She did rob the bank. She demanded that she be given a minute and, as everyone knows, time is money. Guilty.
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Sorry, but this is not a “non-crime”. We can all speculate in our safe BB bubble, but INTENT matters. This person ostensibly walked into a bank with the intent to rob it. That she changed her mind matters not.
It should be important to note for GulliverFoyle:
Bank robbery is a federal crime; local cops have nothing to do with it.
Then I should be locked up, because I think about slapping the stupid out of people around me on a daily basis, but haven’t really done it yet.
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So you came here to tell us that the City of Fall River Police Department is a federal agency 
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Word.
Thank heaven for the soothing effects of cannabis, which helps me curb my darker impulses.
Also the woman should have held onto the scraps from the note.
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Also to point out…I guess any other people who walked into the bank would be accomplices?
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This kinda presents a minority report sort of dilemma. If you think someone is dangerous but they haven’t acted yet should you prosecute or at least investigate them? I get why they’d want to, but it seems like a slippery slope and I’d say let her go. Maybe send a social worker to check on her but don’t put out a ad of Facebook calling it more than it is. She didn’t attempt anything. Her conscience kicked in like it does for billions of normal people every day who are tempted to do bad shit but don’t.
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Thank you because while I have strong feelings about the kinds of things that many police officers are doing that harm people as well as what they’re not doing to help people, I truly believe that writing all cops off as evil is just numbing us to greater acts of oppression in the future. A fight with the beast may be inevitable but it’s going to go a lot better if a fang or two has been plucked out in advance. That being said… honestly I don’t tend to see a lot of good come out of the “help” people get when their road to “help” starts with an arrest. In fact, I don’t even have a single good anecdote in my recollection 
For her sake, I kind of hope they blow it off but that some family or friend steps in and is able to help because no one does something that disorganized and stupid without some kind of big problem in their life.
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People find themselves in these situations out of desperation and I always feel bad for them. It is only by luck and circumstance that we are spared the same fate.
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If my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
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Why does the intent to rob it outweigh the intent not to rob it?
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For her sake I hope that it was not some sort of domestic abuse situation, maybe that’s me having seen too many episodes of SVU and Criminal Intent.
There’s two parts here though to consider and to prosecute her they’d matter: One is intent which you bring up, but the other part is that there has to be some substantial action to go through with the crime, and typically the crime is abandoned because of some external circumstance but would have gone through otherwise. That’s not what we see here, we see some one choose to call off the crime they were thinking of committing. There’s definitely opportunity for her defense there… even on charges of attempted robbery.
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That is not how mens rea works. Intention alone does not create culpability. Substantive steps must be taken toward the commission of a crime. Asking a teller for a minute, writing a private note on a piece of paper, and then disposing of it without meaning for anyone to see it are not substantive steps. Substantive steps would be things like attempting to purchase unlicensed weapon.
I find your implied support of thought-crime extremely disturbing. But it inadvertently gets back to my point about the cops calling it an attempted robbery. The rational conclusion is that they and the prosecutor plan on mischaracterizing the innocent actions leading up to her decision not to do anything criminal as substantive steps in order to railroad her.
Tell the Fall River PD, not me.
I wouldn’t call it a dilemma so much as an oncoming miscarriage of justice, but yes, those implying she committed a crime are spouting pre-crime nonsense.
Hell no.
Authoritarians want to a lot of things they shouldn’t be allowed to.
Hear that. I was walking downtown last night and a likely drunk scooter-douche sped around a blind corner and slalomed toward me at breakneck speed. Brain inventoried the motor memories and checked the muscles for readiness. Mind made the civilized decision not to send him flying at 20 mph into cold concrete (and probably earning myself broken bones in the process). Not wanting to actually hurt even an asshole and not wanting to wind up in prison allowed me to literally curb my darker impulses.
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Okay, there’s a misunderstanding here that I think I caused by saying US cops instead of US law enforcement or something more collective.
I readily acknowledge that some cops help people some of the time. But when you’re dealing with any cop, they’re an agent of a corrupt system whether they themselves are acting benevolently or perniciously. When a police department or other law enforcement agency seeks people out, even if the cops or agents who sign the orders mean well, those people are being sought by a corrupt system that no amount of individual benevolence is going to repair. This is why the whole a few bad apples or a few good apples debate misses the point. The orchard is rotten.
I’m glad for when individual cops help people and I hope for more of them. But the US law enforcement system needs reform. More officer friendlies are great, but they won’t fix a broken system without top-down reform.
I agree entirely. Except she wouldn’t have entertained this idea if she had any money. So she’ll be assigned a public defender. Contrary to their title, public defenders don’t do much defending. The public prosecutor will scare her and the public defender will talk her into pleading out, furthering her decent into the quicksand of poverty and social stigmatization that will haunt her as she tries to climb out of it.
America’s so-called justice system functions to keep the poor in poverty. With rare exception, only the privileged have a meaningful chance at justice. In a system where you get as much justice as you can you afford, the poor are prudent to avoid putting their fate in its hands.
This is not about hating cops. This is about distrusting a corrupt system.
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Wait, but if she intended to rob the bank, then prevented herself from robbing the bank, she would also have earned the reward money for stopping a bank robbery!
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Perhaps they should intend to arrest her and then decide against it.
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INAL:
Substantive steps as in dressing in apparently concealing clothing, deliberately walking into a financial institution, writing a note, then walking away?
My friend, who used to work in retail, would likely have pressed the buzzer by now.
Look @Everyone: I feel for this person’s possible circumstances. I bristle at the the notion everyone here thinks that I’m for any sort of “thought crime” or Minority Report style prosecution, but the rule of law exists for everyone, or it exists for no one. It is up to investigators to determine the facts here, but it seems we have a person who took thoughts into actions in the affirmative, apparently dressed in concealing clothing, wrote a note, then walked away.
But as has been pointed out on this forum and many others besides, this is not a court of law, but one of opinion. This person seems to have entered a financial institution with the intent of robbery. That “intent” translates to “attempted” in the eyes of the law. My sympathies are with this person, but I cannot help but to agree.
Sigh…no, but bank robbery, attempted or otherwise, is a federal crime. Fall River PD no longer has anything to do with it.
Maybe, then, the FBI hasn’t picked it up because they think it’s a waste of time?
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