Barcode Leads To Arrest of Texas Litterbug Behind 200 Pounds of Dumped Trash (chron.com) 106
"Illegal dumping is way too common, and often leads to no consequences," writes Slashdot reader Tony Isaac. "In some urban neighborhoods, people dump entire truckloads of waste in ditches along the streets. Maybe authorities have found a way to make a dent in this problem." Houston Chronicle reports: The Texas Game Wardens were recently able to track down and arrest a litterbug allegedly behind an illegal dumping of over 200 pounds of construction materials using a barcode left at the scene of the crime, according to a news release from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD). The pile of trash, which included sheetrock, housing trim, two-by-fours and various plastic items, was reportedly dumped along a bridge and creek on private land instead of being properly disposed of.
However, hidden among the garbage was also a box containing a barcode that would help identify the person behind the heap. A Smith County Game Warden used the barcode to track down the materials to a local store, and ultimately the owner of the credit card that was used for the purchase, TPWD said. The game warden interviewed the home owner who had reportedly just finished remodeling his home. "The homeowner explained that he paid someone familiar to the family who offered to haul off their used material and trash for a minimum fee," Texas Games Wardens said in a statement. "Unfortunately, the suspect kept the money and dumped the trash onto private property."
Working with the game warden, Smith County Sheriff's Office environmental deputies eventually arrested the suspect on charges of felony commercial dumping. At the time of the arrest, the suspect's truck was reportedly found loaded with even more building materials and trash, TPWD said. The state agency did not identify the suspect or disclose when or where they were arrested.
However, hidden among the garbage was also a box containing a barcode that would help identify the person behind the heap. A Smith County Game Warden used the barcode to track down the materials to a local store, and ultimately the owner of the credit card that was used for the purchase, TPWD said. The game warden interviewed the home owner who had reportedly just finished remodeling his home. "The homeowner explained that he paid someone familiar to the family who offered to haul off their used material and trash for a minimum fee," Texas Games Wardens said in a statement. "Unfortunately, the suspect kept the money and dumped the trash onto private property."
Working with the game warden, Smith County Sheriff's Office environmental deputies eventually arrested the suspect on charges of felony commercial dumping. At the time of the arrest, the suspect's truck was reportedly found loaded with even more building materials and trash, TPWD said. The state agency did not identify the suspect or disclose when or where they were arrested.
A contemporary Arlo Guthrie (Score:5, Funny)
https://ultimateclassicrock.co... [ultimateclassicrock.com]
https://theberkshireeagle.news... [newspapers.com]
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So we're playing Alice's Restaurant for Halloween this year, instead of Thanksgiving? Okay, whatever. But then we have to play Monster Mash for Thanksgiving.
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Group W bench for this guy.
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Littering
Re:A contemporary Arlo Guthrie (Score:5, Informative)
Alice's Restaurant isn't really about littering (though that part of the song is pretty amusing, with the amount of effort the police went through for a littering case). It's really about the Vietnam War.
The gist of the story is that the littering occurs on Thanksgiving day as a result of the dump being closed. The trash is instead dumped on top of another pile of trash that was already present. The protagonist gets arrested but is ultimately acquitted by a blind judge unable to see the "twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was." Later, the protagonist is drafted into the military and, as it is the height of the Vietnam War, has no desire to enter the military. At his induction, he does everything possible to make them think he is unfit for service (expressing desires to murder people, etc) to no avail, until they come to the "criminal" part of the process. They find out about the littering and declare him unfit for service, thus sparing him from going to Vietnam.
It's a fantastic song, and a Thanksgiving tradition in the US.
Is it? (Score:4, Interesting)
...and a Thanksgiving tradition in the US.
Perhaps it is for you personally or maybe it is for older generations (although I never heard my parents play it) but I've never heard this song in all of my 40+ years. Thanksgiving is my hands down favorite holiday to boot.
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If you listen to classic rock or folk rock radio stations, most of them will play it at least once on Thanksgiving.
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'Cause you want to know if I'm moral enough join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug.
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I was thinking more Baretta:
Don't dump that trash and then pocket the cash
No no... don't do it
Don't drop that crap if you've left them a map
No no... don't do it
And keep your eye on the bar code
Keep your eye on that bar code!
Trash (Score:4, Insightful)
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Nah, he's be a Maga Saint shortly and it will be come an article of The Faith that dumping anywhere should be an American right not to be infringed by the nasty overreaching state.
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So you put freedom of speech on the same level as freedom to dump trash?
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So you put freedom of speech on the same level as freedom to dump trash?
I take it you're not familiar with sarcasm.
