Clearly, theft is wrong. But what about that ethical grey area? You’ve heard the example before: the man with no job steals bread for his family to survive. Wrong or right? I’d have to lean toward the “right” side, although that doesn’t make the situation fair for the baker, who just lost a loaf of bread. So what would you say if the father was a 23-year-old homeless American named Shaun Fawster, his family was his smartphone, and the bread was electricity to feed it? Still kind of ok, but also still unfair?
The police in Bangor, PA saw things to be pretty black and white when they came across Fawster with not one, but two phones plugged into a private building, hidden behind some flowers. Of course, the theft of electricity charge was probably just a cherry to top off his possession-of-a-concealed-weapon sundae. Fortunately for him, the gun-wielding, phone-charging Fawster has been released on bail from the Penobscot County Jail.
I realize that his hidden gun kind of incriminates him from that point on, but if we just set the gun aside, is it all that wrong to grab a little juice from an outlet when you’re on the go? I’ve never worried about police closing in on me when I pop into a Starbucks to get my charge on. But maybe I should.
It seems that stealing electricity goes over much better over in Milan, Italy. At least, it did back in 2002 when a parish priest noticed a couple praying to The Madonna while charging their phones. Don Antonio Colombo said he wouldn’t stop the couple from charging their phones, as he knew that they were homeless, like Fawster. “The church is their house,” Don Colombo said. “And letting them charge their mobile phone is a bit like giving them a glass of water.”
[via Cellular News]
