Break in

[Dave Macaulay]

I support quite a few "small town" cinemas and it's usual for the town to really support them. Some are privately owned and some are local co-ops or run by service clubs. They're seen as an important part of the community. The digital rollout did kill a few but a lot managed to make the change.

[Frank Cox]

Unfortunately, "supporting the theatre" doesn't necessarily translate into actually going to movies.

Everyone in town wants the theatre and expects it to continue forever, but when it comes to pulling money out of their pocket to buy a ticket and popcorn... maybe not so much.

Of course, the scream would be heard for miles around if the theatre closed....

[Jack Ondracek]

Years ago, we had what I thought was a break-in at an indoor quad I once owned.

My daughter called to report our boxoffice computer, monitor and cash drawer were gone, as well as a stack of movie-specific baseball caps we'd been given at a recent drive-in owners' conference.
Turned out, the perp had hidden behind one of our screens, and we left him in the building. That resulted in procedural changes and, yes, belated installation of an alarm system.

Best part: A couple of weeks later, a woman came to a show with her young grandson, who was wearing one of our stolen baseball caps! We let them in and called the police. They brought the couple out of the auditorium and learned the cap had come from the boy's uncle, a repeat offender, who recently left town and had not returned by the time we got out of the indoor theatre business.

As described earlier, this kind of experience was more a personal-safety issue than anything we lost that night. Could have been far worse.

[Mike Blakesley]

Everyone in town wants the theatre and expects it to continue forever, but when it comes to pulling money out of their pocket to buy a ticket and popcorn... maybe not so much.

Of course, the scream would be heard for miles around if the theatre closed....

Yeah. We get a lot of "how's the theater doing?" or "what's showing?" questions from people who haven't been to a movie in decades. I came to the harsh realization quite a while ago that if we were to lock the doors one day and just leave the marquee running on the timer, we could be shut down for months before most people in town would even notice.

The ones who still care and who still go to the movies....that's who we do it for.

[Leo Enticknap]

In the US, it goes against the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. ("The right of the people to be secure...against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated...") In Canada, Section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is similar.

I don't know the legal precedent on this, but surely if you have a small town with very little crime and a very small number of residents with a criminal record, and then a crime similar in nature to those committed by the small number of known criminals takes place, it is not unreasonable at least to ask those criminals if they would care to offer an alibi? They are of course free to decline, and if they do so, there's your probable cause to investigate them further. And the police here routinely check existing DNA and fingerprint records against evidence found at a crime scene (hence the stories you read every now and again about decades-old cold cases being solved), so that isn't considered to be an unreasonable search.

[Randy Stankey]

No. Period.

Nobody but nobody is obliged to explain their whereabouts to police unless they are a suspect in a crime. To be a suspect means that there is evidence, legally obtained.

The exception,as I said before, is a current parolee. Police can question a parolee but once their debt is paid, it is a done deal.

Every law abiding citizen has the right to walk down the street without being harassed by police unless there is evidence.

[Frank Cox]

Would you rather they questioned your friends and neighbours about your whereabouts before asking you?

The word investigation implies the discovery and development of evidence. Said evidence usually comes to light through physical items, witness statements, and asking questions (of someone).

Apparently I wasn't the only one with a break-in last week. According to this week's paper there were three business break-ins (including mine) and one vehicle break-in on this street, plus two others nearby. The dates aren't exactly clear in the article but they were all within the last seven days and I get the impression that my break-in and one other and the vehicle were all on the same night. Probably the third one too but again, that's not clearly stated.

[Randy Stankey]

...it is not unreasonable at least to ask those criminals if they would care to offer an alibi? ...

As one of my professors from college would have said, "It is GODDAMNED unreasonable!" [Pounding fist on the table!]

In the 1760s, William Blackstone wrote, "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than for one innocent to suffer."

"Blackstone's Law" is one of the founding principles of the American, British and, by extension, Canadian justice systems. (Both the American and Canadian justice system have their roots in British law.)

The police CAN NOT just cast a wide net to catch suspected criminals without objective evidence. If there is an eyewitness account of a crime, the police CAN follow up on that lead and they CAN question the public about the incident but, no, the police CAN NOT question a person's friends, neighbors and associates because they think a person MIGHT HAVE done something wrong. They have to have a reason.

Eyewitness accounts, video camera imagery, forensic evidence like fingerprints and other things can be used if they are found in proximity of the scene of a crime. Police can not even compel a person to have their fingerprints taken or provide hair, skin, blood or DNA sample given UNLESS there is a reason and, many times, a warrant is required.

Police can not go around asking your friends and neighbors of your whereabouts. That is a form of false accusation. If they have a description of a suspect, they are allowed to ask people if they've seen "a person matching this description" but they can't go around incriminating people just because they committed a similar crime in the past. Once their debt to society has been paid, they are as free as you and I.

Even police lineups are subject to strict rules. There have been cases where, for instance, police lineups have been made up of three White men and one Black man (innocent of any crime except being in the wrong place at the wrong time) who was sent to trial and found guilty because an eyewitness (a White person) picked him out of a lineup. Of course, the White witness is going to pick the only Black man in a lineup! The test is rigged from the start!

Police can get into a lot of hot water because of things like dragnetting and falsely accusing people! Dragenetting has been illegal in the US since (as I remember) the 1930s.

Now, if a person is on parole, things are different. A parolee is still under legal bondage. The rules are different. Somebody said, above, that there might be a parolee living in the area who has committed similar crimes. Yes, in the right circumstances, they can go knock on that person's door. Even so, the police are still likely to get a search warrant beforehand because, if a judge gives his say-so, that is considered due process. If the police really do suspect this person, they will want to do everything possible to build an ironclad case. Having a warrant, beforehand, even if it's not strictly necessary is a way to drive another nail in the coffin, so to speak.

Dragenetting simply can not be done! Period! It is unconstitutional in the US and, as I said, I am 90% certain that Canada and Great Britain have similar laws on their books.

[Leo Enticknap]

Points taken. However, if dragnetting is off limits, how were investigations such as this one allowed to happen? DNA evidence from the crime scene was compared to the DNA data from a huge database of individuals, including entirely innocent ones. Unless all these innocent people had given explicit permission to the "genealogist company" mentioned in the article to share their data with law enforcement, I don't see how this is any different in principle from traditional dragnetting.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Points taken. However, if dragnetting is off limits, how were investigations such as this one allowed to happen? DNA evidence from the crime scene was compared to the DNA data from a huge database of individuals, including entirely innocent ones. Unless all these innocent people had given explicit permission to the "genealogist company" mentioned in the article to share their data with law enforcement, I don't see how this is any different in principle from traditional dragnetting.

Although pretty invasive, that example is not much different than using a security camera photo to query a facial recognition database of faces scraped from relatively public websites (hell these forums are even an example that puts faces to names in many people's cases). It's a slippery slope we are on when your personally identifying "data" is out there in the custody of others. Hell isn't 23&me going under. That trove of DNA data in theory is up for grabs soon. Legal frameworks aside, they will use the tools available to them, until someone fights it in court. Maybe faces aren't quite as "private", but states can find people across state lines using such tools, no State ID required.