About 8 or 10 yrs. ago, I was metal detecting at Carmel Beach, which is near Monterey , CA. It's a city beach (as opposed to county or state, etc....) After leaving the wet sand, to walk back to my truck to leave for the day, I kept my machine on. Still detecting, while walking across the dry sand on my way out of the beach for the day. I got a signal, dug it up, and it was a pair of prescription glasses.
Naturally prescription glasses are of no value to anyone, except the person to whom they are prescribed. So when I got to the parking lot, sorting out my trash to prepare to throw in the garbage can, I also got ready to pitch the glasses in the garbage can too. But I looked a bit closer at them, and could see they were recently lost, and could see they were prescription, and could see they were sort of "high end". So I decided that rather than pitch them, I would run a C.L. "Found" ad. Not only for a "nice gesture", but also because sometimes the owner might tip the person who finds and returns them.
So that night, I posted to the CL "found" section, the following post: "Found prescription glasses on Carmel beach with metal detector. Reply to describe". That was all the ad said.
The next morning, I saw in my "in-box", that I had a reply. I opened it up, and saw that it was from a police officer at the Carmel police dept. They were asking if my glasses matched a certain description. And their inquiry stated that they had a person/tourist who had come into the station the previous day, reporting loss of glasses on the beach (filing a report, in case someone turned them in to lost & found). And the police, in -turn, had gone to the L&F section of CL, in case someone posted "found" glasses there. That's when they had seen my "found" ad.
Turns out it was not a match. The ones I had did not match what they were describing. So I emailed back a reply : "No. Sorry. These do not match that description".
I thought that was the end of the conversation. But no. I got yet another email back from this officer at the police dept. saying the following:
"Thanks for the reply concerning the glasses. And I'm sure you must find interesting things on the beach here. In the future, please bring all items to the dept., so as to be in compliance with the law. If the dept. is closed after hours, there is a night-slot in the door that you can slip items through. Because we frequently get reports for lost items here at the department " (this is a very touristy city)
When I read that, I was confused. I thought: what the heck does this lady officer mean by " .
... to be in compliance with the law" ?
So I started researching lost & found laws in CA. And .... CA's L&F laws are not much different than any other state. We have a threshold cut-off of items of "$100 or more", for when the person is supposed to turn it in to law enforcement. And after a waiting period (30 days?) you get it back, if no one claimed it. If the item is over $250 value, the police will run a L&F ad in a local circulating paper. If you want the item after 30 days (if no one claimed it), then you must pay for the cost of the ad that ran. Some states also charge you "storage" fees for the days it was there while waiting to see if someone claimed it. And states might have varying dollar thresholds of value of which triggers L&F laws to kick in.
These were born out of wandering cattle laws of the 1800s. So you can't merely take your neighbors cow that wandered out of a hole in the fence saying "finders keepers". Or if you find a mountain bike, or wads of cash that fell out of a Brinks armored car, then *obviously* it still belongs the owner, and you're under an obligation to turn it in.
And the law makes no allowance for you to perform your own repatriation attempts (ie.: CL found ads, or a paper pinned to a telephone pole, etc....). It strictly says to turn it in to the police for their steps. And the law makes no distinction on when YOU think the object was lost. Eg.: trying to second guess that a ring has been lost a long time , etc... Hence no matter how deep it was (evidencing having been there for awhile), you are still breaking the law by not turning it in. For example: depth of items on the beach often has no correlation to time-lost anyhow: Erosion can put items (coins, rings, etc...) from decades ago, right on top. Or conversely, a freshly lost zinc can be a foot deep ! Same for park turf: maybe you found it deep, but who's to say a gopher didn't put it down deep on a fluke ? In any case, the law makes no distinction. Just says all must be turned in.
And the law doesn't specify how items are to be valued. Ie.: do you go by melt value ? Pawn shop value ? Value when new ? It's silent on the subject. What's to stop someone from finding a low ball offer of $99 from some pawn shop, and thus claiming "gee, it's below the threshold, hence I'm not obligated to turn it in ?" Or what's to stop someone from finding a $500 apple phone, or $1000 tablet on a park bench, and claiming "gee it only has $1 of intrinsic plastic, silicone, copper, etc.... thus I'm under no obligation to turn it in ?" So asking a lawyer "how are things valued ?", he said "just turn it in to the police, and let them decide. Doh !
So getting back to my story: When the cop had told me to "turn in all items" (which I'm assuming they meant rings, glasses, valuables, etc...., not solo coins), I got the willies. Because I immediately knew that they now had my email address. And .... naturally .... like ALL OF US WHO METAL DETECT, I do not go to the police station with all my items.
And it worried me that perhaps I had put the "wheels in motion" for this cop to wonder "gee, all these guys with detectors on the beach, must be finding some goodies, and we never see any of them bring in their items". In other words, I might have "put up a flag on their radar" that perhaps previously had not crossed their mind (since my ad had said "found with metal detector".) And I wondered/worried that this might lead to a "no detecting" rule.
So after that, I have not run any more "found ads". Or if I did, I left out mention of "metal detector".
Heck, in the exact letter of the law, if you find something of value (that exceeds the $ value for your state) and run an ad, you are *already* in violation of the law, no matter HOW you found it (eyeballed it vs metal detected it, or however). And if you look at any city's CL L&F ads, you will frequently see persons who found various items of value (rings, glasses, cell phone, mountain bike, cash, etc....). And I suppose if some cops, in any city, wished to be anal, they could bust those persons for not turning things in to the police. Since, as I say, the law makes no provision for your own repatriation attempts.
And if you look at any metal detecting forum's "found" sections, (especially beach hunter forums), you will see no lack of md'rs proudly posting their latest show & tell rings, right ? How many of them do you think are trotting down to the police station to turn them in ? Thus technically all of us are violating the md'r code of ethics to "follow and obey all laws". Yet I don't see any LEO's trolling md'ing finds forums, to bust those people. It wouldn't be hard to identify them, track them down, and throw the cuffs on them. Yet obviously it's not happening, so it's of low concern. Yet technically we're all in violation.
