Legal Loophole with Tenant Stealing from CCTV Mailroom, Building Manager Is Allowing It

luminousfox on 14/03/2023 - 16:53

(VIC Melbourne) Back in December we had a parcel stolen (and other residents too) in a new apartment, sucks, but the mailroom has CCTV and is gated off with a key fob so we thought we could finally get someone caught! We bothered to place a police report and surprisingly they fully followed it up, identified the person as someone in the building, but the building manager stepped in and saved them in a loophole. I'll break it down.

Male enters the mail room and takes multiple parcels on CCTV and is identified.

Male leaves the property with the parcels out of CCTV footage.

Male now allegedly places parcels outside the building and leaves the area without them.

Building manager at some point sees the parcels outside, does not collect them

The parcels later get stolen off the street

Now because the building manager has said they saw the parcels on the street, the police say that technically no theft has occurred because the male who removed them from the room technically was now not the one to steal them and there's no cameras for the street. This seems completely incorrect to me and amazingly abusable if you know this alleged law. Is this actually a thing?

The Male is also apparently mentally unstable and what we believe to be their apartment has piles of rubbish out the front and has their windows broken recently which makes us think they’re causing trouble elsewhere than just taking parcels which is concerning for the safety of residents or that the building manager has connections to them and is defending them.

What are my options?, pretty prepared to escalate this further as far as it can go, if not go after the building manager/company.

Home & Garden

Comments

  • djkelly69 on 14/03/2023 - 17:04
    +5

    A person steals if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.

    That is the definition of theft from the Vic Crimes Act

    I guess maybe the police are saying he didn't have the intention to permanently deprive, but it is a pretty weak argument IMO. (Or he doesn't have the mental capacity to be charged so they don't want to deal with it/discuss with you).

    Further explanation of theft if anyone is bored and wants to review all that.

    • Almost Banned on 14/03/2023 - 17:43
      +5

      Yep - you don't have to 'take' the property away. Moving it is sufficient.
      There are plenty of cases where simply moving property from one area to another has been sufficient to establish the intent (Wallace v Lane springs to mind).
      These cops are lazy, useless morons.

      • luminousfox on 14/03/2023 - 18:01

        I was surprised they went through the effort of reviewing the footage and finding the person to begin with, I thought since it went that far there would be an reasonable outcome

    • Trance N Dance on 14/03/2023 - 17:43

      Might not technically constitute theft, but should probably ask the police if it constitutes vandalism or other infringements such as tampering of mail (I suspect this one might stick as you don't need to steal to be considered tampering mail).

      • luminousfox on 14/03/2023 - 18:00

        I thought at the very least they could snag him for littering!

    • Sinnerator on 16/03/2023 - 08:35

      The police probably interviewed him and after 5 mins listening to him talk about mickey mouse they threw the whole thing into file 13.

  • Crow K on 14/03/2023 - 17:05
    +8

    Civil suit against The Male. Good luck collecting it, but that's the meat and potatoes.

    Weaker option: Argue building manager 'should' have known packages outside the building should be inside the building and neglected to move them in (but is it their job to, etc?). I wouldn't want to argue this, but it allows you to put pressure on Building Manager to sort this shit out ("how many other building laws is this maniac breaking? has he de-activated the fire alarms or disabled emergency exits? why would your job include permitting him to do this stuff?")

    • Gunnar on 14/03/2023 - 17:20
      +1

      This but depending on the person’s capacity you’ll have an uphill battle with it because of the assessments that will need to occur.

      If the police are unlikely to place charges on the person you’ll be going after them civilly but you may be in a situation where you are perusing something out of principle

      • Crow K on 14/03/2023 - 17:24

        yeah, but this is how you (legally) apply heat to the situation. if The Male has financial assets, they are now at risk. if there's a relationship with the Building Manager that's been permitting this sort of thing to happen, it's about to be discovered - and so forth.

        unless they're an actual pauper with no assets that the government/NDIS has somehow launched into there (and is now paying the rent of), you have to follow the money and make trouble along the way to resolve it.

        • luminousfox on 14/03/2023 - 18:05
          +1

          It's a pretty upmarket apartment so we've been wondering why he's in there to begin with and if there's a relationship with the building manager keeping him around

  • payless69 on 14/03/2023 - 17:07
    +4

    Where is JV ?

  • lostgoat on 14/03/2023 - 17:21
    +4

    The Dude's found a loophole .
    I think everyone needs to setup parcel lockers.

