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Comment by mkaic | Hacker News Reader

(author) This was my thought as well — honestly it's still kind of my thought. The best explanation I can come up with is that the records are stolen and can't be traced back to their owner, so they can't be returned? I'm not sure. If I found out who the original owner was I'd be happy to give them up.

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It's Los Angeles police; they're lazy, and anything that involves them not doing paperwork (as they'd have to catalogue every individual record there) is right up their alley. Homeless people defecating on the Metrolink right in front of an officer? Not an eyelash batted. I see this daily.

Which is why I'm baffled when people make laws to make it harder to defend oneself, because you can "just call the police." But there's a solid chance they won't get there in time or at all, due to a variety of reasons including the above.

LA is one of these places.

If you were required to catalogue hundreds of records, taking many days, instead of being out catching criminals, would you? Just on the off chance that someone wants them back?

What are you supposed to do about people who haven't got anywhere else to go to the toilet?

If you place them in custody, you might as well provide them with some basic housing that costs less than jail. They have literally nothing to lose from fines, court dates, tickets, probation. They don't have a toilet, what else are you going to take away from them.

The police are correctly judging that the need to defecate is not a criminal problem.

> What are you supposed to do about people who haven't got anywhere else to go to the toilet?

Find a public toilet or use a restaurant/shopping mall toilet.

The question was not 'what do you do if you need the toilet?' but 'what do you do about people who haven't got anywhere to go to the toilet?'

By definition, if there is a public toilet accessible to you, or you are welcome in a restaurant toilet without paying, you have somewhere to go to the toilet.

That's not an issue in LA though. In the wilderness, you can dig a small hole and do your business there.

Every car on the Metrolink has a bathroom. There's no excuse for what I witness.

I don't know what standard of proof they use. Maybe it's too high and indeed impossible to be certain about the owner.

But otherwise it just looks like they don't even want to try. In a normal small community police or you would try to find out who it belongs to, not just give up. :)

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