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Sorry, sarcasm can be hard to read in text.
Don't do that (Score:2)
They're not the brightest sparks in the shed (Score:5, Interesting)
I have twice been able to report illegal dumpers of residential rubbish into local bushland after discovering personally addressed mail items amongst the dross. It's a special kind of idiot.
Re:this guy was slightly brighter (Score:5, Informative)
The fact that he turned out to be a professional (IE paid) illegal dumper may elevate the charges quite a bit.
Let's see: 365.012, section c seems to apply:
A person commits an offense if the person transports litter or other solid waste to a place that is not an approved solid waste site for disposal at the site.
"over 200 pounds", makes it a class B misdemeanor.
"for a commercial purpose", which given that he was paid to dispose of it, applies, ramping it to a felony. And checking, the article mentions that he was arrested for felony commercial dumping. It's a "state jail felony"
He's eligible for 180 days to 2 years, a fine of up to $10k. Per the law, he'll also have mandatory community service if convicted, in addition to jail time.
That said, I can figure some things:
1. They may have had a dumping problem for a while, making a higher priority than normal. IE this guy has been doing it a LOT. They may have recognized his "work" from patterns.
2. At over 200 pounds, this would likely pay for the cop's time in penalties if they can catch and convict them. The cop had reasonable belief they could pull it off.
3. It was a game warden, not a local cop, who did the investigation. That's like a Postal Inspector following up on some illegal mailing. From what I know, a lot of game wardens are actually environmentalists, so exceptionally pissed off by this.
4. Actually sounds like around a day's work, not multiple days.
Remember, this isn't just a littering charge, this is an outright felony level littering charge. They could send this guy to prison for 2 years over this.
Re:this guy was slightly brighter (Score:5, Insightful)
A felony on a young person's record is a life ruining event. Not only do you go to prison for a long time, but any decent employer will never hire you, putting you in a cycle of recidivism or just working at McDonalds (if you're lucky) for the rest of your life.
Ah yes, the Brock Turner defense [cnn.com]:
The controversial sentence was followed by the release of two dueling letters to the judge about the case that have been widely shared and sparked further outcry: one from the victim, who described her ordeal in 12 searing pages; and another from Turner’s father, who dismissed his son’s crime as “20 minutes of action.”
Turner, 20, was convicted in March of the intent to commit rape of an intoxicated/unconscious person, penetration of an intoxicated person and penetration of an unconscious person.
. . .
“A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him,” Persky said. “I think he will not be a danger to others.”
Considering how Texas likes to claim they're tough on crime, make it a felony. Set an example.
If you don't want to go to jail, don't committ the crime.
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You're certifiable. Littering and rape are not the same, and I'd never argue against felony charges for rape.
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You're certifiable. Littering and rape are not the same
That's true, they are not the same. They are each harmful in their own way. Rape is an atrocity against one person. Littering is less immediately harmful, but has long-term repercussions and has the potential to harm many people, ecosystems, other species etc.
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So ANY environmental crime should be treated as a million rapes?
WTF are you saying?
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Not that, but I forgot for a moment there that you're a big fucking idiot.
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Reactive Instapurpose. Just add outrage. Fun game. Not Christian-y either--just sayin'.
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More likely than not, the person and the "corporation" are one and the same: some independent contractor happy to do jobs under the table. The article did not provide specifics about the person they arrested, so that's speculation on my part. But, then again, so is your speculation that it's a "young person".
In a
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I'm not against a bit of jail time, I just don't want to see some kid getting his life destroyed over what could just be a lapse in judgement that didn't hurt anyone (beside some minor environmental damage). I'm just against making it much harder for him to "go straight" by making him unemployable forever.
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1. The garbage was dumped alongside a creek. That leaves the potential for it to not stay minor.
2. He was caught with another load of garbage that he was presumably going to dump illegally. Odds are he's left dozens of damaging dump sites if not cleaned up by others.
3. He's apparently an independent contractor if he's picking up garbage this much. He's able to generate his own employment.4
4. Maybe he should have considered that before, you know, going on an illegal dumping spree.
5. Hell, for all we
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A lapse in judgement is doing it once. Doing it multiple times is criminal enterprise.
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If non-violent felony convictions weren't public record, I wouldn't have a problem at all. This used to the the place you go to be forgotten, the Land of Second Chances, as they called it. Not anymore, you make a mistake and you're just fucked forever. Every employer, anyone whatsoever can dig up every little thing you ever did wrong with a quick Lexus-Nexus (sp?) lookup. And an employer can demand you do a credit check. Heck I know a guy who makes good money and is rarely unemployed and has good credi
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If non-violent felony convictions weren't public record, I wouldn't have a problem at all.