    • luminousfox on 14/03/2023 - 18:07
      +1

      We moved from a bad area and was finally happy to have a spot to send everything, parcels lockers are amazing but limited to Aus post deliveries or Amazon lockers and not every website makes it clear who their shipping company is which had caused parcels to get stuck in the past

  • garetz on 14/03/2023 - 17:27
    +5

    Just removing them from the mailroom should constitute theft, just cause they left them outside doesn't mean that absolves him of any responsibility. Seems like the police just do not care as usual and doing the least amount of work as they possibly can.

    • AngoraFish on 14/03/2023 - 17:43
      +5

      Yep. If I take your car, then later leave it in the Coles carpark, it's still theft. The entire issue is not even a little bit debateable. The police in this case are just being lazy.

      • luminousfox on 14/03/2023 - 18:10

        We found it weird that they actually reviewed the footage to begin with, I assume gated community cctv cases are super easy to resolve which is why they progressed it so Its weird they'd suddenly be lazy when they have everything they need to catch the person. I think I would have preferred they did nothing to begin with heh

    • JIMB0 on 14/03/2023 - 18:12
      +1

      Depends if his intention was to deny the rightful owner the use of the item.

  • kipps on 14/03/2023 - 17:27
    +7

    Sounds like building manager has a negligence claim coming.

    • luminousfox on 14/03/2023 - 18:14
      +2

      The whole thing seems extremely suspicious and the whole thing with the building manager being involved makes it even stranger

  • AustriaBargain on 14/03/2023 - 17:59
    +1

    What was in the package anyway? And do you own your apartment? Does the Male own his apartment?

    • luminousfox on 14/03/2023 - 18:12

      It was only a $30 item amongst other packages from other residents that were "moved" , we used to live in a bad area and parcels would get stolen often so having a cctv and gated area was a seemingly an awesome idea. We own the apartment, not sure about the males

      • AustriaBargain on 14/03/2023 - 18:16
        +1

        Couldn't you just get the manager to have a word with the male and tell them not to touch other people's packages? It's crazy to leave them out on the street but who cares if he doesn't do it again. The police must have spent much more than $30 of resources looking into all this already.

        • luminousfox on 14/03/2023 - 18:45

          I assume that's already happened, just strange to me the police went to all that effort to stop on a technicality

          • AustriaBargain on 14/03/2023 - 18:50
            -1

            @luminousfox: Well I can imagine if this went before a judge the judge would tell the prosector off for wasting the court's time. There was no unlawful entry so what are they going to charge him with, being too lazy to bring them back to the mail room?

            • luminousfox on 14/03/2023 - 21:28
              +1

              @AustriaBargain: Mail tampering, littering, aiding in a theft. Surely moving mail into a more advantageous position for it to be stolen is a crime otherwise you could just pass stuff out of a shop to your buddies and technically you're just moving it out of the shop and they're just finding it with no knowledge of where it came from. The whole thing falls apart even more if you assume everyone was in on it

              • AustriaBargain on 14/03/2023 - 21:30

                @luminousfox: You gotta assume that if the cops talked to this guy or the manager, that the male won't be doing this again.

  • mitt on 14/03/2023 - 18:11
    +2

    With enough residents getting screwed over it looks like you may get enough momentum to replace the building manager. I assume you are an owner & its a body corporate?

    Don't tolerate terrible BC management/staff. Organise with the other owners & hold their nuts to the fire. BC/strata management is a garbage fire of an industry because people just give up whenever they are lazy/incompetent.

    • luminousfox on 14/03/2023 - 18:17

      It's just all so strange, any reasonable person would investigate parcels if they were by the property I don't know why he wouldn't collect them or if that was the truth to begin with

  • GourmetFoodie on 14/03/2023 - 18:19
    +3

    In our old building, the building manager would store parcels in a room only he had access to. Then there was a general mail room with lockable post boxes for each apartment. If your building can’t do this I’d suggest sending parcels to your workplace or a parcel locker.

    • luminousfox on 14/03/2023 - 18:27

      We have lockable post boxes but they only accept Aus post letters, parcel lockers are amazing but it's not always clear what delivery company websites are using to plan around them

  • GourmetFoodie on 14/03/2023 - 18:21

    Btw it doesn’t really matter what this crazy thief guy is doing. Unless you can catch him actually stealing and not just moving you don’t have a case. Even if you catch him actually stealing id imagine it’s a light penalty and only a short time before someone else in the building starts stealing parcels. You need to solve the root cause and not waste time on this one guy.

  • Savas on 14/03/2023 - 18:26
    +3

    does this mean I can rob someone’s house if I put all the electronics and jewellery on the front lawn for someone else to take ??

    • luminousfox on 14/03/2023 - 18:29
      +2

      That was my first thought, like this sounds insanely abusable especially if you have people in on it, like going into a shop and placing things outside the store for someone else to grab easily

    • lostgoat on 14/03/2023 - 18:33
      +2

      It's like a Pickpockets pass off.

