rbinhood
Member
If it's junk, trash, or abandoned because it's been there longer than most regulations require to establish abandonment, a person can't be charged with stealing it because by definition, they are cleaning up trash, litter, or abandoned property.Regardless, glad the junk isn’t there any more. A year is much longer than most regulations require to establish abandonment.
I don't know where you got your law degree, but a public official is not the only one with authority to remove it. The general public has a right, and I would argue, a moral obligation to clean up trash, litter, and abandoned property left on public lands.
I have a friend who is a retired State Patrol officer who made a transfer mid career and became a conservation warden. He told me that he personally knows of many guns and weapons that were confiscated over the years that never made it to the evidence room, or got disposed of at public auction. The fact that someone is a government official doesn't make them immune from possible involvement in wrong doing.