That would be throwing people in prison without telling the public why. Secret convictions for undisclosed crimes. That is not a free country.
There's no need whatsoever for the law to continue to punish you for the rest of your life.
The law does not "continue to punish you for the rest of your life". People exercise their right not to associate with you. Freedom of association means I do not have to associate with you if I do not want to.
If you want to convince someone that you are a trustworthy person ...don't start by lying to them.
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You can tell anyone you want about what you were convicted of, and anyone could see it, but once you leave prison that should not be disclosed to the public unless you opt in.
How's that?
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No, I kind of want to know if someone is felon before deciding to hire them and risk my business on their character.
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Well, society needs to balance your desires with the individual's right to start over and be forgotten. I think that it's horrible that we've lost that.
Also, I did say non-violent felons. I could extend that to one or two time offenders.
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And here I thought republicans loved punishing people for crimes.
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Only when it's their political opponents doing the crimes. Hell, they'll even make shit up and have congressional hearings about it, where the made up shit is called out as made up right there in the hearing.
When it's a political ally, they'll crank up the excuse factory to full output though. See: why George Santos is still a sitting member of the US House of Representatives; they need that vote and they know if they expel him, an Democratic replacement will be appointed by the Democrat governor, or a sp
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As a note, if this had been in Florida, we'd have the dude's name already and be able to check stuff. In this case we don't even have the age.
1. Looking at it, going after the company is indeed going after him. This is "dude with a truck" doing work, not a proper company.
2. He ate an elevated charge because he was benefitting commercially from it.
3. Going to a prison "for a long time", well, as I said, the maximum prison sentence for this is 2 years.
4. The statute is intended for catching even more da
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I really don't care about the penalty, time served, or the fine. It just irks me when a younger person gets a felony that will ruin his life by ruining their employment prospects. This is also why judges are loath to put felonies on young people, and often allow them to plead it down if they don't waste the court's time.
I don't know where I got the impression it was a youngster.
Re:this guy was slightly brighter (Score:4, Interesting)
Fuck him, and fuck you for this bleeding-heart bullshit. 6 year olds know you don't just throw trash wherever you feel, much less dump hundreds of pounds of construction waste on other people's private land. This guy knew what he was doing was wrong, and he was doing it for money which only makes it worse. And he's done it multiple times.
Don't like being fucked over for a felony conviction? Don't commit felony crimes. Repeatedly.
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You're a cunt, then.
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Well that's a compelling argument to what I said. Thanks for confirming that you're a waste of precious resources that could be spent elsewhere, yet again.
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I am of course talking about the muppet who ditched the rubbish, not the copper who was mentally on-point enough to recognise the barcode may provide usable data.
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I guess he just got fed up. :)
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The Texas Game Wardens were recently able to track down and arrest a litterbug allegedly behind an illegal dumping of over 200 pounds of construction materials using a barcode left at the scene of the crime, according to a news release from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD).
Texas Game Wardens
Game Wardens
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That's what Texas calls their parks and wildlife department. [texas.gov]
This is actually the proper governmental agency for enforcement of illegal dumping.
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It wasn't a "small town" cop - it was a Texas Game Warden [texas.gov]; essentially Texas's version of a state park ranger or forest service ranger.
This is kind of their job, in addition to fucking up poachers and other assholes who feel they can do whatever the fuck they want on other people's land (including public lands).
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Have much experience with tossing bodies into dumpsters, do you?
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It's about the weight of your average juvenile 'Murican Walmarter. They couldn't find a couple dumpsters to toss this in?
At our local transfer station, a couple hundred pounds would cost a pittance to drop off. They charge 25 dollars for up to around 600 pounds. So there's no excuse, unless a person thinks public dumping is a constitutional right.
Re: Sentence should be to pick up trash (Score:2)
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In the proper place, such as the back of his truck, to the dump, paying full weight fees.
It shouldn't count unless he's brought in more than 200 pounds. Actually should be the weight he dumped.
And, of course, keep an eye on him so he doesn't cheat(which we already know he'll do given the opportunity).
Given that they caught him with another load, I'm willing to bet that he had made it his "business" to illegally dump. They may tie him to MORE illegal dumping, leading to more community service(actually part
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Whoosh.
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No he needs to pick up a lot more than what he dumped. Otherwise you don't really disincentive the crime.
