[GhostVII]

I think the incentive should be to call the police and have them impound it in a legal way, or just move it off of their property, not have a private party come and steal the scooters. Just because something is on your property, does not mean you can legally take it - if you park in my driveway, I can't just steal your car.

[negativez]

Replace "steal" with "call a registered tow company" and you can do exactly that - have someone remove an improperly-placed item from your property. Cities solved the problem of improperly-parked cars by creating the entire "towing" concept.

Police aren't a service for junk removal, they are for holding guns. You hire a moving company to remove junk and you get the police to come hold guns if the junk-leaver threatens to do you harm because of same.

[ksaj]

Impounding isn't the same thing as throwing them into a dumpster.

Likewise, unless it is registered as a vehicle (and I doubt these scooters are), impounding probably wouldn't happen, and there is no law against tossing abandoned "garbage" that appears on your property.

Interesting. Precedence will eventually be set and then we'll know.

[observer12]

That's not how it works for cars why would it be different for scooters? You generally can't call police to impound a car parked on your private property. That's why you call a towing company.

[theandrewbailey]

What if you have a dozen people show up every morning and leave their pickup anywhere leave anywhere car rentals in your driveway?

[GhostVII]

Call the police, or (in the case of the scooters), move it off of your property. I mean I sympathize with the property owners encountering problems, but I'm pretty sure it is very illegal to just impound other peoples property like this. If it was an individual property owner taking scooters off their property and throwing them in some dumpster after they got fed up with them, I wouldn't really blame them, but making a business centered around stealing property just to shake down scooter companies and reduce competition for your bike shop doesn't seem very legal or ethical.

[chermanowicz]

https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/sites/default/files/FileC...

Every state/city is a little different with regard to the specifics

[supercanuck]

Police contract out this sort of work to companies like the one in the article.