(no subject)

[which_chick]

It's illegal in Bedford County to write bad checks. You can prosecute assholes who give you bad checks UNLESS, and this is both (a) important and (b) not written down anywhere so that you can only find out about it when it happens to you, UNLESS that bad check is for rent and/or deposit on an apartment.

So, y'know, the seven hundred and fifty dollar rubber check that the cunt at 633 gave us? That one? We were told by the district attorney that he "declines to prosecute bad checks for rent" and so we can't do a fucking thing about it. Since this was the first time we'd ever gotten a bad check for rent that was not made good, we didn't KNOW that our district attorney "declined to prosecute" bad checks for rent. Bad checks for all other things are okay, though. You can prosecute those in Bedford County, just not bad checks for rent. Apparently the choice of which bad checks to prosecute is a matter of preference for the district attorney and if he (or she, but ours is a guy) does not feel it's a prosecute-worthy matter, you're up the fucking creek without a paddle. Huzzah!

This has been your daily helping of and justice for all.

Comments

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

He justified it by saying that landlords "... have the deposit to make up for the check." (No, we don't. The check was for deposit and first month's rent.)

When we informed him of that, he offered us the following very helpful advice: "Don't give them the keys until the check clears." -- in other words, it is our fault for being dumb enough to take a tenant's check. I'm sure glad that I got that deeply insightful advice for free. Gee, thanks, Mr. District Attorney!

See, the thing is that we were operating under the impression that it was illegal to kite checks and that persons who wrote bad checks would go to jail if they didn't make good on the bounced checks. If we had KNOWN that it was A-OK to write bad checks to landlords (but NOT to other businesses or people) for your rent and deposit in this county because the DA's office didn't bother to prosecute such things, we would bloody well not have taken a fucking check for deposit and rent.

As a side note, only checks worth $200.00 or more go to the unhelpful District Attorney. Checks worth less than that amount are handled by the district justices and they actually do things like send the bad-check-writers to jail if they don't make good on the checks.

I think it would be very helpful for the public to know that our DA declines to prosecute rubber rent checks because District Attorney is an elected office. Our current DA ran on a tough on crime platform. I guess he meant other kinds of crime besides kiting checks against landlords.

[fooliv.livejournal.com]

This is in Bedford, right? That limb might be already-half-sawed-off, I'd be careful about climbing out onto it. Namely, you guys aren't residents, just out-of-town landowners. Your vote of, hrm, nobody, does not out-vote the DA's apparent base of resident cheats and cheque-bouncers. It's populism vs. the plutocratic!

Of a sort. Sorry, Mr. Potter. The audience thinks Jimmy Stewart is prettier.

About the only way you could swing this is if you convince the hoopleheads that the DA's "landlords are open season" policy means a great deal of inconvenience and bad-blood between the renters in town and their prospective land-lords, who now will refuse to take cheques, or impose cheque-handling fees, or refuse access to new-rented properties until the cheque clears.

As a renter myself, I aver that such a prospect would definitely get *me* voting against such a personage. But then, I'm kind of a law-and-order sort, myself. Regardless of the interests.

[ksleet.livejournal.com]

Hoopleheads?

[fooliv.livejournal.com]

Deadwood reference. About the only reference from that show which *isn't* an outright obscenity.

[electroweak.livejournal.com]

It's probably an obscenity in Etruscan or something like that.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

We deserve the same protection under the law as, say, Giant Eagle, Bedford Carpet One, SAC Motors Inc., Oralee's Golden Eagle Inn, and a slew of other local businesses, none of whom are told that they have to suck it up when presented with a bad check. This is selective lack-of-enforcement aimed at a single kind of business. Either kiting checks is wrong or it is not wrong. You can't make it *wrong* to kite a check at Giant Eagle (for groceries) but *okay* to kite a check to VHDAI (for rent).

I'm writing a letter to the local paper. :)