If you let a thief into the building, are you liable? In a building with gated entry, if a resident lets a stranger into the building, and he turns out to be a thief, would the resident who let him in be liable for the damages?
The primary legal question is whether the resident (tenant) has breached a duty of care. There are all sorts of laws establishing duties of care, such as between doctor and patient, which may be created by a legislature or may be part of common law tradition. There is a duty of care imposed on a landlord w.r.t. the tenant, requiring that the premise be &quot;secure&quot;, therefore a landlord might easily be held liable if the main door into the building was not locked. This duty is a specific instance of a general duty from tradesman/businessman to customer. As far as I can determine, there is no such statutory duty imposed on tenants in Washington state, and none from case law being revealed by a few cursory searches. In order to be subsumed under general &quot;everybody has a duty to everybody else&quot; law, the damage would have to be foreseeable. It is said that &quot;If something is foreseeable, it is a probable and predictable consequence of the defendant’s negligent actions or inaction&quot;. This mean that a reasonable person would have known that, under the circumstances, the damage is likely to result. Circumstances vary quite a bit, and there is no general rule about holding the door open for another person. If there is abundant signage reminding tenants to never ever let in a stranger no matter that their excuse and/or if the premise is in a crime war-zone, the outcome is more likely to be considered to be foreseeable.
You may contact a towing company; they will ask who you are, and will politely inform you that since you aren't the property owner, they aren't authorized to take someone else's car that is trespassing on the property. [Addendum] The first step in unraveling the legalities of the situation is seeing that only the property owner can give permission to enter (park) on the property. That permission can be rescinded, but only by the owner. The owner seems to have given permission and has stated in advance some conditions under which permission might be rescinded. The towing company could be called (by the owner) to act as the agent for the owner and remove the offending vehicle; but the towing company cannot just up an do this on their own. If they were to spontaneously tow a vehicle without officially acting on behalf of the owner, they would be liable for damages, owing to their having torted some guy's chattels. So the company will want to know that they are protected, in acting as the agent of the property owner. One way to do that is to verify that the person calling the towing company is the owner. Another would be to get the caller to swear that they are the owner and indemnify them against damages, in case they get sued. That pound of cure is more costly and annoying than the ounce of prevention of making sure that you're towing a car with proper authorization, so it's unlikely that they would just tow the car on your say-so. You might try suing the complex owner for some kind of breach of contract, if you think you have a contractual right to a parking space and they are negligent in doing what's necessary to meet your contractual right. The lease says "we may...", not "we will", so they haven't promised to absolutely enforce this rule. Or, of course, you could call the manager and mention that there's still a problem.
The owner would need to go through the eviction process, and would need to show that the tenant had violated the terms of the agreement. Conceivably, a tenant could be evicted for using the property to carry out a criminal enterprise, but the courts would have to decide if that is the case. The underlying issue would be whether allowing the tenant to remain would constitute a public nuisance threatening public safety and morals and would cause damage to the owner in the form of loss of value in the property. The owner's attorney would study the specifics and give an appraisal of the likelihood of succeeding in court.
As you note, it does appear that this tenant has committed one or more crimes. In Pennsylvania crimes are prosecuted by the state, and you can begin the process by filing a private criminal complaint with your local Magisterial District Court, which will forward it to your county's District Attorney for review and prosecution. You've essentially written the complaint here; now you just have to file it. The criminal process would proceed independently of whatever civil processes you might be pursuing.
I think the officer is probably lying, not just mistaken, but they are not required to always be truthful. In addition to the law against possessing ID with intent to commit, or to aid or abet, any crime, it is also against the law to be knowingly in possession of a stolen credit card, or any other property. An example of a strict-liability possession crime, which the officer knows of, is that it is a crime to possess heroin, period. I am skeptical that the officer actually believes that there is a law making it a crime to be in possession of a credit card with permission, and suspect that he thinks it is stolen.
Probably not. Theft generally involves an intent to permanently deprive someone of property, or knowledge that one is taking actions that have the very likely probability of permanently depriving them of property. Here, there is an intent only to hold possession of the keys during the shift and to return them. Also, while the surrender of keys is contingent upon the incentive of further employment, it is still a voluntary surrender of the keys. The place where theft issues could arise is if the keys are not returned by the person holding them, either at the end of the shift as punishment, or in mid-shift, if someone insists upon their return, either in an emergency or because they are sick of this manager and want to quit. If keys were retained in those circumstances upon a demand for their return, there might be a problem. This is because continuing to refuse to surrender possession of property permissively given to someone when that permission is revoked, in the absence of a legal right to impose a possessory lien, would generally constitute theft. While the purpose for the manager holding keys in this particular situation don't seem very valid, I can imagine circumstances (e.g. MRI technicians, jail guards, underwater divers, the site only has tandem parking), where retaining keys during a shift might be reasonable and appropriate.
In the US it is generally illegal for you to open somebody else's mailbox. Your best course of action is to contact your neighbor and let them retrieve the package for you. In practice it might depend on your relationship with your neighbor. If you are good friends, they are unlikely to object or report you to the authorities as they'll be willing to trust that you were just retrieving your mis-delivered package. If you don't know your neighbor, or if you are on poor terms with them, they have no reason to trust your motives and they could reasonably think you were stealing from them or invading their privacy. As a tangential footnote: yes, people really can face federal charges for tampering with mailboxes. Recently a former city prosecutor and a former police chief for Honolulu were convicted of attempting to frame a relative on federal charges for stealing a mail box. A mistrial was declared on the mailbox theft charges, and in the process, an extensive web of corruption was revealed involving the former prosecutor and former police chief.
You aren't liable unless you do something stupid with them. Possessing keys doesn't make you the owner, it makes you someone with keys. That said, we could probably come up with negligent things you could do that would be a problem. Like have a huge heroin party (let's assume this is a thing) filled with minors in the back yard. The family of an overdosed kid would have a good action against you personally for being so negligent, and also probably against the homeowner and their insurance as the property owner. If the party turned wild and the house burned down, the owner would likely have good action against you as well. I doubt this is really a problem for you, so there's no need to worry.