If I get caught they'll make me do what I a should of done in the first place, is just incentive to try and get away with stuff. You said it yourself too there are more costs here we have to make sure he does not cheat on the penalty, we had to investigate, arrest, and try him. All the expense of the collective us, all because, he alone, broke the rules. He owes significantly greater debt to his commun
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No he needs to pick up a lot more than what he dumped. Otherwise you don't really disincentive the crime.
The GP of who I responded to wanted him to be picking up trash 2 hours/day, 6 days/week, for a year. That's ~312 days.
I was intending to say that the day doesn't count UNLESS he gets over 200 pounds, so the 312 days required doesn't go down unless he gets at least what he dumped.
So over two orders of magnitude more enough to count?
I'll admit, I wasn't the most clear.
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+5 Funny
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He must eat it.
Difficult and serious problem (Score:3)
This is a difficult and serious problem in a lot of places. Someone drives to the edge of the woods, probably at night, and dumps their trash. I hike a lot, and in some areas it is common to find everything from household garbage to old auto parts.
In this case, they got lucky. Usually, there is nothing personally identifiable. Who owned those old tires? It's hard to catch these idiots, because there are endless kilometers of forestry roads.
Like scammers, one wonders what kind of people do this. Destroy a common resource to save yourself a minuscule amount of money. What kind of person does that?
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The guy is a jerk, and deserves what he gets. However as a side note, have you looked up what it costs to dump a truckload of construction trash these days? It might not be astronomical if you have the budget for a home improvement project, but it's definitely not "miniscule" in my neck of the woods.
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The guy is a jerk, and deserves what he gets. However as a side note, have you looked up what it costs to dump a truckload of construction trash these days? It might not be astronomical if you have the budget for a home improvement project, but it's definitely not "miniscule" in my neck of the woods.
Here, it is 25 dollars for up to 600 pounds, and over 600 pounds is pro-rated at 84 dollars a ton.
That's really not bad - I never did a home improvement job that was less than 15K dollars, so I have no issues using the transfer station.
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Here, it's $180/ton.
Years ago, I did some home remodeling. The rates were lower per ton. Or $12 for a "passenger licensed vehicle". I had an old shitbox passenger van, seats removed, that I used as a pickup truck. $12 for that, even though I'm sure I had dumped more that 1000 lbs at a time.
I may have provided some of their motivation to redefine the cheap rate to "passenger cars".
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> What kind of person does that?
Usually impoverished people.
Real wages have gone down steadily since . 1970 despite a productivity boom.
It all goes to Wall St. so rich people can hedge against a highly inflationary USD.
Nixon broke the money at that time.
That's what "we are the 99%" meant for a few weeks before CRT was deployed to break it up.
Now enough Americans are in pain that they're willing to question their priors and want to vote for peace and prosperity again but that's a year and a war away still
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I participate in what is billed as one of the largest wilderness cleanup events [gambler500.com] every year in central Oregon. Every single year we remove tens of full-size construction dumpsters worth of dumped shit in a weekend, and usually tow out derelict vehicles and trailers from public lands that are similarly full of trash picked up from around the derelict.
If we weren't doing this every year, I would hate to think what some of these areas would look like.
Illegal dumpers deserve to be buried in their own fucking tr
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Someone drives to the edge of the woods, probably at night, and dumps their trash.
Now they'll pour gasoline on it and toss in a lit match.
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Surely it had serial numbers or a license plate.
Why not? (Score:2)
The state agency did not identify the suspect or disclose when or where they were arrested.
Texas is quick to shout, "ILLEGALS!", but not identify this criminal? Why not make an example of him? What are they trying to hide?
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Guy was white.
Re:Why not? (Score:4, Funny)
Guy was white.
Probably still is
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The state agency did not identify the suspect or disclose when or where they were arrested.
Texas is quick to shout, "ILLEGALS!", but not identify this criminal? Why not make an example of him? What are they trying to hide?
Might be some weird laws. I read a story about a woman teacher arrested for raping a 12 year old in Australia. They wouldn't post her name though. Probably never thought a woman would be anything but the victim, so there was a law to that effect in the past.
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Why not make an example of him? What are they trying to hide?
Might be some weird laws.
What happened to the presumption of innocence, AKA "innocent until proven guilty"? The suspect hasn't been tried or convicted yet..
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That was only to help protect the identity of the child.
That makes no sense - the child was not identified, nor the woman that enjoyed some of that 12 year old boy-banging.
Normally, a male rapist's name would be plastered all over, even if every other detail of the case was identical.
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There are probably regulations about public disclosure before indictment.
