Is paying a police officer to do something legal that is in theory part of their job, but isn&#39;t being done, illegal? Let's say you live in a house and have a neighbor who is a nuisance. The neighbor does various illegal things on a regular basis (car is extremely noisy above and beyond what is allowed in the law, loud music in the middle of the night that can be heard from the inside of neighbors homes, pool on roof seemingly without sanitation controls, burning trash on the sidewalk, etc, etc). Basically, a neighbor who all the other neighbors despise, but no one does anything because the nuisance neighbor would probably only increase his disrespectful behavior. I was discussing the issue with a friend, and I suggested that since police enforcement is very weak in the neighborhood, if it would be a possibility to just put a price on the &quot;job of enforcing the law&quot;. Essentially, you walk up to a random police officer and say: &quot;I'll give you 10k USD to do your job. That is, to go to this particular place, and observe the infractions occurring due to this nuisance neighbor, and do whatever the law prescribes you to do when you catch someone doing something illegal&quot;. Is offering the officer 10k to &quot;do his job&quot; an illegal act? Is this conceptually equivalent to offering an officer money to not do his job (a bribe)? Is offering the officer the money to perform his job considered a bribe? As another example. If your house is being robbed this very instant, and you know it, is it illegal to go to a police officer and say: &quot;my house is being robbed, I'll pay you 10k USD to go to my house and do your job&quot;? Is it immoral or unethical from either party (the payer or the police officer taking the payment)?
It depends on the jurisdiction, and what you hire the officer to do. It is generally legal to hire an off-duty police officer, and here is what Seattle says about that. They are held to the same standards as when they are on duty; they have to be off duty (and not on sick leave). They do have to submit an approval form that describes what they will do. While in uniform, the work has to be of a law enforcement or traffic enforcement nature (thus not bill-collecting or vehicle repo), also you can't work in an alcohol or marijuana sales establishment. Some of your interests would probably not be covered, since zoning-type infractions (pool) are not within the purview of the police, but burning trash on the sidewalk would be. Because of the requirement for approval, you probably can't pay to get a response to a robbery (still takes 24 hours to get &quot;short notice&quot; approval). It is not clearly illegal to offer an officer money to &quot;do his job&quot;, but it is also not clearly legal. It is illegal (bribery), if you With the intent to secure a particular result in a particular matter involving the exercise of the public servant's vote, opinion, judgment, exercise of discretion, or other action in his or her official capacity, he or she offers, confers, or agrees to confer any pecuniary benefit upon such public servant It is not obvious whether a peace officer is a public servant, as defined under the law. A &quot;public servant&quot; is any person other than a witness who presently occupies the position of or has been elected, appointed, or designated to become any officer or employee of government, including a legislator, judge, judicial officer, juror, and any person participating as an advisor, consultant, or otherwise in performing a governmental function and a &quot;peace officer&quot; is a duly appointed city, county, or state law enforcement officer By statutory stipulation, a LEO is &quot;appointed&quot;, and they are an employee of the government. Then when you hire them to do something, do you do so &quot;with the intent to secure a particular result in a matter involving the exercise of the public servant's exercise of discretion in his or her official capacity&quot;? If so, it is bribery (a crime). Since LEOs can legally be hired to enforce the law when off duty, the legality of that hiring must depend on the &quot;particularity&quot; of the job. If an officer has the discretion to arrest Smith for a criminal act, but declines to do so, then you cannot pay him to act otherwise. Officers generally have the discretion to arrest (or not) anyone committing a crime, so hiring an officer to &quot;control traffic&quot; or &quot;work security&quot; is not influencing the officer to exercise a particular form of discretion. The crucial question would be, why didn't they enforce the law in the first place?
