Electric car owner charged with stealing 5 cents worth of juice

nygiant · Dec 6, 2013

http://www.11alive.com/rss/article/...-charged-with-stealing-5-cents-worth-of-juice

CHAMBLEE, Ga. -- One Saturday in November, Kaveh Kamooneh drove his Nissan Leaf to Chamblee Middle School, where his 11-year-old son was playing tennis.

Kamooneh had taken the liberty of charging the electric car with an exterior outlet at the school. Within minutes of plugging in the car, he says a Chamblee police officer appeared. "He said that he was going to charge me with theft by taking because I was taking power, electricity from the school," Kamooneh said. Kamooneh says he had charged his car for 20 minutes, drawing about a nickel's worth of juice. Don Francis of Clean Cities Atlanta, an electric vehicle advocacy group, says the estimate of 5 cents is accurate.
"I'm not sure how much electricity he stole," said Chamblee police Sergeant Ernesto Ford, but he added: It doesn't matter. "He broke the law. He stole something that wasn't his."

Sgt. Ford says the officer should have arrested Kamooneh on the spot. But he didn't. Instead, the officer filed a police report. Then 11 days passed, and two deputies showed up at his house in Decatur. "They arrested me here at about eight o'clock at night," Kamooneh said. Ford said he sought the arrest warrant after determining that school officials hadn't given Kamooneh permission to plug in his car. Ford said Chamblee Police did so without asking school officials if they wanted to prosecute the alleged theft of electricity. A DeKalb Schools spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Records show Kamooneh spent more than 15 hours in the DeKalb County Jail for plugging his car into a school's electrical outlet.
Kamooneh acknowledges he hadn't asked permission first. "When I got there, there was nobody there. It was a Saturday morning," he said.
"A theft is a theft," Sgt. Ford said. When asked if he'd make the arrest again, he answered: "Absolutely."

Wednesday afternoon, DeKalb County School District spokesman Quinn Hudson released a statement saying the school system "has cooperated in the investigation and will continue to do so." Wednesday evening, Chamblee City Manager and Police Chief Marc Johnson issued the following statement:

We received a 911 call advising that someone was plugged into the power outlet behind the middle school. The responding officer located the vehicle in the rear of the building at the kitchen loading dock up against the wall with a cord run to an outlet. The officer spent some time trying to determine whose vehicle it was. It was unlocked and he eventually began looking through the interior after verifying it did not belong to the school system.

The officer, his marked patrol vehicle and the electric vehicle were all in clear view of the tennis courts. Eventually, a man on the courts told the officer that the man playing tennis with him owned the vehicle. The officer went to the courts and interviewed the vehicle owner. The officer's initial incident report gives a good indication of how difficult and argumentative the individual was to deal with. He made no attempt to apologize or simply say oops and he wouldn't do it again. Instead he continued being argumentative, acknowledged he did not have permission and then accused the officer of having damaged his car door. The officer told him that was not true and that the vehicle and existing damage was already on his vehicles video camera from when he drove up.

Given the uncooperative attitude and accusations of damage to his vehicle, the officer chose to document the incident on an incident report. The report was listed as misdemeanor theft by taking. The officer had no way of knowing how much power had been consumed, how much it cost nor how long it had been charging.

The report made its way to Sgt Ford's desk for a follow up investigation. He contacted the middle school and inquired of several administrative personnel whether the individual had permission to use power. He was advised no. Sgt. Ford showed a photo to the school resource officer who recognized Mr. Kamooneh. Sgt Ford was further advised that Mr. Kamooneh had previously been advised he was not allowed on the school tennis courts without permission from the school . This was apparently due to his interfering with the use of the tennis courts previously during school hours.

Based upon the totality of these circumstances and without any expert advice on the amount of electricity that may have been used, Sgt Ford signed a theft warrant. The warrant was turned over to the DeKalb Sheriffs Dept for service because the individual lived in Decatur, not Chamblee. This is why he was arrested at a later time.

I am sure that Sgt. Ford was feeling defensive when he said a theft is a theft and he would do it again. Ultimately, Sgt. Ford did make the decision to pursue the theft charges, but the decision was based on Mr. Kamooneh having been advised that he was not allowed on the property without permission. Had he complied with that notice none of this would have occurred. Mr. Kamooneh's son is not a student at the middle school and he was not the one playing tennis. Mr. Kamooneh was taking lessons himself.
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Eco Auto Clean · Dec 6, 2013

Haha yea I saw that. Terrible. Plus he's got a great point about people charging mobile devices etc.

Justin V · Dec 6, 2013

Sure the charges would be thrown out in court but it sucks he already spent a night in jail.

FTZ · Dec 6, 2013

How much money in police effort was wasted over $0.05?

b reel · Dec 6, 2013

How does being a dick towards the officer and making false claims deserve not to be charged for the theft? A case of Entitlement Attitude?

KGraska · Dec 6, 2013

Agreed^^

If the guy was nice and respectable towards the officer I'm sure they would have never taken it this far. He was being a dick and got the shaft for it...well deserved if you ask me. He was also banned from using the school's tennis courts and chose to come back without permission.

His "there was no one present to ask permission" excuse doesn't cut it. If I wanted to borrow my friends car and he wasn't there to ask permission I simply wouldn't drive off with it just because he wasn't there to ask...

Jake · Dec 6, 2013

yeah it was dumb to even pursue this by the officer, however i hate assholes who are argumentative for no reason. a simple, "i'm sorry" or "it won't happen again" would've ended the whole thing right there. so in the end, the guy kind of deserved it.

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Electric car owner charged with stealing 5 cents worth of juice

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Electric car owner charged with stealing 5 cents worth of juice

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FTZ ^.^

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