Temporary theft, or, removing someones property to deliver it to their home or office If I take somebody's property without consent, with the intent of keeping it, it is theft. If I take somebody's property without consent, but return it to them immediately, what law am I violating? Assume I return the property in perfect state, completely undamaged. For example: The Ministry Of Defence (MOD) has placed No Trespassing signs near a military base. I remove the signs and return them to the headquarters of the MOD¹. Someone has attached a trail camera in the forest. I take it down and bring it back to the owner. The local authority has put a sign indicating through-traffic through my street. I remove the sign and deliver it to the local authority offices. Scientists have installed measurement equipment to monitor something. I remove the equipment and return it to the institute owning it. I'm a nuisance in any case, but what law am I violating, if not theft? ¹ I heard about it in a sort of cat-and-mouse game between British peace activists and the police: 1. A group of peace activists walked past a "No trespassing" sign near a military base, in order to document (and perhaps disrupt) activities. They are arrested for walking past a "No trespassing" sign. 2. A group of peace activists remove the "No trespassing" signs. Others walk past the location of the sign. They say that they have not seen the "No trespassing" sign, and can apparently not be arrested for violating it when the owner has not clearly indicated "No trespassing". However, they are arrested for theft (or conspiring to steal) Ministry of Defence property (the signs). 3. A group of peace activists remove the "No trespassing" signs obtained at a military base, drive to the headquarters of the Ministry of Defence, and deliver the signs at the reception. Meanwhile, others walk past the location of the sign. Police are not sure what to arrest them for, for they have not stolen the signs and the "No trespassing" is apparently not valid when not clearly stated.
All of these sound like violations of the Criminal Damage Act of 1971. The courts seem to construe "damage" fairly broadly, to include damage that affects an object's value or usefulness, so I'd imagine that removing signs or cameras or anything else would satisfy that definition.
Utah has a lot of public parks, so to point in the right direction, I will assume that this is a public park in Salt Lake City, it's just a plain old grassy field, and it's not during a special event. A person is suspected of some crime like selling drugs, not arrested, but told by a police officer to go away and never come back. This is way beyond the power of the police. After due legal process, a proven (not just suspected) public menace could be ordered by the court to stay away from the park. A police officer can, of course, order a person to leave a park when they violate a park rule, in fact rule number 1 is "It is unlawful for any person to do or to allow or permit any of the acts prohibited by this chapter in any park in Salt Lake City", so the police cannot legally turn a blind eye to rule violations. Violation of park rules is an infraction which can earn you a ticket of up to $299. However, the officer can tell you to go away, rather than giving you a ticket or arresting you. But an police order cannot issue a unilateral restraining order. Apart from city laws, there are general state laws regarding trespass and destruction of property. The state criminal trespass law says that A person is guilty of criminal trespass if...knowing the person's... entry or presence is unlawful, the person enters or remains on to which notice against entering is given by...personal communication to the person by the owner or someone with apparent authority to act for the owner In this case, the owner is the city, and the officer has apparent authority to act for that owner. In the case of private property, the owner or his agent has very broad authority to give notice requiring you to leave (e.g. if you don't like their politics or their shirt); but in the case of public property, the government has more narrowly circumscribed authority to kick you out.
Broadly speaking, theft offences in common law jurisdictions are defined as the dishonest appropriation of property that belongs to another with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it, without proper authority (e.g. permission or legal right to do that). Appropriation means the assumption of the rights of ownership of the property, i.e. behaving as if you were now its owner, not simply or solely the taking of the property. Possible defences include absence of intent to deprive the rightful owner of the property and intent to search for the rightful owner of the property and return it to them. You say: The facts are presented as follows: One day, couple wakes up to $120,000 extra dollars due to teller error. The money was intended for a business. They are aware that this must be an error but spend the money anyway. The bank wants the money back. The couple quits talking to the bank. The couple is charged with theft and receiving stolen property. I don't know about the charge of receiving stolen property (unless that relates to how they transferred or spent the money) but on the facts presented it's certainly prima facie theft. Reportedly, by their own admissions they found money in their account that wasn't theirs, they knew it wasn't theirs and they spent it.
