Arrested for ''abstracting electricity''

'Community' Officers are a plague, any ol' moron can sign up.

I thought that you could always use the sockets on the trains, freely? (If they didn't allow it, they could just turn them off...)
 
There are plugs on tube trains?

This is Overground.

Yes there are often random sockets about, I assume for things like vacuum cleaners?

I expect theres a lot more to this story. I seriously doubt that 2 Fake Coppers would bother going to this length for a guy charging his phone. I expect his was probably abusive off the bat to cause this.
 
The plugs supposedly say "cleaners use only and not for public use", so he would have known that he shouldn't have been doing it.

I'd expect to be told to stop doing it though, possibly given a fine or something. But to be arrested I'm guessing he was aggressive and argumentative when asked to stop, hence the second charge.
 
The plugs supposedly say "cleaners use only and not for public use", so he would have known that he shouldn't have been doing it.

I'd expect to be told to stop doing it though, possibly given a fine or something. But to be arrested I'm guessing he was aggressive and argumentative when asked to stop, hence the second charge.

I think that's pretty much it, they're marked as cleaners only and he probably got stroppy when asked to abide by the sign.

I think they're only rated/safe to use when the train is stationary as they're not equipped with anything to help with how the possible surges/changes in voltage and current as the train passes over joints in the tracks (so if nothing else there is a chance he'll kill his iphone).

It amazes me that people can't manage without their phone for long enough to get into work and plug the charger in there (or can't plan ahead enough to charge it at hiome).
 
if everyone did it it would add up to hundreds of thousnads a month in extra electricity expenditure. So while this individual probably only used up 10p worth of electricty they have to take a tough line because humans are sheeple.

I used to work at a large exhibition centre traffic control after graduation. You won't believe how many copycats you get after 1 person parks without permit. Other people just assume it's OK to park.

We had a small loading bay so we reserved it for vans only. cars wouldn't park there at all, but sometimes we had deliveries from cars and they would be allowed to use the loading bay. As soon as these delivery cars parked there we'd get lots more cars parking behind them too.

The reason why they have to take a hard line is that for the other 100 or so other passengers that see him use the power from the train, another 10% or so will decide to copy him in the next few days.
 
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Presumably if you stick in an unsafe load then that causes a bunch of safety problems for the train.
You wouldn't want someone plugging in an EMP device into a handy socket on an aeroplane.
 
Well the article does say that he became aggressive.

I'd imagine that if they pointed out to him that its not allowed and he simply said "whoops sorry, my mistake" then everyone would have gone on with their lives.
 
Loads of work places don't allow charging of personal devices either. Yeah it might just be "pennies" but if 1000s of staff across the company did it on a daily basis it would surely add to the electricity consumption.
 
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