>>>>>>>>In addition, if I were an executive with the bank, I'd have strongly considered the positive PR a public food giveaway would generate. Banks could certainly use some these days.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>If you were the an executive at the bank and you did that, you'll be in trouble too.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>How? Technically at that point the food belonged to the bank.
>>>>>
>>>>>Hrm... Perhaps I'm misunderstanding things. What I read in the article, the bank evicted the shop because the shop owners owed them money (so I would assume that means the bank owns the building). At what point did the shop's goods become the property of the bank?
>>>>
>>>>The moment the bank had legal ownership of the building.
>>>
>>>No, the impression given by the article is that the shop was leasing the space, therefore, the bank has always had legal ownership. I'm basing this off of the use of the term 'evicted' as opposed to 'foreclosure'.
>>>
>>>Unless what the shop owed the bank was loans to purchase the products for resale, then yes the argument could be made that the goods belonged to the bank. Otherwise, it's the shop's to do with as it pleases.
>>
>>But the moment they were technically evicted they forfeited the contents of the building which they did not remove...hence ownership of the contents is now the banks to do what they please with - which in this case was to send all the merchandise to a landfill.
>
>Depends on where they are. In some states, the lessor must still let you in to collect your stuff, even if you have been evicted.
>
>Since the merchandise was in the parking lot, then it was out of the building and, therefore, probably still belonged to the shop.

According to the article the stuff belonged to Sun Trust Bank.

"We don't have authority to take possession of the property; we just have to make sure that it's handled, disposed of by law," Smith, said.
SunTrust Bank in Atlanta owns the property and they're sending the merchandise to the landfill after evicting the Chois, the owners of the grocery store...."

>But it was still not the police/marshall/constable's responsibility to let people walk off with it.

Yes... but it IS there responsibility to 'protect and serve' - and they chose to protect something a bank was tossing in the trash instead of serving the 300 people of the community. Frankly it's a sad state of affairs for the cops involved because they're kind of in a no - win situation. I think most of the blame should be on the bank - as their the ones that made the choice to waste a whole store's worth of food in a poor neighborhood. They had a chance to actually do something for the community and decided to be a-holes instead.