They come to her house excessively and have even told her if she has house guests they will arrest her. Can they really do that? Absent special circumstances such as those discussed below, however, having house guests is not a crime, and some laws that purport to prohibit this are unconstitutional. But, there are a variety of proper and improper reasons that this could be happening, as well as some that are in a legal gray area. Clearly, the police are doing this for some reason, proper or improper, because it is a sustained pattern of conduct that seems to be singling out one person. But, without more of a factual context it is hard to tell what that reason is so that it is possible to determine whether or not their threat has a legal basis. Like most legal questions, the answer cannot be provided in a vacuum and a full factual context is necessary to know if the police conduct is illegal or not. Valid Reasons Part of A Pattern Of Evidence Showing A Suspected Vice Offense One possible subtext is that the police believe that the premises is a de facto house of prostitution, or that she is dealing drugs out of the house, even though they don't yet have the evidence to arrest her on those suspicions. The police could be implying in their threat to arrest her that the presence of &quot;house guests&quot; would give them probable cause to arrest her on suspicion of a vice offense such as prostitution or drug dealing. Municipal Ordinance Violations Many valid reasons involve municipal ordinances, almost all of which can be punished by arrest and incarceration just like a misdemeanor criminal offense, even when the ordinance does not describe conduct that would usually be considered to be criminal in nature. For example, municipal codes usually authorize law enforcement to arrest someone for a zoning violation, even though it would be very unusual to arrest someone for violating a zoning law. There are often municipal ordinances which limit how many house guests you can have at any one time in a single family house or apartment, such as fire codes and laws designed to prevent loitering and gang activity, and there are often rules that prohibit certain kinds of activities like loud and disorderly parties (especially where alcohol is served or available). But, these ordinances almost never prohibit all house guests. The police could think that she is operating a short term leasing operation (i.e. Air B-n-B) or hotel, in a place where this use of the property is banned by municipal ordinance, and it appears that her &quot;house guests&quot; fit this description. Many municipal ordinances impose curfews on minors, and someone could be arrested for having a party at which minor house guests are present after curfew under some of those municipal ordinances. Some municipal ordinances (or even sometimes state laws), which are not always constitutional or valid under federal housing laws, prohibit unrelated people from cohabiting, either because the cohabitation amounts to de facto polygamy, or because zoning laws prohibit more than a certain number of unrelated people from living at a residence. Valid Reasons Particular To Certain Individuals If someone is on probation or parole or house arrest or out on bail pending criminal charges, the conditions of that criminal sentence or bail condition could also limit the ability of someone to have house guests. For example, if someone had previously been convicted of disorderly conduct and noise violations and contributing to the delinquency of minors, with a wild party, a probation condition for that person might prohibit them from having house guests during the duration of the probation sentence. Similarly, many probation, parole and bail conditions, prohibit the person released in the community from associating with known felons or gang members. Civil or criminal protection orders can also prohibit particular people (e.g. ex-spouses) from being at a particular location. Many states impose restrictions on where sex offenders can reside that could be implicated in this case. A few states also have a criminal sanction of &quot;exile&quot; on the books that prohibits certain people from being in certain jurisdictions following their conviction. Gray Area Reasons It is also entirely possible that the police are asserting rights to do things that they don't actually have the right to do. And, in most jurisdictions in the U.S., it is not categorically unconstitutional for law enforcement officers to lie to members of the public about their authority or other matters, in order to achieve a law enforcement purpose, even if they would be violating the law if they followed through on their lies about what they are permitted to do. Improper Reasons There could also be clearly improper reasons for this conduct. For example: perhaps a police officer wants men to say away from his ex-spouse or daughter, even though he has no right to do so and his colleagues are backing him up, or perhaps the police think that her house guests are disreputable and are taking matters into their own hands without legal authority to keep &quot;bad people&quot; out of territory in their &quot;beat&quot;, or perhaps they suspect but can't prove that she deals drugs or conducts some other sort of illegal activity at her residence, or perhaps she is one of the few black residents of the neighborhood (or her house guests are black) and the police want to harass her to cause her to leave the neighborhood, and they don't think that she will be able to punish them for their misconduct effectively though legal channels before getting fed up and moving away. For example, if they make an arrest and can articulate some kind of alleged probable cause even if it doesn't hold up in court, they may be able to dramatically inconvenience this women with impunity, particularly if the local trial court judges that would consider the arrest decide to side with the police even when misconduct would be clear to a neutral observer.