A great example of why we need "hard labor" (Score:3)
I'm convinced that a lot of crime ranging from petty street crime (up to misdemeanor violent crime against people and property) and anti-social stuff like this could be solved if we overturned all of the bad case law against hard labor punishments.
Imagine if the system were allowed to send the homeowner to a chain gang after work and on the weekends, with the threat of being charged with a felony if they don't show up to work. Put them to work in a jail uniform in the stinking hot Texas/deep south weather. Coerce them to have a work ethic under penalty of being sent to jail if they slack off.
I think that would get the point across to a lot of non-felons a lot more effectively than the abstract threat of sitting in a jail cell or getting probation. And if the homeowner is old and ends up being at risk of a fatal heart attack or stroke from the exertion? Sucks to be them. Shouldn't have taken a giant industrial sized shit on their community.
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I am with up thru the
is old and ends up being at risk of a fatal heart attack or stroke from the exertion
I and I doubt a majority of my fellow citizens would think it 'curl or unusual' for a typical 20 - 50 something caught illegally dumping to be sentenced to few hundred hours of labor dragging trash out of the woods for proper disposal. I think a lot of people would think it curl to sentence some elderly or otherwise infirm to work that could kill them, for a non-violent crime.
I am with you I think our society would beneficent from more frequent more visible community service labor orie
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We can find something the elderly are capable of [alamy.com] that won't kill them. Time "in the clink" is probably worse than a few hours of this.
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Eh, if the death penalty isn't a deterrent I fail to see how forced labor would be. Criminals don't plan on getting caught.
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Work crew picking up trash on the side of the highway is a common community service sentence. It is not considered "hard labor" it is "community service" hours.
Eliminate dumping fees (Score:4, Insightful)
Make the dumping fee free or cheap, and far less people will dump illegally.
People do this to save money. Taxpayers are already funding the landfill, asking them to pay yet again when they use it is what leads to illegal dumping.
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Make the dumping fee free or cheap, and far less people will dump illegally.
People do this to save money. Taxpayers are already funding the landfill, asking them to pay yet again when they use it is what leads to illegal dumping.
I posted this before, but our transfer station charges 25 dollars for up to 600 pounds. Now is that too much? And there is some money being spent already for a remodel project. Now of course, if you used up everything but your last 25 dollars, well, choosin between a case of Lone Star beer, or taking the trash to the transfer station - you dump that shit in the woods, and get to the Lone Star, Duh! 8^/
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You know the people who contracted him should have known what he was doing was illegal, because when someone says "hey I can dump that trash for you a lot cheaper than the dump fee" that should be a red flag. It would be super difficult to convince me that they didn't know he was dumping the trash illegally.
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Yeah I'm curious what this "minimum fee" these people payed amounted to. If it wasn't enough to cover the dump fee plus some left over for this guy to profit the people whose waste this was should have some liability here.
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Re: Eliminate dumping fees (Score:2)
It should be $0.
A $6 fee is pointless for cost recovery, but it's enough to piss off enough.
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When I was up in Alaska, the waste transfer stations were actually literally free to use. Come in, dump your stuff, done.
We still found dumped garbage at times. But I think it was a lot less. Less administrative cost than trying to run a weigh station taking money as well.
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This guy was hauling garbage as a commercial activity - he charged money to take this shit away and dispose of it.
No matter what the fee is, he could have just charged the homeowner and never had to deal with it being "too expensive" because he's not actually paying it - the homeowner is.
Don't you think that this isn't about the fee, so much as it is about an amoral jackass pocketing 100% of the "fee" and just dumping shit wherever he selfishly felt like it?
Justifying this bullshit based on the amount of th
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People also do this because they don't want to deal with the hassle of going to an actual dump, money or not.
Have you ever noticed that at places like parks, where there are plenty of free trash cans, people still toss their litter on the ground? It's really not about the money.
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This guy was paid to haul the refuse away by other people. If he was so concerned about the dumping fee, he would have just charged the homeowner more to cover it.
No, he was illegally dumping this shit because he saw a chance to charge people and then NOT pay the fucking fee, keeping whatever he charged for himself. Stop making excuses for a shitbag who decided that his own wallet mattered more than the waterway he was dumping construction waste next to.
Punish the monkey... (Score:2)
...Let the organ grinder go free.
Dire Straits.
What is absolutely shocking (Score:1)
is that the police actually bothered to investigate. The land must have been owned by someone important perhaps?
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I want tell you about Smith County Texas, where this happened, they got three stop Signs, two police officers, and one police car, but when we got to the Scene of the Crime there was five police officers and three police cars, Being the biggest crime of the last fifty years, and everybody wanted to get in the newspaper story about it.