My guess is these
I was going to make a snide remark…
…but then I realized the fact that I can instantly identify that as a Cardcaptor Sakura figurine pretty much completely negates my right to do so ^^’.
tips hat to fellow geek
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Funnily enough, his great grandmother decided to start smashing up speakeasies after a neighborhood drunk knocked over one of her porcelain dolls.
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Alcohol. It made his passive get all aggressive. Needs a dose of MM.
No, the correct term is either “Gentleman” or “Florida Man”, depending on the quality of the action.
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Man, I’m so angry that you broke some of my stuff, that I’m going to break a ton of my other stuff…
Man, he must have been drunk (or, again, just a serious asshole with some hardcore behavioral issues).
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Typo: wife should read, “soon-to-be-ex-wife”.
Probably both.
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Is damaging your own property illegal in the US?
Honest question. The story mentions him smashing up his own stuff. That’s not a good thing to do, but I guess here the police wouldn’t get involved unless he hurt or threatened his wife or damaged other people’s property too?
Here’s the actual report:
Summary
- WEST: Domestic Disturbance – 10:03 p.m. Officers were dispatched to a West side residential address, reference a domestic disturbance between the victim (46-year-old AF) and her husband/suspect (34-year-old WM). The suspect called 911 on himself reference his actions in response to drinking too much and then overreacting when believing his wife had damaged some of his prized property (action figures). The suspect had wielded a log-splitting axe and after his wife had left the residence, he subsequently used the axe to destroy the TV, TV stand, laptop computer, and several other items in the house. The suspect then moved outside and smashed the family car, chopping off both side mirrors and eventually striking the windshield with such force that the axe became stuck. When officers arrived, they found the axe embedded in the windshield of the car. The damages eclipsed $5000. Officers took the suspect into custody without incident. The suspect was arrested for domestic-related charges of disorderly conduct and felony damage to property. The suspect was conveyed to jail.
from here:
https://www.cityofmadison.com/police/chief/blog/?Id=18526
That just says that he destroyed stuff without going into whose stuff it was. Given that he destroyed stuff in the home he shares with his wife, I think it’s a safe bet to assume that at least some of the stuff was not (solely) his.
Also brandishing an axe in front of your wife in a fit of rage probably counts as threatening.
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Hopefully already estranged-wife.
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But according to this report, the damage occurred after the wife had left the premises.
I think that here, the police are more hands-off in domestic disputes and would only press charges if the wife reported damage to her property. Which would not be an unreasonable thing to do, if (say) the car was hers.
Yes but he was waving the axe around before she left.
In this case he reported himself. I think the police sort of have to take some action there.
So, Officer Novak - why did you not arrest the man who phoned up to say he’d just been on a drunken axe-rampage?
Well, Your Honor, I asked him a few questions and it didn’t seem absolutely certain to me that he had destroyed or damaged anything that didn’t belong to him. Yes, I know he scared his wife but he didn’t actually hit her and he waited until she’d fled from the house before smashing anything with the axe.
That was probably ok in the 50s, not so much now.
As it happens, this blog post courtesy of Patrick J Stangl, Esq. appears to answer your question:
"Strangely enough, under Wisconsin damage to property laws, an individual can also be convicted of criminally damaging their own property.
Under this scenario, a married couple is considered as a part-owner of one-half of the home or property belonging to both persons involved in the marital situation. This means that when one person damages a jointly-owned property, they are considered to be damaging the property of their spouse since that spouse has
This means that when one person damages a jointly-owned property, they are considered to be damaging the property of their spouse since that spouse has ownership interest in the said property as well."
Relevant statute:
see footnote which refers to this case:
So the TL-DR answer is: Wisconsin law does make damaging your own property illegal if it also belongs to someone else.
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I was at a trade show and one of the booths was for a web site that was something like that Angie’s List , where you post a request for a certain service and then various vendors chime in with why you should hire them and so on.
So I said to the lady at the booth “Hypothetically, if my skill was dusting painted game figurines, I could offer that as a service?” and her eyes went wide and said "Wow, yes, I’m sure people would want that… so how do you do it? With a duster or a small vacuum cleaner? "
I said “Hypothetically…” and she goes “Oh, so with a fine filter or something?”
“No, not a hepa filter… I don’t do this. no one does this as a businesses, I made it up”
“Oh, because it sounds like a good businesses to get into”
“Umm, no… if you’ve ever met one of these figurine-painting obsessive types, they won’t let ANYONE touch their stuff… not even their mom.”
… it was a frustrating conversation, we weren’t on the same page, or same book.
Are you honestly trying to say that she shouldn’t feel threatened that he took AN AXE to stuff in their house?
Might actually be WHY she left the house. And I’d guess the dude has rage issues that have surfaced before and it’s entirely likely it could spin out into physical abuse very easily.
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No, my initial understanding was that he only took out the axe after the wife left.
Of course axe-swinging feels kind of threatening (and is grounds for arrest). I wonder if a psychiatric hospital might have been a more appropriate place than a jail, though.
I am a bit late here. But I am actually impressed.
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If you look through some of the other incident reports on the Police Chief’s blog, there are an awful lot of cases which amount basically to “Officers attended, suspect detained and delivered to mental health facility” or “Officers attended, suspect agreed to check himself in for evaluation/treatment” so the police there do seem to try to get people into treatment where they can.
This one just sounds like your common or garden drunken rage-quit.
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Yes, most likely they took him in to sleep it off …