Answering the question title, a Texas law enforcement officer can certainly make arrests in Louisiana these days under the right circumstances (I'm not about to look up the laws as of 1934). For starters, Louisiana law grants any person the authority to make an arrest when the person being arrested has committed a felony, whether or not that felony was committed in the presence of the person making the arrest. This is normally a legally risky thing to do (the arrest is illegal unless the person actually committed a felony, while a cop's felony arrest is legal as long as the cop had probable cause), but in this case the pair had been involved in a kidnapping and a robbery in Louisiana. Any person could have made a lawful arrest, and could have used necessary force to effect that arrest. But suppose the gang turned out to be innocent of the Louisiana crimes. In that case, a citizen's arrest would be illegal. But the Texas lawmen weren't at the ambush alone. They were there with the parish sheriff and a deputy, who were Louisiana peace officers with the authority to make an arrest on probable cause. And under Article 219 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, A peace officer making a lawful arrest may call upon as many persons as he considers necessary to aid him in making the arrest. A person thus called upon shall be considered a peace officer for such purposes. Neither of these things depends on the Texas officers' status as Texas officers. There are some arrests which are legal based on that (e.g. hot pursuit), and a Texas officer has some extra powers in Louisiana based on federal law that make an arrest easier (e.g. cops in the US can carry concealed firearms nationwide without needing a CCW permit), but under normal circumstances a Texas police officer has no special authority to make an arrest in Louisiana. However, it's not at all uncommon for police agencies in different states (or at the state and federal level) to cooperate on something, and there are ways to make it work out. With more planning, there are normally formal ways to do it instead of needing to rely on "we'll ask you for assistance" (for instance, officers could formally be appointed as deputies in the appropriate agency; this happens a lot on federal task forces, where a deputized state or local cop gets nationwide jurisdiction). If Bonnie and Clyde existed these days but the feds wanted to involve state cops, they'd just set up a federal task force, make Hamer a special deputy US marshal, and go from there.
You are conflating the crime against the state of possession stolen goods with the common law tort against the owner for conversion. To your questions: How would this proceed? It seems like it would be very difficult to prove (short of getting public surveillance footage) that I even bought the item. If you read the second paragraph of the page you linked it says: In many jurisdictions, if an individual has accepted possession of goods or property and knew they were stolen, then the individual is typically charged ... If the individual did not know the goods were stolen, then the goods are returned to the owner and the individual is not prosecuted. Proof of the crime involves a "beyond reasonable doubt" standard of evidence of both the fact that you have the goods and that you knew they were stolen. If you become aware that they were stolen (e.g. the police tell you) and try to keep them then you have just committed the crime. Proof of the tort requires a "balance of probabilities" standard of evidence that you have the goods and that they belong to someone else; your knowledge that they were stolen is immaterial. In the first instance, the police would probably knock on your door, tell you why they were there and ask if the version of the story they have from the thief is essentially true. What happens next depends on your response: "Yes, I knew it was stolen; you better arrest me and I will plead guilty." This will play out as you expect. "Yes, I didn't know it was stolen, I will go and get it for you." You return the goods, give a statement and may have to act as a witness in the prosecution of the thief. You are down $1,000 but are now older and wiser. "No, I have no idea what you are talking about." Well, you have now committed the crime of hindering a police investigation and have also committed the crime of possessing stolen goods - you can no longer claim that you didn't know the goods were stolen; the police have told you they are. What happens next depends on if the police believe you or the thief. Surely they couldn't/wouldn't get a warrant to search my house? Want to bet? They certainly have enough to get a search warrant if they want one (probably). Whether they seek one probably depends on the value of the goods, how busy they are and how much you pissed them off. Could I be prosecuted if I didn't know it was stolen? Not if you return it as soon as practicable after being made aware that they were. The scam This seems like a lot of work for a very small return - spend your time worrying about things that are more likely to happen. Good Title All of this is tied up with the concept of good title. Basically, you cannot gain good title to property from someone who does not have good title themselves; if you buy goods from a thief you do not own them. For example, if A has good title to the goods, B steals them and sells them to C who sells them to D then A still owns them and can demand their return from D, D could demand the return of their money from C and C could do likewise with B but as far as A is concerned it doesn't matter that C &amp; B have lost money; that is simply too bad for them.
