[sudo-discuss] Stealing Shit Policy

[Jake]

thanks Null (whoever that is) for bringing this up and suggesting good 
pointers on how we should deal with such situations.

I agree with Patrik that it's important for someone to take a picture, 
when someone makes enough of a problem that it takes multiple people to 
deal with them, a photograph is essential for two reasons:

1. it allows us to share with each other the knowledge about a problem 
person in case they come back (expecting no one will remember them)

2. it lets them know that we will not forget who they are, and that they 
should forget about us and never come back.

I must stress that #2 is the most important aspect of this, because 
ultimately our goal should be for problem people to go away and never come 
back.  Ideally they will tell their friends "don't bother, those people 
are not the victims we believed them to be" or a paraphrase of that.

in particular, read the story of "Thief" from the noisebridge 86 wiki:
https://noisebridge.net/wiki/86

"This guy went into the back classroom and took Rayc's wallet out of his
  backpack. Rayc saw him with the wallet in his hand and the guy tried to
  say it was his. He then started running towards the door and was tackled
  by Jake. We made him show us that nothing was in his pockets, and he kept
  avoiding the big pocket in the front of his jacket. This pocket turned
  out to have Sasha's smart phone. During the search his crack pipe fell
  onto the floor and broke into many pieces. We let him go and told him
  not to come back."

It took several people holding onto him to keep him from exiting down the 
stairwell with people's property.  He really wanted to leave but he did 
not hit or strike anyone at any time, which is why we let him go after 
searching him and getting the stolen items back.

When there is no photograph, it's basically impossible to prevent a person 
from coming back whenever they want unless there is a person there who 
will recognize them.  We can't be playing cat and mouse with people who 
want to take advantage of us.

-jake