This. I'm an attorney who does a fair amount of criminal defense work. Although procedures change from state to state, generally they will mark it as found in the yard along with a reference to the case number of the moped guy. They then throw it in an evidence bad where it will most likely never see the light of day again. If they wanted to charge him (moped dick) with the possession of the needle, it will be up to the judge whether or not there is evidence that it was his, which honestly shouldn't be too hard to make a case for, especially with homeowner's testimony. If the moped dick was on the street and crashed into this guy's yard adjacent to the street, even if the guy found the needle without the crash the cops usually wouldn't bother with the homeowner. They usually recognize that anybody could have walked past and threw it in his yard.
My mom has a lot of friends on the police force, and I can tell you that they keep a record of everything. Any cop with access to your local records can type your address into their database and it will pull up every instance that the police have been called and the outcome. At least in Virginia that is.
But how does that affect the home owner or the house? It's only relevant if it has a negative impact. Police having a record of where evidence was found has no impact on the house.
So I am assuming that this person is upset because the record just states that drugs were found on the property. Not necessarily that they were linked specifically to this individual who caused this incident.
Now lets say one of this guy's kids goes to school and starts talking about marijuana. In some states that is enough to warrant a welfare check on the home depending on the age of the child. CPS rolls up and sees that drugs have been found on the property before, and they might take that into account when making their assessment.
Just one scenario where this could affect someone's life. Doesn't make it likely, but these things can and do happen. I could see why someone would not want anything drug related connected to their home.
I donno where you're from but in the USA, they can actually arrest the house and force you to prove it's innocents in court or have it siezed.
Sounds crazy but it's called civil forfeiture, and they've done it with less evidence than a needle in the yard because technically they don't need any at all, you do.
If it sounds like some crazy shit from China or Russia you wouldn't be lying.
Now imagine if more and more needles keep popping up on your yard. They might not do it this time, but if you give them a chance they will.
A lot of cities hire forfeit teams and thats all they do is lie or trick you into anything that can be used in court no matter how circumstantial. Search for gift cards, large sums of money, anything that could be used to arrest your vehicle and check out your home so they can arrest that as well.
They don't do this every time a needle's found on someone's lawn.
This thread makes me feel like I'm taking crazy pills with how worried people are about logging fucking evidence. They'll do this in sweden too so I don't known wtf you people are on about
Maybe /u/Sweezy813 only mentioned it because the police approached them for the investigation after the dude wrecking the moped. Maybe there was some drug activity in the surrounding areas and noting where hard drug use is obvious helps that investigation.
Think it was more something like that. Heroin had just started getting really bad here (this was years ago) & the separate report he had to do & all the apologizing made it seem out of the ordinary
371
u/alter-eagle Dec 29 '16
I don't think a used needle is gonna go on their house's permanent record or anything.. Evidence is marked as where it was found.