As a hypothetical, if a young girl found a Nikon D90 camera at a park, what would be the right thing to do. Hypothetically speaking, if the camera was turned in to the police and it was never claimed, the young girl would never see it again so what would be the best course of action to try and return it to the rightful owners but still retain possession in case no one tried to claim it.
Place a found ad in your local Craigslist. There is a lost and found section under the community area. Could also post it under the photo area.
I think if an item goes unclaimed for some period of time, 30 days maybe, you can get the item back from the police.
If there is a memory card in there, people could identify what might be on the card to help ensure they are the correct owner.
You could make flyers ans/or post it in a newspaper and internet. If it has a memory card with photos the people responding could describe the photos so it will go to the right owner instead of someone just wanting to claim it. Hope this makes sense LOL
I'm assuming you have already checked the memory card for any identifiable photos. Maybe leave an ambiguous found notice in a conspicuous spot requiring some form of Identification of the camera.
Found camera Date Call/e-mail xxxx with identifying features etc
The camrea should post the serial number of the camera in the exif data of the image, so make anyone attempting to claim the camera produce an image taken with the camera so you can verify the serial number.
This happened in South Africa this year. A woman found a camera and then notified the local news paper called Beeld. Beeld then published some of the pictures they found on the memory card. The family who had lost their camera, when they were on vacation, recognised the pictures and called the newspaper where after the camera was returned to the owner. Actually a happy story!
@sjoblues That is the best hypothetical response I have heard. My worry is that if I try and find the owner and cannot but they look a year later and find me, then I might be responsible to the value of the camera if I have given it away, hypothetically speaking. A note to Nikon however with the serial number and a description seems to be the most direct route.
I understand the desire to keep such a find, but it's also possible that the owner has filed a report with the police. And/or with whoever administer the park. I know if I lost either of my cameras I'd be going through whatever appropriate channels I could to find it. If I thought it fell out of my car in a parking lot, or out of my bag at an event or attraction, etc., I'd be filing reports all over the place. Personally, I don't think keeping it in the hopes that no one is missing it is a morally acceptable thing to do, and even more unacceptable if this is a lesson being taught to a "young girl" involved. Just my two cents.
@sjoblues Is there no lesson to be learned in if you leave a $900 camera at the park, it is probably lost forever? I think that the best case is that the person that lost it gets it back but I don't want to just hand it over to a bureaucrat that gives it to their kid and I don't want to set myself up for liability if the original owner stumbles across something I may have posted a year ago.
I can think of several "hypothetical" situations wherein a valuable item might be left behind. I was involved in one myself a while back. I had left home to go out and do some night photography, and half a mile from my house a drunk driver slammed into my vehicle. I went to the hospital in an ambulance. My camera and tripod were on the back seat of my car. When the EMTs were loading me into the ambulance and made sure they had my purse with me, I said several times "Please bring my camera! Please bring my camera!" They did, and made sure that the folks in the ER also kept it with me. Had I been knocked unconscious in the wreck, who knows where my camera would've gone? A person in a park might've been taken ill or had some other emergency and rushed off, focused on that situation, and returned later to discover, in anguish, that his/her camera had been stolen. And may have already filed reports with the police, etc. As also mentioned by several people above, any memory card in the camera might also lead to its return to its rightful owner. I do not think you, and the "young girl" involved, are "hypothetically" doing the right thing. Your eyes are on what you see as the prize. If you were on the other end of this situation, having set down your camera for whatever reason and finding it missing, would you be so blase as to think "Oh, well, it's probably lost forever, I'll just nip out and get another?" We're not talking about a paperback novel or pair of sunglasses here. Hypothetically.
I want to make sure that the person who keeps the camera is one of two people:
1. preferable the one who lost it
2. Failing that, I would like my daughter to keep it.
I have called the Park and Recreation Department of my city and asked if anyone had reported losing a camera. I have also looked on Craig's List lost and found and no post has been put up yet. I plan to keep this up for a couple of weeks.
I am pretty sure that the police are not interested in taking a report about an item that someone lost. They are pretty busy with actual crimes.
When I called the Parks and Rec Department, the lady there was stunned that I was asking about this and she said that I had to call the maintenance department because they were the ones that find things. In other words, they really weren't interested in dealing with any lost and found items as well.
If you had found the camera, what would you do exactly? Would you turn it in to the authorities with no regard for what they might do with it or would you try and find the owner on your own?
Would turning it in to a government bureaucracy satisfy your moral code even if you didn't believe they would make an effort to find the owner?
I have been involved in a couple situations that involved the police and lost-and-found items. In one, a friend once left her purse in a booth in a fast food restaurant. By the time she realized it and we went back, it was gone. No one had turned it in to the restaurant. I suggested we stop by the police station. She didn't want to. "They wouldn't care, they don't do 'lost-and-found,' no one would turn it in," etc. I convinced her. We stopped in. Yep, the police had the purse, a good citizen had found it and brought it in. We had arrived at the station before they had a chance to phone her that they had the purse. Happiness all around.
