Petty crimes like this ruin otherwise helpful ideas. In my city I've come across a number of Bird scooters that have been vandalized, had the GPS ripped off to presumably steal them for personal use.
If nobody does anything about that, an otherwise great idea that could seriously help people get around more easily and reduce traffic and pollution will simply not work, because we allow some people to get away with being assholes.
At some point I figured the guy who took mine needed it more than the effort I didn't take to lock it up.
I find cars tremendously annoying and dangerous, does that mean I can start smashing them up?
Also, they are not being only vandalized, but stolen, which would imply that the perpetrators do believe the scooters are quite useful, but simply don't want to pay for them.
You're also ignoring that many of the scooters are being stolen not vandalized, or the vandalism is part of the theft (ripping off the GPS unit so the scooter can't be tracked).
Besides nuisance/boon is not a binary switch. Even if the vandals were a handful of angry cranks who were annoyed by the scooters, that doesn't imply that the scooters aren't overall beneficial to the city.
Reasonable, morally normal people don't want anybody sent to prison for stealing a bike. That's a reductive straw man. The issue at hand is that this person had stolen before, had been caught stealing multiple times before, and, despite being told that doing it again would result in a long sentence, still couldn't stop himself from stealing a bike.
This is a pattern of bad behavior, even in response to the threat of dire consequences. That's not normal. And it's not just "stealing a bike." It's the totality of the behavior that's being punished. "Three strikes" laws require three strikes. It's silly to look at any one of those strikes in isolation. The point is that society is saying, "enough is enough."
I was incredulous, as of course was he, and I asked to look at his paperwork because, frankly, I didn't believe him.
Often, I have learned, when you hear of things like this in the system, once you look at the paperwork you find out "oh, on top of stealing the bicycle you also pulled a gun on someone" or something of the like that explains things.
Not this time...the guy was a drug addict in his 40's who had a lifetime of petty crap, and I guess the judge was in a shit mood the day of sentencing. Since a porch is attached to a house..an "occupied dwelling" in Florida parlance, this was considered a rather serious crime, thus the 15-year bam!
I guess I'm trying to say...it depends upon several factors how things like this are going to be treated. To be honest, I have a few "friends" in Vegas now that are telling me they are really cracking down on fraud and handing out real time behind relatively minor offenses.
Just carrying a fake ID in Vegas with priors will get you a 2-5 year state-sponsored vacation.