    • AustriaBargain on 14/03/2023 - 18:52
      +1

      Would be unlawful entry, breaking and entering if it was locked. This is more like you've been invited to a dinner party and you move valuables from the dining room to the front lawn. Or you're sharing a house and you move your housemates property from the common room to the front lawn.

      • orangetrain on 14/03/2023 - 23:17
        +1

        if it was locked

        If a window on the second floor is unlocked, that's okay? Just asking for a friend.

        • AustriaBargain on 14/03/2023 - 23:21
          +1

          If you had reasonable belief that the owner allows you to go through that window, then yeah it's fine.

          • larndis on 15/03/2023 - 08:14
            +1

            @AustriaBargain: I don't think this guy had a reasonable belief the parcel recipients wanted him to move their parcels though.

  • Davo1111 on 14/03/2023 - 19:00

    Get the crazy dude evicted for some other reason.

    Tear up the building manager at the AGM for being neglegent. Possibly vote to remove him if hes that incompetent.

  • Ughhh on 14/03/2023 - 20:30

    How does the BM know the parcel outside is the same? Did he check each parcel?

    • luminousfox on 14/03/2023 - 21:24

      Exactly my thought too,the implication from the police officer is that the manager later saw them enough to claim that they were the stolen parcels, but not make any efforts to collect them. It really makes no sense to me other than the building manager being in on it. Even as a regular person if I see mail on the ground anywhere I do my best to return it to the address

      • Ughhh on 15/03/2023 - 10:39

        Male now allegedly places parcels outside the building and leaves the area without them.

        If there's no evidence of this, I would argue that the parcels the BM saw on the street are not the same.

    • kiitos on 15/03/2023 - 08:31

      Yes, you'd think either he was sure they were for the residents, and therefore moved them back, or wasn't sure they were for the residents, and therefore it's not an argument that the tenant didn't steal them, only moved them.

  • sidesw1pe on 14/03/2023 - 21:41
    +1

    So the building management deem it acceptable for tenants to remove others' mail/property from the secure mailroom and place them on the street?
    What is the purpose of the mailroom?
    What reason do tenants have to remove others' mail and leave it outside?
    No matter what, it sounds like theft to me, once the items have been removed.
    If this is all legitimate, then I guess you can walk out of the supermarket with your unpaid groceries, and when security stops you, you can say "don't worry man I'm not stealing these groceries, I am just going to leave them outside".
    And yes I skimmed the thread so if this has already been mentioned, my apologies if anybody feels upset.

  • bobbified on 14/03/2023 - 22:19
    +2

    The law here works on being able to prove something beyond reasonable doubt. I think the fact that the building manager said he still saw the parcels outside the building after the guy had moved them outside would cast enough doubt in a reasonable person's mind - it's entirely possible that someone else did come by and walk off with the boxes. Any reasonable lawyer would easily be able to argue this.

    Whether the parcels that the building manager saw were the same parcels or not is on him.

    • Switchblade88 on 14/03/2023 - 23:01

      The CCTV proving the parcels were taken without authority would be well beyond reasonable doubt.

      Where they ended up is irrelevant to the fact (and the proof) that they were taken. The manager spotting them afterwards is irrelevant to the charge of theft.

  • Not SkyNet on 15/03/2023 - 08:31
    +1

    Request that they revoke the persons access to the mail room if this is what building manager does not want to assist when they see parcels outside.
    If that person wants access, they need to have someone supervise them as they have shown they cannot be trusted to have unsupervised access.
    Taking property out of a secure location without due cause is theft, doesn't matter if they left it somewhere else or not. So that Person should no longer have the right to access if they cannot respect other people property.

  • jonkvh on 15/03/2023 - 11:43

    Just take it to the next meeting of the Body Corporate, if the cops aren't following up then the BC have to.

  • OzBargainGirl on 15/03/2023 - 11:47
    +1

    You can not fix other people's mental problems. Save your sanity and have parcels delivered to parcel locker. Claim loss via CC, to cover losses for your delivery. Whatever building manager asks for in the future, take all the time in the world to reply. Find a way to get a new building manager, if you have strata meetings.

  • Monty01 on 15/03/2023 - 16:28

    The normal reason given by the cops would be that it has not been taken from the premises so therefore not technically stolen. They like to use this to refuse to charge shoplifters at computer markets when someone pinches something from a stand but have not left the hall.

  • 2esc on 15/03/2023 - 19:15
    +2

    Inform other residents politely if they have lost mail you will have extra support.

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