It’s every Freecycle moderator’s nightmare. A family in the Dallas/Fort Worth suburb of Mansfield woke up to discover men with a truck packing up their portable basketball hoop…which they weren’t giving away. It had been listed on the “free” section of Craigslist by their neighbor…a police officer in a nearby town.

Sherry Johnson Huwitt was standing at her kitchen window in her bathrobe shortly before dawn a couple of weeks ago when two strangers pulled up and started loading the portable basketball goal from the side of her house into a truck.

When the Mansfield woman ran outside to confront them, they said they weren’t stealing because the item was offered for the taking on Craigslist.

“What the hell is Craigslist?” she asked.

Huwitt had never heard of the advertising Web site and hadn’t posted any such ad. Someone else did: Free basket ball goal and tether ball pole.

At dead end of roadway beside my home…(address) dont knock its placed out there for you to come get. will delete when gone. thanks.

The incident boiled down to a dispute between neighbors, and in the end there’s no crime that the neighbor/cop/Craigslist poster can be charged with. police aren’t quite sure what to charge the officer with. Fraud? Forgery?

I’ll never look at “curb alerts” in quite the same way, though.

Mansfield woman says Arlington officer offered her possessions on Craigslist without her consent [Dallas Morning News]

(Photo: moon angel)
(Thanks to commenter David Mays for correcting the error in my summary.)

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