Trash talkin'
Like today's featured letter writer in The Bee, Tom L. Carroll, we had our first experience with Operation Cleanup this year. We had a little better experience that he did. I would start staking out the curb with binoculars if I had to keep cleaning up after people like Tom did. There's no excuse for the nonsense that happened to him. I appreciated the service and it worked out fine on our street. It was pretty hilarious, however, watching our neighbors' pile on the curb, expanding and contracting during the week before the pickup. They put out some pretty nice stuff, patio furniture, a fireplace tool set and some other cool things. So day by day, the junk just disappeared from their curb. On the day the trash pickup actually happened, there was almost nothing left!
The subject of who has the right to go through your trash can get far more complex, however. In my e-mail today was a tip from Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute on the privacy issues connected to trash. What if, for example, identity thieves, reporters -- or the cops -- decide to go through your trash on the curb? And while they are at it, what if they find some incriminating items that may or may not be yours?
From a story by Monica Bradbury of the Anchorage Press: "
For Jack Beltz, however, people looking through his trash turned out to be a major problem. Especially when those people were the cops and his trash included, according to court documents, one empty container of Coleman fuel, one empty acetone can, hundreds of matchbook covers with the striker plates removed, seven empty containers of HEET, twelve empty bottles of cold allergy tablets, stained coffee filters, stained tubing and stained latex gloves -- all items used to make methamphetamine.Beltz, a Wasilla resident, and his attorney thought the evidence should be thrown out -- the Alaska State Trooper and Palmer Police officer involved didn't have a warrant, after all. A judge in Palmer agreed. But when the State brought the case to Alaska's Court of Appeals, that judge's decision was overturned. It's not illegal for someone -- anyone -- to go through another person's trash without a warrant."