If the police are able to attain a warrant that for some reason identifies your room and your things in particular, then they can search your room and seize your things. Ideally the police would have to give the judge or magistrate reasonable suspicion that their target has put some evidence in your room, or that some of your things are evidence relating to the purported crime. In practice, warrants err on the side of generality, so the police can easily get a warrant to search "the whole residence" without contemplating the nuance of which tenants use which rooms. Likewise, when determining what to seize, the police can certainly choose to err on the broad side and seize anything that meets the criteria of the warrant without stopping to determine who owns what. "Respect" of any sort is not a legal factor in the execution of an approved warrant.
Many states, including Colorado, at Colorado Revised Statutes § 18-4-401, have consolidated a wide variety of common law crimes related to taking property that doesn't belong to you into a single consolidated theft statute which is very broadly defined. In those states, this offense would constitute theft. The definition of theft in Colorado (at Colorado Revised Statutes § 18-4-401(1) is as follows: A person commits theft when he or she knowingly obtains, retains, or exercises control over anything of value of another without authorization or by threat or deception; or receives, loans money by pawn or pledge on, or disposes of anything of value or belonging to another that he or she knows or believes to have been stolen, and: (a) Intends to deprive the other person permanently of the use or benefit of the thing of value; (b) Knowingly uses, conceals, or abandons the thing of value in such manner as to deprive the other person permanently of its use or benefit; (c) Uses, conceals, or abandons the thing of value intending that such use, concealment, or abandonment will deprive the other person permanently of its use or benefit; (d) Demands any consideration to which he or she is not legally entitled as a condition of restoring the thing of value to the other person; or (e) Knowingly retains the thing of value more than seventy-two hours after the agreed-upon time of return in any lease or hire agreement. Thus, it is legally theft when the employee concludes that he doesn't plan to return the computer, but not when he is planning on returning it and just hasn't gotten around to doing that. But, as a practical matter, a conviction can probably be obtained from circumstantial evidence and a failure to return the item within a reasonable time (if there is no more specific standard set for the time that it is required to be returned and if no demand for its return is made by the company). In states that don't have a consolidated theft statute, figuring out which of the various common law property crimes such as larceny and embezzlement apply to this fact pattern is trickier and will come down to the exact language of the statutes in question and the case law interpreting those statutes. Larceny, at common law, was the non-violent taking of tangible personal property with an intent to permanently deprive its owner of it. Embezzlement, at common law, was the taking of property from someone who has placed you in a position of trust with respect to that property without authorization. There are, in states with such distinct subtypes of theft, legitimate arguments that either, both, or neither, or those specific offenses apply to this fact pattern. The position of trust component takes the facts further from the heartland of larceny. The fact that it is tangible personal property rather than money, takes it further away from the heartland of embezzlement. There are probably other specific common law theft offenses that could also be implicated that I haven't mentioned.
There is no general rule about ownership: one parking lot I know is owned by the city, another is owned by the company that operates the mall, and in a third case it is owned by a third party who doesn't operate the mall. Either way, the owner of the parking lot has the property right to limit how it is used, and their agents (security guards, for example) can request that you refrain from skateboarding. They can evict you; they may not have the legal authority to physically toss you off the property, but they can probably perform a citizen's arrest for trespassing. None of this depends on how many cars are in the parking lot. It is more likely that a governmentally-owned parking lot will have a corresponding law restricting its use (whereas in the case of a private parking lot, restrictions center around general property law and the law of trespass).
