I was just 'pilfering,' and now I'm just going to jail

We recently made some arrests for burglary when a deputy caught some people at a house that did not belong to them. He also found property in their vehicle that came out of the house. One of the people arrested made a comment that is starting to become somewhat regular when we catch people in this type of crime. They said they were "pilfering."

It was just a few months ago that we made an arrest for the exact same thing, a person was found by the deputy halfway out of a window in a house that did not belong to them. In both of these cases, the house was being used for storage and no one was living in it. In both cases we heard the phrase, "We were just pilfering."

This is a phrase we have begun to hear more and more around the county when we make arrests for burglary, stealing, and receiving stolen property. The statement that one was "just pilfering" appears to have become a household argument for just cause of the situation one finds himself in when arrested by a local deputy on someone else's property.

The first time I heard this explanation about a year ago, the guy would not stop saying he was "only pilfering." I informed him that he had the right to be silent but he would not stop yelling at the top of his lungs that we had made a mistake. "I didn't do anything wrong, I was pilfering, I have witnesses," he would yell over and over again.

He was right about his witnesses, each one verified he was "pilfering" a home they had never been to before and had no idea who owned. They thought they were helping him with their statements! When we got back to the jail, I decided to just print out the definition for pilfering and let him read it for himself. I printed the following from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary "pilfer: to steal things that are not very valuable or to steal a small amount of something." The sad thing is this guy seemed pleased with this explanation. He said, "See, it even says not very valuable."

Although many of the items we have recovered from people "pilfering" were far more valuable than what is defined in the dictionary, the simple fact is that when you go onto some else's property and take something that does not belong to you, it's wrong no matter what condition it was in, or how much it cost.

One of the first arrests I ever made for burglary was a guy who had taken a book of checks, some cash, and a few gold rings from a safe. When I found the items, he told me he was only "borrowing" the items and was planning to give them back. In his mind, calling the crime something else made it okay.

Call it what you may, if the Sheriff's Office catches anyone on someone one else's property taking something that does not belong to them, they will be arrested. They can call it a free room, a home away from home, or locked up, but they will go to jail just the same.