In your example, Bill, that would be taking something with the intent to deprive it from the owner, even if only for a period of time,which would be an offense. The CL poster has openly declared his intention and he would probably be able to demonstrate to police or the actual owner that he believed the bicycle was abandoned following a theft and out of civic duty wanted to make the bicycle safe in order to return it to it's owner.
This is definitely made complicated by the cutting of the lock. However, if he and ill intention and wanted to ultimately keep the bike, he could have dropped it off at a police station, not mentioned the cutting of the lock and then in three months time or whatever, made a finder's claim for the bicycle. The CL lister's heart seems to be very much in the right place. He;s actually taken a bit of a risk in being charged with theft in order to help someone. Maybe he should have simply reported it to the police and left it at that, but realistically, the police would likely have done nothing. IanA/Canada On Thursday, February 1, 2018 at 12:23:26 PM UTC-7, Bill Lindsay wrote: > > Interesting. It isn’t theft if you take something that isn’t yours but > don’t intend to permanently deprive the owner of the property. > > So I could take a bike that isn’t mine, use it for six months and put it > back where I ‘found’ it without committing theft? Is there a different > statute I’ve broken in that situation? > > Bill Lindsay > El Cerrito Ca -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
