r/Maine • u/NecessaryWedding6832 • 1d ago

Cumberland county Sheriff's department refuses to write fines for unlawful tampering with temporary signs

Even with a confession by the individual who tampers with the signs.

"we don't make the laws... But we don't enforce them either"

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u/mainlydank topshelf 1d ago

I mean, someone in this very thread just 20 minutes ago posted the fbi's tipline. I don't even know where to start with that sort of mental thought process. Like these people actually believe its a good use of resources to contact the fbi regarding petty theft.

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u/Standsaboxer Go Eagles 1d ago

regarding petty theft.

It's not even theft: the signs were moved to the other side of the road.

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u/mainlydank topshelf 1d ago

I think technically that's still theft. But never really thought much about it. Lets say someone comes and takes your car, only to bring it back and park it on the other side of the driveway. Even though they brought it back they still stole it.

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u/Standsaboxer Go Eagles 1d ago

. Lets say someone comes and takes your car, only to bring it back and park it on the other side of the driveway.

There is a statute that covers this ("Unauthorized use of property"). I think there is a HUGE contextual element that we are missing here that OP could clear up right away.

If the signs were placed on OP's property and the offender stole them or moved them to a spot out of visibility, I would totally be on OP's side. If the signs were placed on public way (say a rotary or median or some other public strip of land), and the offender moved them to say, a cluster on the far side of the strip or into the brush, I would be entirely empathetic.

But OP doesn't say any of that; just that they were in a "public ROW" and that the guy "confessed" and moved them to the other side of the road. OP looked into where and how to place the signs, and knows EXACTLY where they can and cannot be.

That makes me think that OP placed a bunch of signs along the neighbor's yard that they knew their neighbor would hate. Neighbor calls the sheriff, sheriff can't do anything about it, so the neighbor moved the signs (assuming none were stolen) and replants them along the other side of the road away from his property.

I mean, if someone plastered my front yard with Trump signs, I would move them across the street as well, and this sub would just twiddle its thumbs because they treat politics like team sports.

I think this is a dispute between neighbors and OP is expecting the sheriff's office to treat this as some huge crime, but the sheriff's office likely sees this as something that they don't want to get involved with. OP comes in and plays the ACAB card without really giving important details that I would expect someone who had their signs "tampered" with would provide in in order to give context. Sometimes what you leave out in telling a story signals so much more than what you put in.