Theft is of course illegal in all US states, and pretty much every other jurisdiction. In the US that is a matter of state law, not federal. It could be reported to the local police, but it might be hard to prove. Both landlord/tenant law and privacy law are largely matters of state law in the US, not federal law. Such laws vary a good deal in different states. In many states a landlord is allowed to enter the rented premises, usually on "reasonable" notice, or without notice if there is an emergency. If the landlord actually lives in another part of the house, and simply rents a room to the tenant, the landlord may be able to enter the room more freely than if it was a separate apartment or house. In many cases where there is a written lease or rental agreement, it will specify under what conditions the landlord or landlord's agent may enter, and how much notice is required. What does the lease in the current case say about that?
You don't make plea bargains with police officers. This answer discusses the ethics of plea bargains. Even if you made this deal with the police officer, you could renege on it at trial, and the police officer would have lost his or her opportunity to search the trunk. Extortion is generally defined as (this example from California): this obtaining of property from another, with his consent, or the obtaining of an official act of a public officer, induced by a wrongful use of force or fear, or under color of official right A plea bargain doesn't result in the obtaining of property. The plea bargain exchanges your statement of guilt of crime A for the prosecutions's dropping of charges for crime B.
Actually, neither the council nor a private owner are responsible for illegal actions by unauthorised people on their property. This is obvious: if an intruder enters your property and, while there, shoots someone you cannot be held responsible. However ... Since you have made them aware that there are intruders on their property acting illegally and causing a nuisance to the neighbours and they have done nothing they are quite likely negligent, even recklessly negligent. Rather than sue them, consult a lawyer and get them to write a letter that if they do not take action by X date you are going to sue them.
You are asking a different question The title to the earlier question -- &quot;Do the police have a civil duty to do their job&quot; -- is slightly misleading. The question is not whether the policy have an abstract &quot;civil&quot; duty to enforce the law, but whether they have a specific &quot;constitutional&quot; duty to do so. If they do have such a specific duty, then, as they OP says, they could &quot;be sued for not doing their job.&quot; As ohwilleke explains thoroughly, the answer to this question is &quot;no.&quot; The Supreme Court has consistently held there is no constitutional right to police enforcement of the law. In particular, the SCt has held that police aren't violating the 14th Amendment when they don't &quot;do their job.&quot; According to the Court, someone who is hurt when the police don't enforce the law, is not deprived of &quot;life, liberty or property without due process of law.&quot; This in turn means that the people who are hurt can't sue the police under §1983, which allows people to sue state or local officials who violate their constitutional rights. As you point out, the Nevada statute clearly requires officers to make an arrest in some cases. However, this requirement is not absolute; the statute also creates an exception to the requirement: a peace officer shall, unless mitigating circumstances exist, arrest a person when the peace officer has probable cause to believe that the person to be arrested has...committed a battery upon his or her spouse.. The statute goes on to explicitly exempt the officer and her department from liability if she decides not to make an arrest: Nothing in this section shall be construed to impose liability upon a peace officer or his or her employer for a determination made in good faith by the peace officer not to arrest a person pursuant to this section. Thus, the statute sends mixed signals to police officers. On the one hand, it requires them to make arrests in some domestic violence cases; on the other hand, it says they are not liable if they ignore this requirement. Taken together, the Nevada statute and the SCt's decisions mean people who are hurt if police don't make an arrest under 171.137 cannot sue the police under either state or federal law.