Changing Iowa Trespassing Law

[Highmark]

As a landowner and someone who deals with trespassers on a yearly basis this issue needs to be addressed. I do think a rapidly increasing penalty for repeat offenders is right. There is never an excuse of not knowing exactly whose property you are on. Good fences or not its our responsibility to know where we are.

 

[Daver]

As a landowner and someone who deals with trespassers on a yearly basis this issue needs to be addressed. I do think a rapidly increasing penalty for repeat offenders is right. There is never an excuse of not knowing exactly whose property you are on. Good fences or not its our responsibility to know where we are.

Not to quibble...but I would disagree a little here. My example here is one time, long ago I had a friend/co-worker that had grown up on a farm. She invited me to her parent's farm to go pheasant hunting. I met up with her father and he showed me around the place and told me where I could go and not go, etc. Everything was ship-shape...so off we go.

So, a little while later we are walking down a fence line when a pickup truck approached us out in the field and the man driving it was all kinds of upset at us for...trespassing! What? Well, it turns out that the man giving us permission figured his neighbor wouldn't mind...so he showed us his place too...only he did mind...a lot as it turned out! Harrumph!

Technically, we were trespassing, but not knowingly and we certainly had an explanation. This type of trespassing, where there is an honest mistake, to me, is not what is causing the real heartburn out there. I think there can still be some benign mistakes from time to time that should not warrant a "death penalty", so to speak.

The real criminals are the ones that knowingly and repeatedly cross property lines. A different level of penalties, escalating with repeat performances, should apply in these cases IMO.

 

[Highmark]

Not to quibble...but I would disagree a little here. My example here is one time, long ago I had a friend/co-worker that had grown up on a farm. She invited me to her parent's farm to go pheasant hunting. I met up with her father and he showed me around the place and told me where I could go and not go, etc. Everything was ship-shape...so off we go.

So, a little while later we are walking down a fence line when a pickup truck approached us out in the field and the man driving it was all kinds of upset at us for...trespassing! What? Well, it turns out that the man giving us permission figured his neighbor wouldn't mind...so he showed us his place too...only he did mind...a lot as it turned out! Harrumph!

Technically, we were trespassing, but not knowingly and we certainly had an explanation. This type of trespassing, where there is an honest mistake, to me, is not what is causing the real heartburn out there. I think there can still be some benign mistakes from time to time that should not warrant a "death penalty", so to speak.

The real criminals are the ones that knowingly and repeatedly cross property lines. A different level of penalties, escalating with repeat performances, should apply in these cases IMO.

No question for these situations hopefully no charges can be filed also why I stated rapidly increasing penalties. By no means am I implying you but that is an often used excuse too.