First off, you cannot booby trap your property, period. It is both illegal and tortious. But, as you noted, there are already questions/answers that deal with this issue. Sure enough, if the police get a no-knock search warrant, that in and of itself is the Court order allowing entry by any means necessary. When the officers, there by right of law, breach the outer perimeter and stop at the warnings, they will not be seeking any other court orders to have you allow them "safe entry". Their warrant gives them all the right they need, as probable cause of crime and violent intent or intent to destroy evidence was already presented to a judge. If, in real life, you actually put up signage or state explicitly that they're being forewarned that you intend to harm, trap, maim, or otherwise make it unsafe to enter; or that doing so will result in an attempt to destroy evidence, that is something they have already assumed (hence the seeking and granting of the no-knock vs. a regular search warrant). However, the signs in and of themselves are not protected speech, but rather overt threats, and that would put you in a very precarious position indeed. If the police get a "no knock" warrant (the most invasive, difficult to get warrants, whereby there is a grave risk of destruction of evidence or injury to persons), the police will ensure they have safe passage &ndash; they've come prepared for dangerous entry long before your signs, but once they see them, you could rest assured they will take them as they are intended: as a direct threat to their safety, and they will deploy a SWAT or other heavily armed entry team (who is usually there anyway for these dangerous entries). You could expect things like smoke/out canister and teargas, flash bangs, and heavily armed and well armored officers attempting to force you from your dwelling. Presumably, if you need to disarm traps to escape the situation, they can enter. Assuming you're home when they invade with chemical weapons, whether you come out or not, they will force you to disarm whatever booby trapping you may have in place that may destroy evidence, likely walking you in as their human shield in the event you're lying about any dangerous ones. That is probably your best case scenario. They may just decide to throw you through the perimeter once they get their hands on you, just to see what happens! If you don't exit and are home or if you are lucky enough to be out, the bomb squad, ATF, and SWAT will converge on your property in less than typical means. Because from your warning they can assume some incendiary or explosive device exists, bringing it into the jurisdiction of other agencies. If they cannot disarm the trap, they would send a robot in first to set it off, or cut through your roof, or knock down a wall &ndash; whatever it takes to get in without using a typical means of ingress/egress, so as not to chance your trap. Regardless, you can rest assured that they will get in, and you will pay for the trap you set for law enforcement. Further, to whatever charges you'd have been faced with from evidence flowing from the original warrant will now be added additional charges like attempted murder of a peace officer; if you have any roommates or known associates: conspiracy to do those things; attempted destruction of evidence, criminal interference with a police investigation ... all at a minimum. If anyone is actually harmed, your signage offers you no shield from criminal or tort liability, and you will be lucky to live through the experience once they get their hands on you. Police tend to not like being the targets of intentional maiming, dismemberment or death. You have to understand that, according to this hypothetical, you are intentionally trying to harm law enforcement, or destroy evidence of your dangerous criminal activity. These are not invaders, or intruders according to the law; they are the people whose job it is to enforce the laws, collect the evidence (if you weren't getting arrested pursuant to the fruits of the warrant, you certainly would be at that point). The signs themselves would make excellent exhibits in the coming case of State v. you. BTW: The only reason they have left John Joe Gray alone is that he knows the Henderson County Sheriff Ronny Brownlow, who has been told that the ATF, FBI, and State SWAT, would all be happy to enter and get or kill Mr. Gray if need be. Since the Sheriff never filed any federal charges, and has determined that he doesn't want to breach (and it's in his jurisdiction to determine this), the Sheriff, aware that Gray's entire family is holed up in the "compound", decided it's not worth going in. It's as well known as it is anomalous. When the police want in, and have the right to get in, they will get in. That Sheriff just decided it's not worthwhile.
There's the question whether something is lost property or abandoned property. You'd be allowed to keep abandoned property, but keeping lost property without looking for the owner is in many places considered theft. A car on your land is quite likely abandoned by the last driver (people don't usually lose cars). But the question is whether it is abandoned by the owner; if the car looks like it has some value then it is unlikely to be abandoned by the owner and more likely that it has been stolen. I'd report the car to the police; then it's up to them to find the owner or not. If they can find him, and the car was not abandoned, but actually lost (unlikely) or stolen (more likely), you have the satisfaction of being an honest person helping either a very stupid car owner or a crime victim to get their property back. If they can't find him, usually the property will then belong to the finder.