OT Should I tell the police?

reading all the responses, I will toss in mine:

1. try again with the police. Maybe go to the station with the license plate written down. I have had it go both ways "we can't tell you - where is the car?" and a smirk, eyes rolling directed at the "smarty pants citizen", run the plate, and then "yes, it is stolen - where is it?". If they won't just run it, tell them where it is and let them investigate.

1. If you can, see if the police will at least tell you if the registered address is in your HOA, so you can try to locate the owner and prevent it being towed by the HOA. I have had a cop in a cruiser tell me the registered address so I could walk across the street and tell them to move their car or it will be towed. Of course, this was right there, and the cop told me the address once he realized what the deal was - I was dong this guy a favor.

2. Does your HOA not keep a list of license numbers and HOA owners? Many do. Do any neighbors know who the car belongs to? Are their assigned parking spaces?

1. If you can determine the car is not stolen, belongs to an HOA owner, and you can locate him (or the police can do a welfare check), and you realize he is simply out of town, tell the HOA to give the guy and his car a break. If they seem belligerent as most HOAs are, keep filling up the tire, or forget about it - your choice.

I concur with the thoughts to let the police do their job. The car could be stolen, or it could belong to a lady who has fallen and can't get up. Try to eliminate these types of possibilities first.

Why not? Getting shot is also a possibility

Call the cops, let them handle it or just let it go. Around here, I would guess it was just a snow bird who will be here sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

If it is worth $25 to you

But does the HOA know who it belongs to? Could just be some old bitty that saw the flat tire violation and had to stick her nose into it. Rules, you know.

Agree not to open a door. If you think it is perhaps abandoned, call the police. If it is a neighborhood of elderly, the owner could be dead and the HOA can then tag the house.

Never figured why people would move to a location with an HOA anyway. I don't need anyone telling me how to live and tell me I can't paint my house black and yellow.

They want to live in an area where *other people* can be told what they must do and not do. But these types never imagine that the rules will also be applied to them, so when that happens, they go ballistic.

Read any account of a ruckus over an HOA infraction, and that's the basis of the story.

I am not sure about all HOAs but the rules at the one my wife runs is renters register their cars. Owners do not have to. Usually there will be someone who knows who the car belongs to anyway. That is where the HOA management simply needs to know someone in the gossip network. If they have a country club, I would start with the wait staff. They hear everything and know who to ask if they haven't heard.

There might be a chance that the car's owner just does not get out much and they don't even know they have a bad tire because Micky keeps it aired up for them

It might just be a little old lady who owes him a big batch of cookies. ;-)

Except that most states have data privacy laws that restrict the amount of information that is considered public, which usually renders the information available next to useless for the average snoop. Also, it's not unusual to restrict individual access to only that individual's information; if you want someone else's, you need their written consent.

I doubt these data mining companies really care about the law and some are actually located offshore.

I doubt these data mining companies really care about the law and some are actually located offshore.

and how careful are they in verifying a person's authorization? I am pretty sure at least one has been forged in the past.

I was referring to this type of authorization/consent:

"Also, it's not unusual to restrict individual access to only that individual's information; if you want someone else's, you need their written consent."

On 15 Oct 2014, "Bob F" wrote in alt.home.repair:

In my town it's illegal to leave your car parked on the street overnight. The police don't rigorously enforce the law, but I was ticketed once many years ago.

I would consider a car that has been sitting on a public street in the same place with flat tires for 3 weeks to probably be abandoned. If I saw such a car in my neighborhood I would definitely consider calling the police. Especially if it's near my property. I'd probably ask some of the neighbors if they knew anything about it first.

My mother put some plastic fern or ball on the antenna, but that was more so she could find it in a parking lot than to distinguish it from cars that looked alike.

My antenna retracts, so I couldn't do that if I wanted to. And a lot of people don' have antennas?, or have little ones.

Don't do what I did once. In a rental car went to Disney, Anaheim [forgot to really, really identify exactly where parked] go to Disney World and spend at least four hours, then come out and look for a car that you've really only seen from the INSIDE! well, ...uh, it's white.

The only thing that lightened my day was since the four hours were spent in lines, I got my money for entrance AND the money for parking refunded! Plus, some nice guy in a pickup truck offered to drive us up and down the rows and rows in the area I thought it was parked in. So we did find the rental rather quickly.

Now, to avoid that scenario I walk backwards away from the car to remember what it should look like as I'm going towards it. [trick learned from a mountaineer] So far works well. You see the way the car sits, the landscape, the background, haven't lost another car since then.

there is also

It has most certainly happened. For instance, the birther lunatics have openly boasted about forging credentials in order to unlawfully access the President's Selective Service record. They've also gained access to commercial databases to get his SSN and publicized that. In my state, there's a huge pile of lawsuits pending due to persons working in law enforcement and other parts of the government who habitually snooped the records of many private individuals. It's one thing to have a cop run your plate on a traffic stop. It's another thing to find out that the cops were routinely looking up information on any pretty girl they encountered, as well as on their neighbors, and their exes' significant others, etc. People found this out by filing requests to see who'd accessed their data. One woman discovered that her records had been accessed by dozens of cops hundreds of time. It turned out that one of the cops decided she was hot, and spread the word, so all of his buddies looked her up, too.

I do that "walk backwards" now and again. Great technique. I've also been known to put some thing on the dash board, like pair of gloves.

Same here. So when a car was left overnight across the street from my house, my neighbors called the cops. The cops blew them off. So the hubby goes to check out the car. He discovered it was unlocked and had camera and computer gear on the front seat. He called the cops again, thinking it must have been stolen, only to be blown off again. He was

Some parking lots are huge. I've had the experience of approaching a parked car that looked like mine. I've experienced a moment of fear when I walked down the row where I thought it was, and it wasn't.

A strip of red reflective tape, 2 or 3" wide, across the car, just above the windshield, and another just above the back window. If you can see the roof line, you'll know your car from hundreds of yards away.

If you're coming over a rise at 60, and a car is at a stop sign ahead, only your roof line may be visible. Depending on the color of your car and the background, it may be inconspicuous. The strip of red should catch the driver's eye.

That tape is hard to remove. If I were looking for cars to steal, I wouldn't consider one with red tape that made it stand out like a sore thumb.