Cab said:
Are you within your legal rights to break a lock that someone else has erroneously (or intentionally) put on your bike? Or would that be criminal damage?
RE Criminal damage (or not) Sorry for the long post – but feel it’s relevant:
A personal example was when my partner had her car taken by bailiffs (unpaid parking ticket she is adamant she didn’t receive – came back from holiday and her car had gone with an £800+ ransom posted through the letterbox from ccs enforcement – bunch of crooks!)
She paid the outstanding amount in full and I cycled all the bloody way to Croydon (for those of you who haven’t been there – even the ice age took one look and retreated) to pick the car up from some tosser’s car dealership cum breakers yard only to be told, on arrival, that it had to be picked up by her (not me) because she’d paid the bill on her card, and that if she wasn’t there in the next 10 minutes they would keep the car overnight and charge us another £150 for “storage” or scrap it if we didn’t return the next day. Made me a little peeved!
The car was fenced in by the sort of joined together wire segmented fences that are put around construction sites / festivals. I believed they were acting unreasonably so I went to B&Q and bought an adjustable spanner, returned to the tosser’s site and set about dismantling the fence that was preventing me from driving the car away. I called the police just before I entered the chav’s site - thought there might be a bit of trouble – sure enough king chav wasn’t best pleased – managed to unbolt one section and get the fence open before they knew what was happening – police arrived as the owner and his goons surrounded me.
They were a nice pair of coppers, but informed me straight way that I could be arrested for criminal damage to the fence. I pointed out that I hadn’t damaged the fence (only undone a few bolts and was perfectly willing to put it back together once I had the car back that I believed it was unlawfully holding – seeing as all fines had been paid etc.)
There followed a little debate –
Police: You might not have damaged it permanently but you have rendered it unfit for purpose.
Me: It’s being been used unlawfully to prevent me from accessing and using my property.
Police: Yes – but it’s his land.
Me: Yes – but it’s my car.
Police: But you’ve damaged his fence.
Me: No I haven’t – I’ve taken it apart and am willing to put it back together again when it’s not preventing me from taking my property back.
And on and on
End result – didn’t get arrested - got the car back there and then but had to put the fence back together under the eye of the police, king chav and his goons.
Not recommending this action and I’m sure on another day, with other police officers, it could have gone another way. Must stress that I was polite and respectful to police at all times and do not recommend that anyone else takes this course of action – although it was fun at the time.