Police to train trash workers to sort through citizen's trash

The Conway Police Department has a new plan to fight crime. The city wants to train workers at the waste department to be on the look out for evidence. Police said the goal of the "Workers on the Watch" program is to train city employees to spot possible crimes.

"When they are out collecting trash they are going o be looking for evidence of drug production among other things," said Detective Dan Repass, Conway PD. "They will be looking for suspicious activity and they will be contacting their dispatch who will then call the police with that information."

Officers said workers will look for very specific evidence such as excessive amounts of batteries tossed in the trash. Police said that could be a sign of methamphetamine production.

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This is uncalled for. Police training garbage workers to go through the trash of private citizens! Regardless of the reason the CPD cites there is no excuse to train what amounts to spys to do snooping for law enforcement. I personally called the Conway SC Police Department and voiced my concern that this also gives those workers the excuse to sort thru trash for personal identifying information such as credit card statements, social security documents etc then if they are caught all they have to say is that they "checking for evidence". I live in this area and plan to do a hell of alot more calling about this also.
I checked with friends who work in the Horry County Police Department's Narcotics Unit and they told me there were no abundant cases of meth labs in the area. They too were concerned about this also.

I can't wait to put a bunch of kindly worded letters in my garbage can.

Innocent until your trash proves you guilty!

Trash men as detectives?

This is rubbish!

reply to post by iversusvsversusi


I sent this to friends over in Conway and they are doing the same thing.

seriously do you think there will be a lot of sanitation workers snooping through trash??? They may be snooping through it already for stuff but I'm pretty confident that they are not turning the stuff in...I'm sure the union had to abide by this unless these city workers are contracted out or private companies...think of how quick the sanitation workers are moving up and down streets to get things done...don't think they will slow down for this type of scrutiny..

reply to post by chrismarco


This gives them legalization to snoop through it for any reason they want to. So instead of snooping thru it and worrying baout getting caught, now they have a reason to do it. Theirs or the police's.

all the more reason to by a shredder and a bbq pit for all those credit card offers and important documents.

Next they will be trying to get you on enviromental laws. Which sucks for me since I just threw out two monitors.

Originally posted by Humint1
reply to post by chrismarco

 

This gives them legalization to snoop through it for any reason they want to. So instead of snooping thru it and worrying baout getting caught, now they have a reason to do it. Theirs or the police's.

I believe that law enforcement is already allowed to take your garbage when it's at the curb without requiring a warrant. Due to it being in a public place or publicly accessible place or something.

I agree with Chrismarco that sanitation workers aren't going to care enough to actually do it though. You might get a couple that are all gung ho about being all that you can be but other than that I think it'll be ignored. But I still don't like it.

I don't care where you work but if someone you're not accountable to comes up and asks you to do extra work for free... you'd be like No.

Just means that the criminals will have to get smart and recycle their batteries rather than putting them in the bin along with everything else.

Does it say they will actually be sorting through rubbish or mearly on the lookout whilst doing their rounds? There is a difference. The first means emptying a bag and scrutinising the contents and the other just paying more attention as they collect so they might notice clues to a crime.

Not sure about the batteries thing - we have lots of batteries which we separate from the rest of the rubbish (like we do for food waste, paper, glass and metal) and take them to our local recycling depot along with glass, as they don' collect these. And if you shred paper with any personal stuff etc there isn't going to be much to see.

They haven't started doing that yet in my neck of the woods in Texas but if they do they will be sorely disappointed when all they find is garbage. Makes you want to throw a few dog turds in there don't it?

reply to post by grumpydaysleeper


Or perhaps some fly attractant.

Odd. What the police used to do was receive tips or some kind of evidence that a place was producing drugs, and then they'd get a search warrant and raid the house. One way of receiving evidence was having the garbage men collect the trash and bring it to the police station - it's happened to someone I know. Now they want workers to sort through everyone's trash? Seems excessive, and it also seems like the invasion of privacy outweighs the benefits.

Law reads as You legally still own the property even after pickup and disposal. So if you got video proof bring that up to a cop or the courts as that info can easily be used to get all fruits of said search thrown out in future potential court cases.