Another other-side-of-the-coin situation also comes to mind, wherein we turned in a found item, and the police were able to reunite it with its owner. They let us know this, and again, happiness all around. So certainly at least in some municipalities, the police are quite interested in helping distressed citizens, no matter the level of or reason for the distress.
Not everyone uses or reads CraigsList. Most people I know actually do not.
You have yet to indicate whether or not there was a memory card in the camera with images on it.
I still don't feel that teaching your daughter "finders keepers, losers weepers" for such an expensive item is morally a good thing, but obviously how you raise your kid(s) is your business. If I were in this situation, I would do everything in my power to find the camera's owner, because I fervently hope someone would do the same for me if they found mine after it unfortunately was separated from me somehow.
Another possibility to consider is that the camera was stolen from someone and the thief dropped it in the park, perhaps after having second thoughts. The police may very well have it on a list of stolen items they are attempting to recover. How would you know, if you don't involve them? Maybe a teenager borrowed mom's or dad's camera and carelessly or deliberately disposed of it in a snit. You just don't know the circumstances; you only see the outcome you want to see: one that benefits you (and your daughter).
Again, if the found item was a paperback book, or a pair of sunglasses, or a $5 bill, or something relatively insignificant, I wouldn't worry about finding the owner. But a DSLR? Yes, I would make every possible effort to reunite it with its owner with NO expectations of keeping it. And as I said before, I would fervently hope if I was on the other end of this, and it was my camera that someone found, they would do the same for me.
What happens to unclaimed items in the US then?
In the UK - at least last time I had cause to check up - if an item isn't claimed after a certain period of time, it becomes claimable by the finder.
(I ended up with a nice silver bracelet this way some time ago)
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I think if an item goes unclaimed for some period of time, 30 days maybe, you can get the item back from the police.
If there is a memory card in there, people could identify what might be on the card to help ensure they are the correct owner.
Found camera Date Call/e-mail xxxx with identifying features etc
I want to make sure that the person who keeps the camera is one of two people:
1. preferable the one who lost it
2. Failing that, I would like my daughter to keep it.
I have called the Park and Recreation Department of my city and asked if anyone had reported losing a camera. I have also looked on Craig's List lost and found and no post has been put up yet. I plan to keep this up for a couple of weeks.
I am pretty sure that the police are not interested in taking a report about an item that someone lost. They are pretty busy with actual crimes.
When I called the Parks and Rec Department, the lady there was stunned that I was asking about this and she said that I had to call the maintenance department because they were the ones that find things. In other words, they really weren't interested in dealing with any lost and found items as well.
If you had found the camera, what would you do exactly? Would you turn it in to the authorities with no regard for what they might do with it or would you try and find the owner on your own?
Would turning it in to a government bureaucracy satisfy your moral code even if you didn't believe they would make an effort to find the owner?
I have been involved in a couple situations that involved the police and lost-and-found items. In one, a friend once left her purse in a booth in a fast food restaurant. By the time she realized it and we went back, it was gone. No one had turned it in to the restaurant. I suggested we stop by the police station. She didn't want to. "They wouldn't care, they don't do 'lost-and-found,' no one would turn it in," etc. I convinced her. We stopped in. Yep, the police had the purse, a good citizen had found it and brought it in. We had arrived at the station before they had a chance to phone her that they had the purse. Happiness all around.
Another other-side-of-the-coin situation also comes to mind, wherein we turned in a found item, and the police were able to reunite it with its owner. They let us know this, and again, happiness all around. So certainly at least in some municipalities, the police are quite interested in helping distressed citizens, no matter the level of or reason for the distress.
Not everyone uses or reads CraigsList. Most people I know actually do not.
You have yet to indicate whether or not there was a memory card in the camera with images on it.
I still don't feel that teaching your daughter "finders keepers, losers weepers" for such an expensive item is morally a good thing, but obviously how you raise your kid(s) is your business. If I were in this situation, I would do everything in my power to find the camera's owner, because I fervently hope someone would do the same for me if they found mine after it unfortunately was separated from me somehow.
Another possibility to consider is that the camera was stolen from someone and the thief dropped it in the park, perhaps after having second thoughts. The police may very well have it on a list of stolen items they are attempting to recover. How would you know, if you don't involve them? Maybe a teenager borrowed mom's or dad's camera and carelessly or deliberately disposed of it in a snit. You just don't know the circumstances; you only see the outcome you want to see: one that benefits you (and your daughter).
Again, if the found item was a paperback book, or a pair of sunglasses, or a $5 bill, or something relatively insignificant, I wouldn't worry about finding the owner. But a DSLR? Yes, I would make every possible effort to reunite it with its owner with NO expectations of keeping it. And as I said before, I would fervently hope if I was on the other end of this, and it was my camera that someone found, they would do the same for me.
In the UK - at least last time I had cause to check up - if an item isn't claimed after a certain period of time, it becomes claimable by the finder.
(I ended up with a nice silver bracelet this way some time ago)