London Man Arrested For 'Stealing Electricity' After Charging His Phone On The Train

Metro- A commuter has spoken about the moment he was arrested and marched away in handcuffs for stealing ≈0.052p in electricity while on a train.

London-based artist Robin Lee plugged his phone in on a London Overground train on Friday and was spotted by a community support officer, stealing the ≈0.052p of electricity.

He said "The officers got hold of me by each arm and put me in handcuffs – they were really aggressive and over the top. They put me in the cage in the back of the van and started going through my stuff – they even checked underneath my belt and everything."

Robin called the incident 'ridiculous'.

Back at Camden Road station he was eventually de-arrested for stealing ≈0.052p of electricity but then re-arrested for ‘unacceptable behaviour’ before being released without charge.

Robin was allowed to collect his stuff and leave, with no charges brought against him.



Fucking England. Talk about an ass backwards country. Driving on the wrong side of the road. Arresting people for taking advantage of conveniently placed outlets. Well, that's pretty much it. However, those are two pretty big concepts to completely fudge. Nothing will get a man killed quicker than not knowing which way traffic is coming from or walking around with a dead battery. No good stems from either of those situations. I thought London was pretty Americanized. Was I wrong in that assumption? When I was there they had Domino's and KFC for Christ's sake. How do you steal our most convenient food franchises and not realize that walking around at 3% is the most inconvenient thing a person can do? If Americans could get arrested for stealing electricity you would be better off just building prison walls around the entirety of the continental United States. There isn't a bar in any American city that isn't filled with enough phone chargers to put a Verizon kiosk out of business. If you think criminalizing such a thing would do anything to deter people from charging their phones in public you are beside your mind. 

The more I think about it, if you can get arrested for 'stealing electricity' than England is much closer to communist Russia than to America. Is stealing electricity even a crime out there? What's next, stealing oxygen? First this guy got arrested, then he got de-arrested, then he got re-arrested, and then he was let free. I didn't even know there were that many prefixes to 'arrested'. Sounds to me like they were trying to make the crime fit the punishment and not the other way around. Probably shouldn't be aggressively slapping cuffs on people when you are that unsure of yourself. That booking process had more up's and down's than a middle school relationship. That detainment made DeAndre Jordan look decisive. If you want to be a police state that arrests people for enjoying basic human rights then at least have your ducks in a row when you do so.