>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.
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>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.

No argument on the bank being an a-hole (Pig - Grunt). I'm just sorry that the cops got stuck in the middle of the stupidity. And, in reality, let's not forget the happy shop's responsibility in some of this. They could have picked an 'ending' time, kept that time internal to the management and then, at the appointed time, opened their doors to whomever wished to come and get.

And now, we'll have the arguments of "why should they give the stuff away when they could have continued to sell it?". Simple answer: obviously, they weren't.