Obviously, the great thing about electric cars is that you can plug them into an outlet to charge, rather than stop by a gas station and drop a bunch of money on gasoline. They’re not only environmentally friendly, but cost efficient and — considering you can avoid gas stations — time efficient. However, all that cumulative saved time might not be time well spent when you get arrested for theft. Atlanta man*Kaveh Kamooneh was arrested for plugging in and charging up at his son’s school.
Kamooneh was attending his son’s tennis practice at Chamblee Middle School in an Atlanta suburb, and plugged his Nissan Leaf’s extension cable into an outside outlet on school premises. A few minutes later, he noticed a police officer around his car, who informed him that charging the car with a public outlet without permission is theft. The officer didn’t arrest Kamooneh there, but instead filed a police report. Eventually, 11 days later, two deputies arrived at Kamooneh’s house and made the arrest.
The police did not ask school officials if they’d want to press charges, and arrested Kamooneh anyway, tossing him in county jail for 15 hours.
When plugged into a 110-volt outlet like the one at the school, Kamooneh says that the car only draws about one kilowatt per hour, which costs less than ten cents of electricity. He claims his Leaf was plugged in for about 20 minutes, which makes the arrest over five cents of electricity theft.*The officer that arrested Kamooneh, Sgt. Ford, said that a theft is a theft, and he’d absolutely make the arrest again should the situation present itself.
So, next time you want to plug your phone into an outlet somewhere, make sure you have express consent from the people who pay the electricity bill, or else you could spend your day in jail.
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