someone pointed out to me years ago, unfortunately our Justice System is.... just a system. And a broken system at that. I'm sure that part of this problen is a lack of assets to allocate, with all the budget and staffing cuts. Rape, murder and arson get attention, while lesser crimes get reports taken but not much effort is given to follow up.

(Venting mode off-)

EDM

You can also bring the convicted criminal to court to recover damages in small claims court. I was a court clerk in the local Minnesota District Court for eleven years (now retired--a second time) so I saw this happen on a weekly basis. You can attempt to cover your losses in two ways here in my state, and I suspect, in most other states.
1) The criminal gets convicted of theft in criminal court and typically the sentence includes restitution. That's where you as the victim can talk with the judge at sentencing to claim your actual losses, not just the value of the stolen property. If restitution is not paid and the criminal was put on probation, then non-payment of the restitution means probation is violated and the criminal has to come back and most likely go to jail unless he/she can come up with the money. When he/she gets out of jail they'll still owe the restitution BTW.
2) If restitution isn't ordered by the judge, you can then file a claim in small claims court, or what we call in our state Conciliation Court. Most small claim courts have an upper limit on claims ($7,500 in Minnesota as of late 2010 when I retired as a court employee). Small claims court doesn't usually require a lawyer (they're not allowed in Conciliation Court for either the claimant or defendant in Minnesota), just you as claimant. You have to have your case together, of course, e.g., receipts, estimates for work to be performed, invoices for materials used to fix the damage, etc.

Small claims court is usually pretty straight forward. If you win your case the issue then becomes collecting the judgement against the crook. If he/she is a dirtbag/crackhead/methhead, you can probably assume you'll never collect anything. But you can then make their lives totally miserable by going back to court to file a claim to garnish wages, get money (if any) from current or future bank accounts, ruin their credit rating if they even have one. The judgement will follow them wherever they go, at least in your state. If they fail to respond to the judgement in Minnesota the judge can issue a warrant for their arrest if they fail to respond to a "show cause" hearing. Typically bail in such cases equals the amount of the judgement. No bond here, strictly cash bail. Like I said, if you don't like the fact that the criminal charges were reduced and they were given a wrist-slap, there are other ways to make the criminal's life miserable.

Unfortunately, the above steps take time and money for filing fees in some cases. A lawyer might be helpful post judgement as well. But if you want to make a point and have a "mean streak" in you, there are ways...

Thanks!

Yeah exactly, back to what I was saying about civil recourse.

By the way, when I say "party" I mean someone who has legal standing to subpoena, call witnesses, cross examine, make closing arguments etc. If a victim wants that standing... sue.

Like I say a civil action simultaneous to a criminal action can have useful effects. The criminal system is broken on purpose to assure innocents are not persecuted. The civil system is not.

You can demand restitution, sue or go to claims court all you want. You can't get something from nothing. If these guys had $$$$ they would not be stealing from you. So to stay out of jail the thief needs to make a restitution payment. How does he get the money????? Steal it from somewhere else. Or the thief goes to jail where he gets a terrific education, learning first hand from the masters on ways to beat the system and new ways to avoid getting caught.

You need to go after the scrap dealers. They have some resources. Go after them in court or in the legislature.

Perhaps it is time for preservation folks to work together to develop tougher recycle laws. Granted most of this work is done at a very local level and you may be the only preservation group around. But it is time to work together with contractors, farmers or whoever is plagued by scrap thieves.

Tom

Whenever Our Museum has a theft problem A couple of guys go to all the local scrapyards around within a 100 mile radius if needbe and physically inspect the piles. We have recovered over 3000lbs of brass locomotive parts on the last one, but missed several yards. It is very important to doo this asap right after the theft as the piles are soon melted when brass is involved. We have had many thefts over the years and none of the scrap yards ever called to check if it was legit. We have prossecuted the theives to the full extent of the law and that threat did result in return of a couple of injectors for the plow.

Do not rely on the scrappers word or trust a phone call but check him out yourself!

[size=150] Time is of the essence.[/size]