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Comment by eckesicle | Hacker News Reader

This is such an American problem. I love visiting the US, but boy am I glad that I don't live there.

Everyone here in the comments is blaming Hertz, but really the problem is that the police are just arresting people willy-nilly without actually confirming the vehicle in question is really stolen. And even if they do stop to question someone, why are they pulling a gun on them, or even taking them back to the station before trying to de-escalate the situation?

This story just reeks of a series of serious societal failures.

Staff on minimum wage, dated systems and processes, overzealous police, insane court system (did you read the comments in that linked article? One poor man had to pay bail at 45k, lost his job, and a bunch of other fines!)

I just couldn't imagine any one of these things happening where I am from in Europe.

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When the police see a car and run the plate and it comes back stolen, how should they “confirm the car is really stolen”?

They should probably confirm the car is stolen when they mark it as stolen.

A responsible course of action, given Hertz history of false accusations, would be to ignore “stolen” cars that belong to Hertz. It’s a lesser evil - even if it actually got stolen nothing bad will happen, Hertz is a wealthy company.

The usual procedure is for the police dispatcher to check with the law enforcement agency that entered the license plate into the database.

In case of a rental car, a call to the local or corporate office of the rental company would also be appropriate, all the more so now that there’s wide publicity about the problem of false or out-of-date theft reports.

Yes, and calling Hertz would confirm the report that the car was stolen, because its Hertz calling the police in the first place.

In some cases, that might’ve been true, but in others, I expect Hertz, when confronted with a rental agreement number, vehicle number, and customer’s name, would have been able to confirm that the agreement was current and valid, making it obvious that the theft report was mistaken or outdated.

I normally rent from National/Enterprise, and I cant tell you the last time I got a printed rental agreement. As they say, its all in the app these days.

For this purpose, they do not need to.

   if( car_theft->reporting_party == Hertz )
      car_theft->credibility = Probable_Clerical_Error;

Police generally hate stolen car license plates. This means things are about to get serious. Most police departments wont even attempt a pull over with just one unit. But most scary for the cop they have no idea who this person is. In the US you want to take stolen cars seriously [guns out]:

https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEB&search_query=police+...

It can be as simple checking the registered owner of the car(Hertz), then checking the paperwork the renter has on hands and that should lower the suspicion and go from there.

The police aren't there to sort out paperwork issues. They aren't qualified for it. They're qualified to bring you to jail to await a bail hearing while they write a report about the incident. The rightful owner of the vehicle reported it stolen, there's not much else to do then clear yourself criminally and then restore yourself civilly.

That's not to say that the arrest and bail processes don't need a lot of work, but I'm not sure there's a better structural alternative. Also, in the case of the individual with high bail, I can't find a reference to that particular case. Do you have one?

I’d respectfully disagree. The courts have the last word, of course, but we don’t expect police officers to be unthinking automatons. “Round ’em all up and let the judge sort it out” doesn’t square with the Fourth Amendment.

A theft report isn’t a warrant. It might give an officer reasonable suspicion to stop the reported vehicle and detain its driver briefly to investigate, but to make an arrest, a higher standard must be met: the officer needs probable cause that the suspect has committed a crime.

If the driver claims to have rented the vehicle, I’d expect an officer at least to try to contact the rental car company to confirm the situation, or to ask his or her dispatcher to do so, especially now that the problem of false reports has become widely known.

> “Round ’em all up and let the judge sort it out” doesn’t square with the Fourth Amendment.

Why wouldn't it? The fourth amendment covers _unreasonable_ seizure.

> but to make an arrest, a higher standard must be met: the officer needs probable cause that the suspect has committed a crime.

The vehicle is reported stolen. You are found in possession of it. That's probable cause.

> I’d expect an officer at least to try to contact the rental car company to confirm the situation

How do you propose they do that? Check the paperwork? How do they know it's accurate and not forged? How do they know they've reached the appropriate agency? How do they know if the person they're contacting through the paperwork would have any authority of the reporting of the vehicles status?

You're expecting a lot to be available to an officer that just isn't. The best they could do is directly call the reporting party back and tell them that this person claims it isn't stolen and is a mistake on their end.. and if they say "it's not a mistake, it's definitely stolen?"

The police should do what at that point?

This is why we have courts with evidentiary standards and formal procedures that are defined in law. You cannot expect an officer in the field to be capable of maintaining those same standards.

> You're expecting a lot to be available to an officer that just isn't.

What do you mean? Rental car companies don’t have 24-hour, toll-free numbers, published on their websites? Police don’t have telephones?

In the typical rental model the cars are either owned by a holding company or by a franchisee. In the typical DMV model there isn't a lot of other information other than "reported stolen." It may have been reported to an entirely different agency Local Police, State Police, Highway Patrol that whatever agency happens to effect the traffic stop.

You're expecting a traffic cop to perform a pretty thorough investigation, using just a cellphone and mobile PC, on the side of the road, without adequate facilities to properly identify the party on the other end of the telephone or even properly review the details of the initial report.

If it was your car that was stolen, I'm not sure you'd want someone trying to "Kojak" their way through the case. I wouldn't. Likewise, if I was pulled over in a rental and told it was stolen, I'd accept that the few hours of inconvenience I would face over it would easily be remedied and I would never rent from them again.

The police are functionaries with qualified immunity and no actual duty to protect or serve you. This is established law in the US. You want these people doing the most minimal, simple, procedural thing they can do in any given situation and you want to get yourself into an actual court as quickly as you can.

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