angeloks
Well-known
Well, I never said that non-criminal behavior was bad. You must be confused. Nonetheless, I justify my activity solely by the pictures I bring back from my expeditions. I like them and I find that they tell something about the times we live in.
I don't claim it to be legal in any way. I simply say that it is acceptable : trespassing in open areas, abandoned for decades, nobody cares. Also with my personnal experience, the police in Detroit has other things to do than pressing charges against people with cameras... The law is there, but unworthy to be applied to that case.
Dave Wilkinson
Veteran
Can we start talking about the quality of bokeh, or weather we should use a light meter - again, now-please?
MCTuomey
Veteran
Bill, if you were truly committed to your view, perhaps consider a donation to Detroit's General Fund for the purpose of supplementing the City's police ranks so as to be able to respond to calls regarding trespass in abandoned properties. I've been told by DPD officers that such calls fall very low in their response triage compared to situations like domestic violence, armed robbery, assault, etc.
Spend any real time in the City, with all its poverty and unemployment and social ills, and you'll appreciate that crime of a violent nature isn't a worse problem than it is. Practically, I'd rather have troubled people damaging abandoned property than in-use property or, god forbid, other people. I'm not condoning destructive behavior, or justifying it, just acknowledging its reality.
Btw, I posted a few recent photos of the Michigan Central Depot in the RFF gallery awhile ago. Haunting in its now decrepit grandeur. My imaging is quite inadequate to capture its sense of place.
johnny9fingers
Well-known
Can we start talking about the quality of bokeh, or weather we should use a light meter - again, now-please?
Ahhh yes, we all got a chance to vent. Now the criminals can resume their nefarious activities :bang: and the law abiding citizens can continue to sleep well at night :angel: . Me, I'm going over to my neighbors house to make a sandwich (i know where the key is hidden)
dfoo
Well-known
Said trespassers should also have their legs cut off. That seems suitable, don't you think? That'll stop the *******s from trespassing again in an abandoned building!
climbing_vine
Well-known
I think dfoo made one of the more salient points here.
The Packard plant is "owned" by Romel Casab, who is a speculator specializing in shady turnarounds that some might call extortion. In ten years he has exercised essentially no security or maintenance over the site. To assert that people like this have any particular right to "their property" is sort of dumbfounding to me. If you own property in the middle of the woods somewhere, fine, feel free to let it descend back to nature.
If it's in a major city, you have a responsibility to help maintain the physical fabric of the community. People vandalizing that space are no better than the absentee scam-artists slumlord "owner", but if the only thing you can accuse someone of is "trespassing" that says to me that they're guilty of nothing compared to the owner. If it weren't sitting there abandoned, they wouldn't be able to walk all over it.
The Packard plant is "owned" by Romel Casab, who is a speculator specializing in shady turnarounds that some might call extortion. In ten years he has exercised essentially no security or maintenance over the site. To assert that people like this have any particular right to "their property" is sort of dumbfounding to me. If you own property in the middle of the woods somewhere, fine, feel free to let it descend back to nature.
If it's in a major city, you have a responsibility to help maintain the physical fabric of the community. People vandalizing that space are no better than the absentee scam-artists slumlord "owner", but if the only thing you can accuse someone of is "trespassing" that says to me that they're guilty of nothing compared to the owner. If it weren't sitting there abandoned, they wouldn't be able to walk all over it.
Paul T.
Veteran
I believe that's an unfair summary of Bill's position on this. He reserves the right to shoot them, which creates much less mess and supports one of the last great American manufacturing industries.
angeloks
Well-known
bmattock
Veteran
I donate my time as well as money to the city of Detroit. Saturday I took photos at the request of one of the Detroit veteran's organizations as well as the Dept of Commerce and the 338th US Army band.
I won't be criticized for complaining and not *doing* anything to help. I do both. As compared to trespassers who do neither.
Were you thinking I am not in Detroit very often? As to comparisons, as Roger pointed out, there are worse things. Shall I then thank a mugger that he isn't a murderer too, or is it OK to point out that mugging is also bad?
I'm familiar with the place. My own photos of it were taken from outside the fenceline. It is private property, and it has an owner.
I do not take a lot of photos of urban decay because I don't care for that sort of photo in general. However, I do not trespass because it's against the law and I respect property rights. And somehow, that makes me the bad guy. Not clear on how that happens.
climbing_vine
Well-known
But does it, in any meaningful sense?
dfoo
Well-known
I don't think it makes you a bad guy for living with your convictions. What makes you a bad guy is calling other people immoral because they don't happen to share your particular set of convictions and morals.
bmattock
Veteran
In the legal sense, yes. I think that's meaningful. So does the law.
bmattock
Veteran
Think about that one for a minute. If everybody's convictions and morals are OK, then nothing is wrong, ever.
climbing_vine
Well-known
I usually agree with you, so I'm convinced you're at least a little smart and not totally small-minded.
Obviously you, like anyone, would recognize that the law doesn't necessarily determine right and wrong (canonical example: slavery), or the relative badness of various bads (see: longer sentences in some places for smoking pot than rape). So, I'm curious whether property law is an absolute to you, or if there is some point at which doing harm to the physical fabric of the community outweighs a property "right". Owners like Casab and Maroun are habitual violators of the law themselves in how they conduct their properties, so...
bmattock
Veteran
I do not think other people should trespass on my property. If I expect my property rights to be respected, then I feel strongly that I should support the property rights of others.
As to what evil property-owners do, that is not my right to take the law into my own hands to 'fix' their ills. The example someone gave of breaking into a theater to take photos and shame an owner into fixing it up strikes me as just that. They're not performing a public service.
ebolton
Number 7614
When private "owners" let locations deteriorate to that dangerous extent, I think maybe they should be relieved of their ownership. They certainly loose a certain amount of moral authority , I would think. Do any of the places depicted in this thread account for any tax revenue to the city? Revenue as in revenue that might offset the cost of protecting them from "trespassers", vandals, and photographers.
bmattock
Veteran
Perhaps that would be an issue for the courts and not for urbex types?
Again, that would seem to be a legal issue that can and should be addressed by courts. In any case, I do not see urbex types doing what they do in order to highlight issues, but rather for the apparent joy of it.
johnny9fingers
Well-known
Last I heard property taxes are considered revenue.
Paul T.
Veteran
Well, no. THis is about your prejudices, not necessarily the law. We saw that when you called a photographer on a preceding thread a "criminal." He is plainly not a criminal; he had had entered a building - in Europe. He had not committed criminal trespass, which is defined quite clearly in most European countries.
Your moral code therefore seems to transcend the relevant law, which is pretty much what you accuse "Urbex scum" of.
climbing_vine
Well-known
Most of these absentee owners aren't paying property taxes. Through various combinations of bribing city officials for favorable assessments and other tax shelters, and just ignoring the bills and trusting that it will take 20 years to go through the courts, at which point they'll either be long gone or have miraculously unloaded the lot for a profit.
The Michigan courts are a decade behind in these property cases thanks to the guys that own the buildings we're talking about here, and others like them.